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 Fashion holds
a mirror to the epoch. Though trite, it's true. We can most accurately determine
the epoch, with all its political, philosophical, cultural and other implications,
by its headwear, the presence or absence of lace, length and shape of a women's
skirt or a men's waistcoat. Every age generates its own aesthetic image, forges
its characteristic beauty standards, expressed through art, architecture, and
costume design (in proportions, shapes, volume, details, material, color,
hairstyles, makeup, and accessories).
Fashion is
a sort of gauge, indicating evolution of manners and morals. Politics change,
new customs and tendencies emerge, and costume changes accordingly. By «changing
its clothes», society changes its way of thinking. Throughout the history of caste
society, costume served as a medium for expressing one's social identity, used
to identify privileges of one class over another. In a way, clothing is a sort of
social marking. So, let's hold our mirror to the 19th century Europe.
The culture
of this century is characterized by a diversity of styles. This was the century
of ups and downs, great alteration in outlook and transformation of the cultural
paradigm; a century, which separated classical heritage and modern traditions. In
art, philosophy and ideology realism reigned supreme. From myth and religion-oriented
worldview to thinking in terms of economic profitability - that's the way of
the 19th century.
This change
was reflected in clothing. The influence of national features in dress in
Europe had been declining since about 1675 and by 1800 fashionable dress design
had become international. The character of the feminine wardrobe stemmed from
Paris, the masculine from London.
In terms of
fashion, 19th century can be divided into 3 periods:
1. 1800-1825 Empire\Regency
2. 1830-1860 Romanticism
3. 1870-1900 Late Victorian era
Until about
1820 women's dress continued to reflect styles initiated by the French. These
fashions were supposedly based upon the classical dress of ancient Greece.
Ladies wore loose, draped, high-waisted gowns in white colors. Women wore a
minimum of thin garments with little underwear which made it an unsuitable mode
of dress during the winters. To attempt to combat the chill, women adopted a
threequarter-length overdress made from a warmer material and a variety of
shawls, pelisses, and redingotes.
During the
1820s in European and European-influenced countries, fashionable women's
clothing styles transitioned away from the classically-influenced
Empire/Regency styles of ca. 1795-1820 (with their relatively unconfining
empire silhouette) and re-adopted elements that had been characteristic of most
of the 18th century (and were to be characteristic of the remainder of the 19th
century), such as full skirts and clearly visible corseting of the natural
waist.
The
silhouette of men's fashion changed in similar ways: by the mid-1820s coats
featured broad shoulders with puffed sleeves, a narrow waist, and full skirts.
Trousers were worn for smart day wear, while breeches continued in use at court
and in the country.
During the
first half of the 1820s, there were slight gradual modifications of Regency
styles, with the position of the waistline trending successively lower than the
high waistline of the Regency (just below the breasts), and also further
development of the trends of the late 1810s towards giving skirts a somewhat
conical silhouette (as opposed to earlier more clinging and free-flowing
styles), and in having various types of decoration (sometimes large and ornate)
applied horizontally around the dress near the hem. Sleeves also began
increasing in size , foreshadowing the styles of the 1830s. However, there was
still no radical break with the Empire/Regency aesthetic.
During the
second half of the 1820s, this neoclassical aesthetic was decisively
repudiated, preparing the way for the main fashion features of the next ten to
fifteen years (large sleeves, somewhat strict corseting of the natural waist,
full skirts, elaborate large-circumference hats, and visual emphasis on wide
sloping shoulders). Around 1826, fabrics with large bold checkerboard or plaid
patterns were seen on various fashion plates (another contrast with the
previous fashion period, which had favored small delicate pastel prints). A
bustle was sometimes also worn. Belts accentuated the new defined waist. Day
gowns were often worn with a round ruffled linen collar similar to a soft
Elizabethan ruff.
The prevalent
trend of Romanticism from the 1820s through the mid-1840s, with its emphasis on
strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience and its recognition of the
picturesque, was reflected in fashion as in other arts. Items of historical
dress including neck ruffs, ferronieres (jeweled headbands worn across the
forehead), and sleeves based on styles of earlier periods were popular.
Overall,
both men's and women's fashion showed width at the shoulder above a hippo tiny
waist. Men's coats were padded in the shoulders and across the chest, while
women's shoulders sloped to huge sleeves.
In the
1830s, fashionable women's clothing styles had distinctive large «leg of mutton»
or «gigot» sleeves, above large full conical skirts, ideally with a narrow, low
waist between (achieved through corseting). The bulkiness of women's garments
both above and below the waist was intended to make the waist look smaller than
it was - this was the final repudiation of any last lingering aesthetic
influences of the Empire silhouette of ca. 1795-1825. Heavy stiff fabrics such
as brocades came back into style, and many 18th-century gowns were brought down
from attics and cut up into new garments. The combination of sloping shoulders
and sleeves which were very large over most of the arm (but narrowing to a
small cuff at the wrist) is quite distinctive to the day dresses of the 1830s.
Pelerines,
or lace coverings draped over the shoulders, were popular (one of several
devices, along with full upper-arm sleeves and wide necklines, to emphasize the
shoulders and their width).
The
fashionable feminine figure, with its sloping shoulders, rounded bust, narrow
waist and full hips, was emphasized in various ways with the cut and trim of
gowns. To about 1835, the small waist was accentuated with a wide belt (a
fashion continuing from the 1820s). Later the waist and midriff were unbelted
but cut close to the body, and the bodice began to taper to a small point at
the front waist. The fashionable corset now had gores to individually cup the
breasts, and the bodice was styled to emphasize this shape.
Evening
dresses had very wide necklines and short, puffed sleeves reaching to the elbow
from a dropped shoulder, and were worn with mid-length gloves. The width at the
shoulder was often emphasized by gathered or pleated panels of fabric arranged
horizontally over the bust and around the shoulders.
Day dresses
generally had high necklines, and shoulder width was emphasized with pelerines
or wide collars that rested on the gigot sleeves. Summer afternoon dresses
might have wide, low necklines similar to evening dresses, but with long
sleeves. Skirts were pleated into the waistband of the bodice, and held out
with starched petticoats of linen or cotton.
Riding
habits consisted of a high-necked, tight-waisted jacket with the fashionable
dropped shoulder and huge gigot sleeves, worn over a tall-collared shirt or
chemisette, with a long matching petticoat or skirt. Tall top hats with veils
were worn.
Shawls were
worn with short-sleeved evening gowns early in the decade, but they were not
suited to the wide gigot sleeves of the mid 1830s.
Full-length
mantles were worn to about 1836, when mantles became shorter. A mantlet or
shawl-mantlet was a shaped garment like a cross between a shawl and a mantle, with
points hanging down in front. The burnous was a three-quarter length mantle
with a hood, named after the similar garment of Arabia. The paletot was
knee-length, with three cape-collars and slits for the arms, and the pardessus
was half or three-quarter length coat with a defined waist and sleeves. For
evening, voluminous mantles of velvet or sation, with fur trim or fur linings
in cold climate were worn with the evening gown.
In this
period, men's fashion plates continue to show an ideal silhouette with broad
shoulders, and a narrow, tightly cinched waist. Shirts of linen or cotton
featured tall standing collars, increasing worn «spread» and later turned down
rather than turned up over the chin, and were worn with wide cravats tied in a
soft bow; dark cravats were popular for day wear. Shirts for daywear had tucked
insets over the chest, while evening shirts had frills.
Frock coats
(in French redingotes) increasingly replaced tail coats for informal day wear.
They were calf length, and might be double-breasted. Shoulder emphasis fell
lower on the arm; shoulders were sloped and puffed sleeve heads gradually
shrank and then disappeared. Waistcoats or vests were single- or
double-breasted, with rolled shawl or (later) notched collars, and extremely
tight through the waist. Waistcoast were sometimes worn two at time, in
constrasting colors. Corsets or corset-like garments were worn by many men to
draw in the waistline. The most fashionable coats had padded shoulders and
chests, a feature that disappeared after about 1837.
Full-length
trousers began to have the modern fly-front closure, replacing the earlier
fall-front. Breeches remained a requirement for formal functions. Breeches
continued to be worn for horseback riding and other country pursuits, especially
in Britain, with tall fitted boots.
No 19th
century gentleman would have considered himself well-dressed without sporting
some sort of cloth around his neck--the more decorative, the better. At times,
cravats were worn so high that a man could not move his head without turning
his whole body. There were even reports of cravats worn so thick that they
stopped sword thrusts.
It is to
Honore de Balzac that we owe the truism «le cravate c'est l'homme meme». Balzac
spoke the truth. A consummate dandy and legendary practitioner of the art of
tying the cravat, Balzac is generally believed to be the author of the first
book on men's fashion called «The Art of Tying the Cravat». The book credits «H.
Le Blanc» with the authorship, but few argue that Balzac was the man behind the
pen.
It was the
necktie which finally replaced the cravat. It was replaced during the 19th
century by an unlikely combination of Lord Byron, Charles Dickens, English
coachmen, and Edward VII. The necktie was tailormade for the clerical workforce
of the new industrial economy of the late 19th century. It was inexpensive,
lasted for ever, and was easy and quick to knot.
Innovations
in roller printing on textiles introduced new dress fabrics. Rich colors such
as the Turkey red of the 1820s were still found, but delicate floral prints on
light backgrounds were increasingly popular. More precise printing eliminated
the need for dark outlines on printed designs, and new green dyes appeared in
patterns of grasses, ferns, and unusual florals. Combinations of florals and
stripes were fashionable.
Vivid
description of magnificent splendor of fabrics, lace, and linen in France of industrial
era are given by Emile Zola in his novel «Ladies' Paradise»: «First, pale
satins and soft silks were gushing out: royal satins and renaissance satins,
with the pearly shades of spring water; light silks as transparent as crystal -
Nile green, turquoise, blossom pink, Danube blue. Next came the thicker
fabrics, the marvelous satins and the duchess silks, in warm shades, rolling in
great waves. And at the bottom, as if in a fountain-basin, the heavy materials,
the damasks, the brocades, the silver and gold silks, were sleeping on a deep
bed of velvets - velvets of all kinds, black, white, colored, embossed on a background
of silk or satin, their shimmering flecks forming a still lake in which
reflections of the sky and of the countryside seemed to dance».
«Round the
columns flounces of Mechlin and Valenciennes lace were hanging down like the
white skirts of ballerinas, falling to the ground in a shiver of
whiteness...And everywhere, on all the counters, there was a snowy whiteness,
Spanish blond-lace as light as air, Brussels applique with large flowers on
fine mesh, needle-point and Venetian lace with heavier designs, Alencon and
Bruges lace of regal and almost religious richness...»
The
technical advances and the capability for mass manufacturing were making
fashionable dress available to a rapidly expanding middle class. The invention
of the sewing machine and the development of the ready-to-wear trade, new
marketing techniques, and the establishment of department stores and emergence
of first fashion houses in 1870s were revolutionizing the fashion industry.
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