Clothing and Fashion

Home , 1850s in Western fashion, Mantle (clothing)

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Women wearing bustles. Bustles have been an element of Western fashion intermittently since the seventeenth century. Women's dresses were form-fitting on top and created with a tuck and flounce in the back, below the waist, to avoid appearing masculine. © BETTMAN/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

from all classes, as well as by little girls with their short Elsa Schiaparelli made playful homage to the bustle in skirts. As The Delineator noted in February 1886 (p. 99), some of her sleek evening dresses, while late-twentieth- some women did not wear a bustle pad, "except when century bustle interpretations by avant-garde designers, such an adjunct if necessitated by a ceremonious toilette," such as Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood, have relying instead on a flounced petticoat to support the utilized the form with historically informed irony. drapery of simpler dresses. See also Mantua; Skirt Supports. After about 1887 the bustle reduced in size and skirts began to slim. The skirts of the early 1890s featured some BIBLIOGRAPHY back fullness, but emphasis had shifted to flared skirt hems Blum, Stella. Victorian Fashions and Costumes -from Harper's Bazar and enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves, and bustle supports 1867-1898. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974. were not as fashionable. With skirts fitting snugly to the Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nine- hips and derriere in die late 1890s, however, some women teenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1937. Reprint, relied on skirt supports to achieve a gracefully rounded New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990. hipline that set off a small waist. While not as extreme as Gernsheim, Alison. Fashion and Reality: 1840-1914. London: examples from the mid-1880s, the woven wire or quilted Faber and Faber, 1963. Reprint as Victorian and Edwardian hip pads worn beyond the turn of century show the tenac- Fashion: A Photographic Survey. New York: Dover Publica- tions, Inc., 1981. ity of the full-hipped female ideal. Hill, Thomas E. Never Give a Lady a Restive Horse. From Man- Despite some historians' view that bustle fashions were ual of Social and Business Fonns: Selections. 1873. Also from surely the most hideous ever conceived, this very femi- Albmn of Biography and Art. 1881. Reprint, Berkeley, Calif.: nine silhouette has continued to fascinate. In the late 1930s, Diablo Press, 1967.

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(SHOES, WOMEN'S •> N^^_ ^f CLOTHING tended not to last long ; PHYSICAL CULURE at the ball of the foot, ANOTHER WORD FOR Colored footwear founi AND FASHION NOW ONLY kle-length skirts, but decadesJ "". T^1 Uh e 1long, hill tury hid the feet from view, with perhaps the occasional peep at a vamp when the woman walked or waltzed across a floor. By the mid-1850s, black or white footwear was deemed by fashion delineators to be the most elegant and tasteful choice, a standard that would last for many years. However, after the mid-1850s, with the introduction of wire frame "crinoline" skirt supports, skirts tended to tip and swing, exposing the foot and ankle. This brought about interest in the decoration of shoe vamps. Machine chain-stitched designs with colorful silk underlays, dubbed "chameleons," became fashionable for home and evening wear. For daytime, however, boots became mod- est essentials underneath the wire-frame supported skirts. Side-laced boots called "Adelaides" in England, after William IVs consort, were made for most outdoor occasions until improvements in the elasticity of rubber resulted in the development of elastic thread which, woven into webbing, was used for ankle-boot gussets. Elastic- sided boots were referred to as "Garibaldi" boots in Eu- NEW FOOT NOTES rope after the Italian statesman who united Italy during the 1860s, and as "Congress" boots in the United States Physical Culture women's shoes advertisement, 1938. By the after the American Congress. Front-laced boots came 1930s, the color, shape, and decoration of shoes had expanded back into fashion by 1860. Called "Balmorals," after to offer numerous options for fashionable women. © LAKE COUNTY Queen Victoria's Scottish home, the style was deemed MUSEUM/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. suitable for informal daywear and sporting occasions at first, but by the 1870s had become the more common closure of all boots. Button boots were introduced in the 1850s, but were generally not favored until the 1880s and the shapes of toes varied, with no one style predom- when their tight fit and elegant closure flattered the slim inating. The square toe, introduced as early as the 1790s, ankle and foot more than laced styles. did not become the main style until the late 1820s but would remain so for the next half century. Heels were re-introduced on ladies' footwear during the late 1850s, but did not find universal appeal until the As factories disfigured the horizon, many longed for late 1870s. Historicism was an important movement of the picturesque qualities of an unspoiled landscape. A nat- the mid-nineteenth century; Rococo and Baroque styling uralism movement brought long country promenades was evident on shoes in the 1860s with a return to buck- into fashion; ladies began to wear "spatterdashes," leg- les and bows. Large, multiple loop bows were called gings adapted from men's military dress that protected "Fenelon," after the seventeenth-century French writer. stockings from spatters and dashes of mud. Walking be- Mules, too, came back into fashion as part of the histor- came a fad called "pedestrianism" and a prescribed ac- ical revival of the ancien regime. tivity for women. Boots were worn for this activity as a sensible alternative to fashion shoes. Ankle boots, re- Exoticism was another important movement of the ferred to as demi-boots or half boots, found international nineteenth century. Via the Crimean war, Turkish em- appeal in this period. broideries were exported for the production of shoe up- By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in pers in the late 1850s and when Japan opened its doors to 1837 a sentimental, romanticized movement had swept foreign trade in 1867, a taste for all-things Oriental made popular thought. Women became expressions of virtue a strong comeback. Chinese embroidered silks or Euro- and femininity, their conservative costume and demure pean embroidered silks in the taste of Chinese and Japan- decorum reflected conscious gentility. Fine slippers of kid ese textiles were in fashion and a Japanese-influenced and silk were made in great quantities in Paris and ex- palette of colors resulted in brown leather footwear com- ported around the world. Soles, which had been made ing into vogue, which would become a fashion staple. without left or right definition for more than 200 years, By the late 1880s the square toe had finally fallen were exceptionally narrow now and the delicate uppers from fashion, replaced by rounded and even almond-

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CLOTHING ROMA AND GYPSY \a men. A group of four young Roma men in Brasov, Romania. In Roma tradition, hats are kept away from any surface and AND FASHION

The presentation of self through dress and fashion 2. 1930s Chicago gangster—loose pants, two toned is very important to the Roma and part of their public shoes, wide splashy tie, and double breasted jacket. performance as Roma. Roma fashions do change over 3. Palm Springs golfer—white or loud color pants, red time and place. Furthermore, fashions for men and golf shirt, Irish hat. women seem to be based on different criteria. Whereas 4. Casual modern—polo shirts, white shirts, or Hawai- men dress to present an image to the outside world that ian shirts, long pants. they associate with power and authority, women dress to Young men who are not yet old enough to present present an image to the Roma that is associated with an image of power may adopt a more youthful modern Roma ideas of the power of purity and pollution. dress. For example: (1) Beatles attire—pencil thin tie, loud tight shirt, and stove pipe pants; (2) Spanish or Hun- Men garian Gypsy musician—longish hair, red diklo at the In the United States Roma have adopted fashions that neck, "Gypsy" shirt; or (3) Modern—shirt and baggy project a particular masculine stereotype, often gleaned shorts. from the movies. Their public and private appearance is a performance of a certain recognizable style that they Women associate with masculinity and authority. They are not Women are interested in fashion that shows their sense concerned with being stylishly up-to-date, rather they are of "shame" and their status as guardians of purity for the concerned with the images of power projected by the family. Because of this role, women are expected to cover clothing. Examples of commonly seen styles include: their legs at least to the mid-calf. Married women tradi- 1. Urban cowboy—hat, cowboy shirt, bolo tie, jeans, tionally cover their head with a scarf and tie their long and boots; sometimes a Western-style jacket. hair up or braid it. There is no shame associated with

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING AND FASHION 115 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING Occult Dress to Zoran, Index AND FASHION TO<;A question whether it is a physical possibility for women to reduce their natural waist measure below 17 or 18 inches." This is not to say that women did not use corsets to reduce their waists. Writing in 1866, the English author Arnold Cooley claimed that, "The waist of healthy women ... is found to measure 28 to 29 inches in cir- cumference. Yet most women do not permit themselves to exceed 24 inches round the waist, whilst tens of thou- sands lace themselves down to 22 inches, and many de- luded victims of fashion and vanity to 21 and even to 20 inches." The discourse on tight-lacing needs to be analyzed in ways that move beyond simple measurements. Because the practice of tight-lacing was so ill-defined and yet was perceived as being so ubiquitous in the nineteenth century, it became the focus of widespread social anxieties about women. Tight-lacing disappeared as a social issue with the decline of the corset as a fashionable garment in the early twentieth century. However, there still existed individu- als who wore tightly laced corsets. In the mid-twentieth century, Ethel Granger was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having "the world's smallest waist," which measured 13 inches. In the early twenty-first century, the most famous tight-lacer is probably the corsetier Mr. Pearl, who claims to have a 19-inch waist. His friend Cathie J. boasts of having reduced her waist to 15 inches.