Conference turris::womannotes-v1

    This note is an addendum to the base note .0  May I thank moderator
    Bonnie for unmessing my original basenote which was fouled up by
    a system problem.                                       
                                                            
    So...if you have experience making or wearing historical costume,
    or have explored the problems of making people today look like 18/19
    Cent people do please get in touch.                     
                                                            
    Just  recently I have heard of a 1950s fashion designer saying that
    today women cannot wear the 1950 dresses because of 'shape'. Really
    ?                                                       
                                                            
                                                            
    David   SUBURB::WILSON                                  
                                                            

    Such an interesting subject!  I did take several semesters
    of historical costume-alas, 15 years ago...some points I
    remember:
    
    Costume (clothing) was complimented by hairstlye and makeup
    (or lack of), including 'beauty treatments' such as eyebrow
    plucking, additions of beauty marks, etc.
    
    Carriage and movement greatly influenced the style of dress,
    and vice versa....posture, range of motion, facial expressions,
    walk (small steps for example, when tight skirts were popular).
    
    Even such small elements as hand movements influence how 'authentic'
    a costume appears (it takes real practice to carry and use a fan
    gracefully and naturally).
    
    DK
    
    

    It's unfair to criticize costuming by what you see in the movies.
    This winter I attended a showing of Hollywood costumes at LACMA.
    The accompanying material was quite informative, showing how some
    costumes were horribly modified to either cater to what the audience
    thought people dressed like at the time, or to what the actress
    and actors wanted to show off.  The exhibit included sketches by
    the costumers and examples of accurate design.  Several times, mention
    was made of arguments made by designers who wanted exact historical
    accuracy.  Some of the costumes were accurate, some were not, but
    all were fun to look at, and all the exhibited costumes showed 
    amazing attention to detail.

        My wife (who is unfortunately not a DEC employee) was a costumer
    during a portion of her college career.  She worked in the costume
    shops of College of Marin, and San Francisco State University and
    studied costumes and costuming quite a bit.  If you give me some
    specific questions I can ask her to address them.
    
        She gave me a fascinating tour of the Victoria and Albert museum's
    costume display.  She pointed out how certain features of the costumes
    grew and shrunk as different aspects of the female body became
    "popular" during different periods.
    
    ASP

    
    A couple of thoughts...
    
    In .0 you mention that some costumes (with corsets etc) would be
    unwearable today. I would have thought that when for example in
    victorian times, tiny waists were the fashion, women probably started
    wearing corsets when fairly young which I would have thought would
    have affected the way their bones grew as they developed. Also people
    were smaller then, I presume this was perhaps due to not such a
    good diet.
    
    I was also going to mention make up & hairstyles, but I see someone
    else has already mentioned that.

    But at any given time, women come in all shapes and sizes.  I think
    the trick would be finding the ones who are a good match for the
    period in question to model the costumes most appropriately.
    
    I have known women with 'Twiggy' bodies, with hourglass figures,
    with 40's pin-up chests, with 'boyish hips' (1920's), and so forth.
    
    Another lesson in how relative the standards of beauty are!

    re: .6 
    
    Good point, Holly.
    
    For a pioneer-days celebration several years ago, I wore a riding
    dress that used to belong to my great-great grandmother. I
    couldn't get into the boots, but otherwise the costume fit me very
    well and I felt quite comfortable in it, corsets and all.  (And
    this was after kid #1.)  The dress was made in the 1880's, when
    hips and bosoms were in style.  :) :) 

    A friend of mine, who was in theater, was a perfect Renaissance
    woman, with good hips, sloping shoulders, and very white skin. Her
    chest was shaped in a way to show off those breastplate-type dress
    fronts that Queen Elizabeth is always shown wearing. She found
    that costume comfortable, since it suited her.  
    
    I notice that nobody has mentioned male costuming at all -- a lack
    that has come up in almost every discussion of historical dress
    that I've ever participated in. (Except for lewd jokes about kilts
    and codpieces). 
    
    Men wore full makeup in the late 1700's.  They powdered and
    braided their hair.  They wore lace and perfume until about
    Victorian times.  In the 1500's, male costume was more flambouyant
    than female (women were supposed to be modest).  
    
    The urge to decorate one's body appears to be universal.  Jewelry,
    paint, and symbolic and non-functional clothing are found in every
    culture known to archaeology and anthropology, on people of
    all ages and sexes and classes.  
    
    Our culture, with its dowdy, plainly costumed men, is the
    anomalous one.
    
    --bonnie
    

    
    I wonder what it was that made men change from lace and perfume
    to pinstripe suits ? Was fancy dress thought too frivolous in the
    Victorian era or something ? Has anyone got any ideas why this should
    change so much in a couple of hundred years ?
    
    	Sarah.

    Until the early 19th century, men dressed up in bright colors,
    and in general peacocked around.  Then, around 1820(?), Bulwar-Lytton
    wrote the novel _Pelham_, in which his narrator and "hero"
    espoused the belief that a man looked his finest in evening dress
    of stark black and white.
    
    Voil�!  Overnight men changed their plumage.  Only in the last
    twenty years or so have bright feathers started to re�merge among
    the males.
    
    I'm sure there were other factors.  Who knows 'em?
    
    							Ann B.
    
    P.S.  A sensible man wore his plainest dark coat, and tucked back
    his ruffles when he duelled.

    Re: .10
    
    I thought it was Beau Brummel who ushered in simplicity in men's
    wear a few years earlier (maybe it didn't *really* catch on for
    a while).  Also, I thought Bulwar-Lytton was nearer the Victorian
    era than the Georgian.  (Bulwar-Lytton was the author of the infamous
    opening line, "It was a dark and stormy night.")

    I *believe* it was "Beau" Brummell who first shocked society by
    appearing at a formal affair in a closely-tailored black coat and
    trousers instead of the usual colorful jacket, knee-pants and
    stockings. Having stood society on its ear, he then got to see his
    style emulated by everybody - especially once royalty started taking
    it up. (The version I heard had it that George IV, who was rather
    portly, liked the new fashion because it made him look slim... or
    so his courtiers told him.)
    
    Well, anyway, it's as good a myth as any!
    
    And, once "fashion" had been started, Queen Victoria's lengthy reign
    made sure that everybody who *was* anybody in the British Empire
    (and in most of its allied nations) took up the same fashions.

    I also believe that formal etiquette (as in books of "how to's")
    began to rise in popularity at about the same time, thus codifying
    the new fashions.
    
    [Side note: I find it rather entertaining to read articles about native
    tribes wherein the authors comment on the local customs concerning
    personal adornment. They typically make it all sound very odd and
    unbelievable: "The women smear their faces with colored ointments made
    from crushed roots, and insert ornaments through holes pierced in their
    noses." But how do these differ significantly from the face-painting
    rituals to be observed in the girls' rest rooms in most junior-high or
    high schools?]

    -b

    I don't know about dress but I do know that men started wearing
    their hair consistantly short after WWI ...the lice that spread
    in the trench wars carried typhus....so short hair was seen as
    being cleaner and preventing disease.
    
    I suspect like all changes the style changes were gradual and made
    up of many different factors.
    
    Bonnie Jeanne

    Re .11 and .12: Great minds think alike - and great noters all note
    after lunch!
    
    -b

    re: 12 and others,
    
    All these factors correspond to the rise of the middle class.
    
    Ettiquette (never could spell that word!) books rose because
    the new middle class wanted to know how the upper class lived
    so they could pass as upper class.  The simpler the dress was,
    the fewer mistakes there were.
    
    Similarly, "correct" English became much more codified and
    much more rigid.  People who feared they were going to make
    mistakes of diction that would reveal their humble origins
    weren't about to allow others to use syntax that might lead
    to those mistakes.
    
    I hadn't connected the change in clothing styles with the change
    in manners and grammar, though.

    I've got a scholarly study of these factors.  I'll fish it
    out and see if it has anything relevant to say.
    
    --bonnie 

        Although you can find folk with "old-fashioned" bodies, the
        influence of garments on changing body shape can be very real
        and hard to duplicate by accident. My wife's grandfather, I am
        told could put his hands around the waist of his young wife, a
        feat much less likely in the absence of cradle to grave corset
        wearing. 
        
        Regarding men's fashion, it is well to remember that although
        Brummel was by the lights of his time, an advocate of plain
        dress, he would have been quite a peacock by the standards of
        the middle of this century or even today. As to where the trend
        to stark simplicity in men's dress started, I would say that it
        is a compound of several influences, of which I can think of
        about four. 
        
        First of all there was the trend towards a simple elegence
        amongst the style setters--Beau Brummel and Bulwar-Litton's
        fictional hero amongst them. This was in part an expression of
        the natural swing of fashion from simple to complex and back.
        
        Secondly there was Queen Victoria. Her influence on the world
        extended throughout and beyond the Victorian era. Under her
        influence there was a fairly extreme damping of the extravagence
        of earlier days. Her own dress and that of the women who
        emulated her was very conservative. The men who had to deal with
        her also became quite conservative in their appearence and their
        manner. In many ways she had more influence on the men than on
        the women. Excepting herself, few women were in positions of
        power, so the people who interacted with her and who had to
        curry her favor were men.
        
        Thirdly was the rise of the middle class. In earlier centuries
        there was little in the way of "middle class fashion". The upper
        middle class followed the fashions of the upper classes to which
        they aspired. The lower middle class dressed as well as they
        could, but with a very practical eye. In the 19th and 20th
        centuries the middle class took on its own identity and
        developed its own fashions. These fashions were practical and
        uniform as befit the needs and desires of the class.
        
        Finally is the long standing influence of the military on men's
        dress, and the increasing practicality of military uniform. The
        modern men's suit, for instance has lapels because it was the
        custom of off-duty officers to open the stiff high collars of
        their tunics and turn them back. If you turn up your lapels you
        get a Neru-jacket sort of look which is very like the military
        tunic of the early 19th century. Similarly men's hair styles are
        based on the sanitary needs of WWI trench warfare, and ties
        trace back to the military etc. As military dress became more
        practical and plain so did civilian dress.
        
        JimB.

    re: .16
    
    Jim, I didn't mean to discount entirely the difference fashion
    makes on actual physical structure.  I did mean that if we put you
    and me both into 1880's riding habits, I would be fairly
    comfortable but you probably wouldn't.  Similarly, if you put you,
    me, and my friend into Renaissance costumes, she would be fairly
    comfortable while I would be looking for a cowherd's tunic. 
    
    It's interesting to note that in various societies and places,
    warrior dress has been more extravagant and peacockish than
    the dress of everyday people.  In fact, it's almost true today.
    
    One of my professors was a retired Naval officer.  Whenever he had
    to go to a dressup function he wore his Navy uniform rather than a
    suit because it was flashier -- he could wear white gloves, a
    stripe on his pants, etc. 
    
    --bonnie

    I was watching a TV programme last week in which they said that
    'sometimes the lower ribs were surgically removed' to enable 
    tighter bodices to be worn.   So waspie waists must have been
    VERY prized.
    
    diana.

    Yes, well, so were "Lotus hooks" in another part of the world.

    yes, in addition to surgical removal of ribs, pressure from some
    whalebone corsets at the height of the fashion trend exerted 80
    pounds per square inch on the wearer's body...no wonder women were
    always said to be weak and swooning back then...they couldn't breathe!
    
    -jody
    

    and dsypepsia was a common aliment (i.e. gas)

    Hmmm.  As every good VS8000 engineer knows, dyspepsia is also caused
    by worry.

    While the surgical removal of the lower ribs did occur, it was
    rare -- surgery was considerably more dangerous then and a
    woman who went through it had to be desperate to conform.
    
    They would be analogous to present-day women who are risking their
    eyesight to have indelible eyeliner tattooed onto their eyelids. 
    
    --bonnie

    Also I have heard is the current practice of models to have certain
    teeth (molars) removed so that their face appears thinner!
    

    I am curious about how this would all apply to dress codes?
    
    dondi