Centuries of Style: Exhibition Highlights
"Naked people," Mark Twain once quipped, "have little or no influence on society." Our recent exhibition, Centuries of Style: A Retrospective of Dress, encouraged visitors to think about whether clothes really do make the man. In case you missed the exhibit, here are some highlights...
CLOTHES MAKE THE (WO)MAN
In Shakespeare’s time, women were rarely allowed to appear on the stage, as it was considered indecent for a woman to put herself on public display. Female characters were usually played by men or boys. By the late seventeenth century, this had changed—so much so, in fact, that not only were women appearing on the stage in women’s roles, but also in men’s.
Charlotte Charke, the author of the narrative shown here, was the youngest daughter of Colley Cibber, a famous eighteenth-century English actor. From a young age, she acted in what were known as “breeches” roles (male parts played by women). Some scholars have argued that this subverted and challenged traditional gender roles. Others argue that it maintained them, albeit in a strange way, by revealing the contour of female legs and buttocks and reinforcing the idea of women as sexual objects.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, the legendary French actress Sarah Bernhardt deliberately sought out young male roles, including Hamlet and L’Aiglon (the son of Napoleon). Scholar Pamela Cobrin theorizes that this may have been intended to make a statement about the lack of professional opportunities for older women (Bernhardt was nearly sixty when she played L’Aiglon). Cobrin writes: “Bernhardt assumed youth and male-ness on stage, which both highlighted her offstage socially perceived deficits (aged and female) and challenged the designation of those identities as deficient.”
CROSS-DRESSING FOR KING AND COUNTRY?
In 1756, the Chevalier d’Eon, a French nobleman, was sent to Russia to spy on the Empress Elizabeth and advance French interests in Eastern Europe. Although there is no proof, some have said he disguised himself as a woman. D’Eon was later assigned to London as French ambassador. Annoyed at being demoted in 1763, he published a scandalous memoir and threatened to reveal state secrets. The little volume fueled speculation over whether he was actually a woman, and bets as to his real gender were even placed on the London Stock Exchange.
D’Eon was eventually allowed to return to France on two conditions. The first was that he hand over all diplomatic papers in his possession. The second was more unusual: he would be required to dress for the rest of his life as a woman. Some historians have suggested that d’Eon himself proposed the second stipulation, for although appearing as a woman would make it easy for the government to dismiss him as a “hysterical female” or even a lunatic, it would also ensure that he stayed in the public spotlight, ready to tell his secrets whenever it was to his advantage.
Why d’Eon continued to wear women’s clothes after returning to England in 1785 is a mystery. When he died in 1810, a postmortem examination revealed that he was in fact male. His strange story shows just how powerful clothes can be in shaping our public and private personas.
... AND CALLED IT MACARONI
Copied from a 1742 painting by the British caricaturist William Hogarth, this engraving makes fun of high society fashions of the eighteenth century. The man on the right is thought to be “Beau” Colyear, the Earl of Portmore, who was known for his extravagant style of dress. In the background, we see a painting of cupid lighting a fire to burn petticoats and wigs that have gone out of fashion. On the left, a turbaned black slave adds an element of irony to the painting, suggesting that his masters are as much slaves to fashion as he is to them.
Men like the one shown here were known in the eighteenth century as "macaroni." Noodles, you ask? In the 1700s, it was customary for young British gentlemen to take a long trip to Italy, called the Grand Tour. This was a chance for them to “sow their wild oats” and see the world before returning home and settling down. Some of them, while on the Tour, adopted the Italians’ flamboyant style of dress and exaggerated manners, which conservative, xenophobic Britons considered effeminate and silly. They also developed a taste for pasta, a food then unknown in England. Fashion, food, and foreign ways merged into one, and when the travelers returned, they were referred to derisively as “macaroni.”
Although a patriotic song today, “Yankee Doodle” (the hero of which "stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni") was originally sung by British military officers in America to make fun of poorly dressed colonists who thought that by simply sticking a feather in their hat, they were being ultra-fashionable like the real macaroni back in England.
A REVOLUTION IN FASHION
Extravagant dress has always been one of the ways aristocrats set themselves apart from the lower classes. When revolution swept across France at the end of the eighteenth century, a new, simpler style of dress followed in its wake. To an even greater extent than before, clothes became imbued with political and social ideology, and now that France was a republic, it made sense for fashion designers to look to ancient Greece and Rome for inspiration.
Some public officials adopted uniforms resembling togas. In general, however, men simply did away with the excesses of eighteenth-century apparel and tried to cultivate a more masculine, “classical” look. Frock coats were made with high collars and broad lapels to exaggerate the size of the neck, chest, and shoulders. Waistcoats were cut shorter to expose the groin area and show off a man’s virility.
By the early nineteenth century, breeches had fallen out of fashion because of their association with the aristocracy. One faction of revolutionaries, in fact, took to calling themselves sans coulottes (“without breeches”) and proudly wore trousers, a garment previously only worn by laborers and sailors. The fashion soon spread throughout Europe and is now a standard part of men’s dress around the world.
Women’s garments of the French Revolutionary era were modeled on the free-flowing robes of ancient times. Although some were made of gaily colored or embroidered fabric, simplicity and understatement was the order of the day, at least when compared to pre-Revolutionary fashions. The “empire” waist developed at this time, and some women stopped wearing corsets, symbolizing their newfound freedom.
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TAILORING TECHNIQUES
The Encyclopédie was one of the most important books of the Age of Enlightenment. Its editor, the French philosopher Denis Diderot, wanted to fight superstition and backward ways of thinking by educating the public about science and, in particular, the mechanical arts. The multivolume work contains many entries and illustrations explaining various trades and crafts, including some related to clothing and fashion, such as tailoring, weaving, leatherworking, and lacemaking.
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HEADWEAR
Hats were once an indispensable part of men's and women's attire. Women's headwear, in particular, changed almost every year, and illustrations of the latest fashions were printed in magazines such as this one so that people could stay in style.
Wigs were not commonly worn in Europe from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. Their heyday was the period from about 1600 to 1800. In one sense, they were practical, addressing unhygienic conditions of the time. Bathing was infrequent before the invention of modern plumbing, and having no natural hair made it easier to avoid head lice. Royal patronage, however, did more than anything to popularize wigs. In England, Queen Elizabeth I, distressed at the thinning of the bright red hair that she had been famous for as a younger woman, took to wearing a tightly curled wig in a Roman style. Men’s wigs came into fashion in 1624 after King Louis XIII of France began balding at a young age. During the reign of his son, Louis XIV (after whom Louisiana is named and who inherited his father’s bad hair genes), men’s wigs grew to be especially large.
The fashion for wigs was satirized even when they were in style. This engraving, first published in 1761 by the caricaturist William Hogarth, makes fun of eighteenth-century "big hair." Hogarth seems to have found it ironic that despite the contemporary obsession for all things Greek and Roman (considered models of good taste), people showed such poor taste in hairstyles. The print is a play on the five orders (styles) of classical architecture.
