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dresshistorynerd · 2 days

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#my sister was all on the mini skirts over jeans trend#i was marginally bc#justyoungersiblingthings#ANYWAY thank you for this post omg and thank you for talking about the Slutty Era in men's fashion#surprised to see ashley tisdale in the style bc i don't typically think of her as being famous in that era but#evidently...#in ANY case this is a historical post and im on a modern tangent#thank you op! thank you for telling us about The Sluttiest Era#long post#history#fashion history

I'm very glad I could spread the important message of the greatest era in fashion history. I don't think we as a society appreciate enough the raw horny slut(affectionate) energy the Late Medieval men displayed. One post at a time I mean to fix that.

So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

I think the short answer here would be men have worn skirts as long as people have worn anything, so pretty long tbh. But since I am incapable of answering anything shortly, I think we can re-frame this question:

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

So let's start with acknowledging that tunics, togas, kirtles and such men wore through history were, in fact, skirts. I think there's often a tendency to think of these as very different garments from those that women wore, but really they are not. Most of the time they were literally referred to with the same name. (I will do a very broad and simplified overview of men's clothing from ancient times to Early Middle Ages so we can get to the point which is Late Middle Ages.)

Ancient Greek men and women both wore chitons. Even it's length wasn't determined by gender, but by occupation. Athletes, soldiers and slaves wore knee-length chitons for easier movement. Roman men and women wore very similar garment, tunics. Especially in earlier ancient Rome long sleeves were associated with women, but later became more popular and unconventional for men too. Length though was still dependent on occupation and class, not gender. Toga was sure men's clothing, but worn over tunic. It was wrapped around the waist, like a dress would, and then hung over shoulder. Romans did wear leggings when they needed to. For example for leg protection when hunting as in this mosaic from 4th century. They would have been mostly used by men since men would be doing the kinds of activities that would require them. But that does not lessen the dressyness of the tunics worn here. If a woman today wears leggings under her skirt, the skirt doesn't suddenly become not a skirt.

All over Europe thorough the early Middle Ages, the clothes were very similar in their basic shape and construction as in Rome and Greece. In Central and Northern Europe though people would wear pants under shorter tunics. There were exceptions to the everyone wearing a tunic trend. Celtic men wore braccae, which were pants, and short tunics and literally just shirts. Celts are the rare case, where I think we can say that men didn't wear dresses. Most other peoples in these colder areas wore at least knee-length tunics. Shorter tunics and trousers were worn again mostly by soldiers and slaves, so rarely any other woman than slave women. The trousers were though definitely trousers in Early Middle Ages. They were usually loose for easier construction and therefore not that similar to Roman leggings. However leggings style fitted pants were still used, especially by nobility. I'd say the loose trousers are a gray area. They wore both dresses and pants, but still definitely dresses. I'd say this style was very comparable to the 2000s miniskirts over jeans style. First one below is a reconstruction of Old Norse clothing by Danish history museum. The second is some celebrity from 2005. I see no difference.

When we get to the high Middle Ages tunics are still used by both men and women, and still it's length is dependent on class and activity more than gender, but there's some new developments too. Pants and skirt combo is fully out and leggings' are back in in form of hose. Hose were not in fact pants and calling them leggings is also misleading. Really they are socks. Or at least that's how they started. As it has become a trend here they were used by everyone, not just men. During early Middle Ages they were worn often with the trousers, sometimes the trousers tucked inside them making them baggy. In high Middle Ages they became very long when used with shorter tunics, fully displacing the need for trousers. They would be tied to the waist to keep them up, as they were not knitted (knitting was being invented in Egypt around this time, and some knitting was introduced to Europe during middle Ages, but it really only took off much later during Renaissance Era) and therefore not stretchy. First picture is an example of that from 1440s. Another exciting development in the High Medieval era was bliaut in France and it's sphere of influence. Bliaut was an early attempt in Europe of a fitted dress. And again used by both men and women. The second illustration below from mid 12th century shows a noble man wearing a bliaut and nicely showing off his leg covered in fitted hose. Bliaut was usually likely fitted with lacing on the sides, but it wasn't tailored (tailoring wasn't really a thing just yet) and so created a wrinkled effect around the torso.

In the 14th century things really picked up in European fashion. European kingdoms finally started to become richer and the rich started to have some extra money to put into clothing, so new trends started to pop up rapidly. Tailoring became a thing and clothes could be now cut to be very fitted, which gave birth to fitted kirtle. At the same time having extra money meant being able to spend extra money on more fabric and to create very voluminous clothing, which gave birth to the houppelande.

Kirtle was once again worn by everyone. It wasn't an undergarment, for women that would be shift and men shirt and breeches, but it was an underlayer. It could be worn in public but often had at least another layer on top of it. The bodice part, including sleeves were very fitted with lacing or buttons (though there were over-layer kirtles that had different sleeves that changed with fashions and would be usually worn over a fitted kirtle). Men's kirtles were short, earlier in 14th century knee-length but towards the end of the century even shorter styles became fashionable in some areas. First picture below shows a man with knee-length kirtle from 1450s Italy.

Houppelande was also unisex. It was a loose full-length overgown with a lot of fabric that was gathered on the neckline and could be worn belted or unbelted. The sleeves were also wide and became increasingly wider (for men and women) later in the century and into the next century. Shorter gowns similar in style and construction to the houppelande were also fashionable for men. Both of these styles are seen in the second picture below from late 14th century.

In the very end of 14th century, first signs of pantification of men can be seen. In France and it's sphere of influence the skirt part of the kirtle became so short it barely covered the breeches as seen below on these fashionable musicians from 1395-1400 France. Long houppelandes, length ranging from floor to calf, were still used by men though (the second picture, 1414 France), as were knee and thigh length gowns of similar loose style.

The hems continued to be short through the 15th century in France, but in other places like Italy and German sphere of influence, they were still fairly long, at least to mid thigh, through the first half of the century. In France at some point in late 13th century the very short under-kirtle started to be called doublet and they are just getting shorter in 1400s. The showing underwear problem was fixed by joined hose and the codpiece, signaling the entrance of The Sluttiest Era of men's fashion. Below is an example from 1450s Belgium of doublet and early codpiece in display. As you can see from the other figures, the overgowns of the previous century were also getting very, very short. In the next French example below from 1470s we can see the skirt shrink out of existence right before our eyes.

The very skimpy doublet and it's accompanying codpiece spread to the rest of the Europe in the second half of 15th century and it would only get sluttier from there. The Italians were just showing their full ass (example from 1490s). The dress was not gone yet though. The doublet and codpiece continued to be fashionable, but the overdress got longer again in the French area too. For example in the second example there's Italian soldiers in a knee length dresses from 1513.

But we have to talk about the Germans. They went absolutely mad with the whole doublet and codpiece. Just look at this 1513 painting below (first one). But they did not only do it sluttier than everyone else, they also changed the course of men's fashion and killed the dress.

Let's take a detour talking about the Landsknecht, the mercenary pikeman army of the Holy Roman Empire. (I'm not that knowledgeable in war history so take my war history explanation with a grain of salt.) Pikemen had recently become a formidable counter-unit against cavalry, which earlier in the Medieval Era had been the most important units. Knights were the professional highly trained cavalry, which the whole feudal system leaned against. On the other hand land units were usually not made of professional soldiers. Landsknecht were formed in late 15th century as a professional army of pikemen. They were skilled and highly organized, and quickly became a decisive force in European wars. Their military significance gave them a lot of power in the Holy Roman Empire, some were even given knighthood, which previously wasn't possible for land units, and interestingly for us they were exempt from sumptuary laws. Sumptuary laws controlled who could wear what. As the bourgeois became richer in Europe in late Middle Ages and Renaissance Era, laws were enacted to limit certain fabrics, colors and styles from those outside nobility, to uphold the hierarchy between rich bourgeois and the nobles. The Landsknecht, who were well payed mercenaries (they would mutiny, if they didn't get payed enough), went immediately absolute mad with the power to bypass sumptuary laws. Crimes against fashion (affectionate) were committed. What do you do, when you have extra money and one of your privileges is to wear every color and fabric? You wear every color and fabric. At the same time. You wear them on top of each other and so they can be seen at the same time, you slash the outer layer. In the second image you can feast your eyes on the Landsknecht.

Just to give you a little more of that good stuff, here's a selection of some of my favorite Landsknecht illustrations. This is the peak male performance. Look at those codpieces. Look at those bare legs. The tiny shorts. And savor them.

The Landsknecht were the hot shit. Their lavish and over the top influence quickly took over men's fashion in Germany in early 1500s. Slashing, the technique possibly started by them, but at least popularized by them, instantly spread all over Europe. That's how you get the typical Renaissance poof sleeves. They at first slashed the thighs of their hose, but it seems like to fit more of everything into their outfits, they started wearing the hose in two parts, upper hose and nether hose, which was a sort of return to the early Medieval trousers and knee-high hose style. The two part hose was adopted by the wider German men's fashion early in the century, but already in 1520s had spread to rest of Europe. It was first combined with the knee-length overdress that had made it's comeback in the turn of the century, like in this Italian painting from 1526 (first image). At this point knitting had become established and wide-spread craft in Europe and the stockings were born, replacing nether hose. They were basically nether hose, but from knitted fabric. The gown shortened again and turned into more of a jacket as the trunk hose became increasingly the centerpiece of the outfit, until in 1560s doublet - trunk hose combination emerged as the standard outerwear (as seen in the second example, 1569 Netherlands) putting the last nail on the coffin of the men's dress as well as the Sluttiest Era. The hose and doublet became profoundly un-slutty and un-horny, especially when the solemn Spanish influence spread all over with it's dark and muted colors.

Especially in Middle Ages, but thorough European history, trousers have been associated with soldiers. The largely accepted theory is that trousers were invented for horse riding, but in climates with cold winters, where short skirts are too cold, and long skirts are still a hazard when moving around, trousers (with or without a short skirt) are convenient for all kinds of other movement requiring activities like war. So by adopting hose as general men's clothing, men in 1500s associated masculinity with militarism. It was not a coincidence that the style came from Landsknecht. I may have been joking about them being "peak male performance", but really they were the new masculine ideals for the new age. At the time capitalism was taking form and European great powers had begun the process of violently conquering the world for money, so it's not surprising that the men, who fought for money and became rich and powerful doing so, were idealised.

Because of capitalism and increasingly centralized power, the feudal system was crumbling and with it the feudal social hierarchy. Capitalism shifted the wealth from land ownership (which feudal nobility was built upon) to capital and trade, deteriorating the hierarchy based on land. At the same time Reformation and centralized secular powers were weakening the power of the Church, wavering also the hierarchy justified by godly ordain. The ruling class was not about to give up their power, so a new social hierarchy needed to form. Through colonialism the concept of race was created and the new hierarchy was drawn from racial, gender and wealth lines. It was a long process, but it started in 1500s, and the increasing distinction between men's and women's fashions was part of drawing those lines. At the same time distinctions between white men and racialized men, as well as white women and racialized women were drawn. As in Europe up until this point, all over the world (with some exceptions) skirts were used by everyone. So when European men fully adopted the trousers, and trousers, as well as their association to military, were equated with masculinity, part of it was to emasculate racialized men, to draw distinctions.

Surprise, it was colonialism all along! Honestly if there's a societal or cultural change after Middle Ages, a good guess for the reason behind it is always colonialism. It won't be right every time, but quite a lot of times. Trousers as a concept is of course not related to colonialism, but the idea that trousers equal masculinity and especially the idea that skirts equal femininity are. So I guess decolonize masculinity by wearing skirts?

#i also remember wearing miniskirt over jeans style at least on an occasion #it definitely was a style i can say that

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dresshistorynerd · 2 days

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#this is fucking fascinating#op i love the way you explain things#posts like this make me want to shift to fashion history so fucking badly#or at the very least do research on clothing as it was represented in art through time

Thank you very much! I'm glad it was interesting to you! This made me very happy because I sometimes worry I'm not explaining things clearly or concise enough because of the rambly ADHD brain.

I'm studying architectural history, not fashion history, but I just started reading books and papers on dress history. There's a lot that can be learned even if not studying dress history in uni, but it helps a lot if you have access to a university library and academic journals. There's quite a lot of good sources online too, but dress history as a serious academic study is very new and therefore especially with online sources, but honestly with books too, studying it requires practicing a lot of critical reading, as new information is found frequently. Some people online have done a lot of great legwork to comb through primary sources in the absence of academic study though. A nice thing that internet allows is access to a lot of primary sources, especially art. I've gathered my own little primary source library on Pinterest (it's very convenient with it's boards, but there you also need to painstakingly track down every picture you find, which isn't always an easy task). (Some day I will share it here, but currently it's way too chaotic and out of order.)

This is to say, I definitely encourage researching dress history on your own, if you're interested but studying it in academia isn't viable (or just appealing or sensible) option. I'd recommend starting with an overview book of the whole (in this context western, but could be any other place if that's what interests you) dress history and A Handbook of Costume by the legendary Janet Arnold. In her book Arnold gives really great outline and how to research dress history. There's a free access to it in Internet Archive found here. An overview of the whole dress history can never be nuanced or cover everything, and most of the reliable ones are pretty old already and therefore contain outdated knowledge, but I think it's still the best way to gain the understanding on how things evolved broadly speaking. In order to understand fashion in any specific era, I do think it really helps to know how it fits into the broader evolution. One I've read, which I would recommend most, is Costume and fashion: a concise history by James Laver, which did give a pretty good summary of things though there was some outdated stuff.

So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

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dresshistorynerd · 2 days

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Thank you very much for your lovely comment! <3

These are great additions! There's always a lot of nuance with these things than one post can capture. Even while wearing a dress as a man in the Modern Era was not considered acceptable (honestly still really isn't), as you illustrated there were specific contexts where it was. Other example that comes to mind is the the modern kilt that was created in 18th century as a nationalist symbol for Scotts and was/is acceptable to wear in certain situations.

Also you mentioned how boys are still baptized in most Christian denominations in skirts, which I think comes from the tradition from Victorian Era, when small boys till around 5 years old I think, were dressed in same clothes (dresses) as girls that age. It was probable partly out of convenience, since as you said fitting trousers to changing size is much harder than doing it with skirts and small kids grow very fast. But they also had longer hair and generally the dresses were so similar to the girl's dresses, which for the time (and modern eye) were very girly and feminine, that basically small Victorian boys look exactly like girls. I don't really the modern thing where small literal babies are heavily gendered (like some people will have stroke if a one year old boy who has no concept of any of these things is wearing pink or something), but the implication here is that femininity is suitable for babies and boys grow out of it, but girls don't. It does fit with what Victorians were writing about women and how women are mentally children (which also has some very gross implications).

But yeah, the dress didn't stop one day being completely unacceptable for men in every context but since 16th century those contexts where a specific dress is acceptable have become more few and far between.

Relating to that point about how skirt is much easier to refit than trousers and in that way more practical: I think skirts in general are more practical for any type of body, except of course in certain climates/situations/activities. Which is why for most history in most places of the world everyone wore skirts except when pants were needed for a profession/activity/weather. But you're right that pants were more impractical to people seen as women. Also like using toilet or especially nature as your toilet (which you had to do much more often before modern infrastructure) was much easier and private with a skirt when you had vagina and especially before drawers were popularized in women's clothing.

Also your breakdown of how christian patriarchy and colonialism relate to each other is great! Christianity, patriarchy and colonialism truly are the unholy trinity lol. I didn't really touch on how religion came to play into this on my post, which it definitely did, since there's again so much there, as Christianity too was undergoing massive changes during that time, which had a lot of implication on how it was used politically.

(Also you are so right about Nicole Rudolf, I love her channel! Haven't yet watched that video though, but I will.)

So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

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dresshistorynerd · 2 days

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Thanks for that piece about the history of men wearing skirts. Fascinating.

Curious about hose: what kind of material was hose made of before knitting made its way to Europe? If it was something woven, how was it form fitting - did it have some kind of stretch?

I'm glad you found it interesting!

Hose was made of wool. Wool has naturally a bit stretch to it, but not much. Twill weave has a bit more stretch than plain weave, except when plain weave is stretched across the bias, in that direction it has a fair amount of stretch (of course neither has as much stretch as a knit). So likely they were made from twill or plain weave cut on bias, I've seen both of the option suggested. They still weren't stretchy exactly but had a bit of stretch. They were tailored and sewn to the shape of the legs. Well tailored hose had good movement around the joints while still looking smooth and relatively unwrinkled. There was a tailoring profession just specialized on men's hose because it needed so much skill. Apparently they were not a very comfortable garment, especially the joined hose, which would have to fit the butt while sitting and standing, but it was very fashionable so.... I'm imagining wearing them was similar as wearing the early 2010s fitted jeans. This is also why the codpiece came to be, because it would have been very hard to fit that area while still preserving the smooth look of hose without it being very uncomfortable. I think it's pretty cool how technical difficulty of construction gave birth to a fashion item that lasted a century.

In this painting the seam is very visible and shows nicely how they were constructed out of two halves. You can even see the soles which were leather slabs sewn in. It protected the wool and the soles could be changed whenever they got into bad condition, extending the durability of the hose and making it possible to wear them without additional shoes. The other picture shows a pattern for men's hose from 14th century. The knee especially is quite strongly shaped as is the calf, because big calves were fashionable, so they'd want to emphasize that. Also padding was sometimes added to hose for an added effect. (Padding was used in the kirtle and later the doublet and of course the codpiece, like we have all seen how ridiculous they got, to achieve the fashionable silhouette.)

While nowadays our socks are knitted into shape, when knitting became available in Europe and stockings replaced the nether hose, they were also constructed similarly, that is the knit was produced as a flat fabric and the pattern for the stocking was cut from it and sewn together. But because it was so much stretchier, it was constructed from one pattern piece and there was just one seam in the back. It was also shaped to fit so they got extra smooth legs, but it was enough to shape just that one seam. This is how stockings were constructed actually well into the 20th century.

#answers #fashion #history #fashion history #historical fashion #dress history #medieval fashion #renaissance fashion #historical men's fashion #hose #historical sewing

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dresshistorynerd · 3 days

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So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

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dresshistorynerd · 3 days

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#a wonderful tangent!#this dovetails very neatly with a thing I learned about earlier this week:#along with the 'Enlightenment' and rising colonialism came the concept that only 'lesser' civilizations didn't have a gender binary#so Europeans started to emphasize a distinction between two genders (in occupation‚ manners‚ fashion) because to them#that signaled an 'advanced civilization'#so yeah#decolonize masculinity by wearing skirts! - @swords-n-spindles

Firstly, glad you liked the post! Secondly, excellent addition!

For the sake of not making the post overtly long (and because I'm work in on a post where I'll talk about all this in length) I kept it framed around the gender binary, but you're absolutely right that the seeds of the strict modern gender binary were being planted here. It was not just that racialized men and women were denied full access to their gender, but also that those who did not fit into that binary, were also forcibly gendered in binary lines. Before colonialism there was of course gender systems where there was only two socially recognized genders in Europe and other places, but before those lines were always fuzzy, even in Medieval Europe, which wasn't in reality nearly as strictly gendered as people often think. This makes sense because humans are much too varied and complex to fit into two neatly defined boxes and people have always been aware of that. And beyond fuzzy lines in a two-gender system, there was also more complex gender systems all over the world including Europe.

For example in ancient Mediterranean eunuch didn't mean "a castrated man", like it's understood today, but they were literally written about as a third gender and they occupied a different social and political position from men and women and also had different gender expression. They were not necessarily either actually castrated, but also could be intersex. Castration was used as a punished in many different times and places, but in ancient Mediterranean many eunuchs choose to be castrated. There are many other examples, like the pre-Christian Baltic Finnish shamans, who were amab warriors, wore women's clothing and occupied a separate space from men and women in the society, and even more examples from every corner of the world.

The point is, a strict gender binary is a new invention even for Europe, and as you said it was very much shaped by colonialism and Enlightenment philosophy. And certainly part of the growing distinction between men and women was to built these strict binary boxes and create hierarchy between white and non-white gender systems, where white wealthy people, who had full access to these very binary genders were at the top, and under them were those who had binary genders, but were denied full access to them under colonial rule (racialized men and women), and at the bottom were those who would and could not to fit into these binaries at all (racialized non-binary people). White people who couldn't or wouldn't fully access binary genders (poor, queer etc. people) fell right under wealthy white people, but this was a complex hierarchy and it definitely depended on the exact time, the status and the egregiousness of the gender transgression, how would someone be treated under this colonial gender system.

So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

#thank you for your nice and interesting tags!

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dresshistorynerd · 3 days

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I'm so sorry for not showing the whole ass that I promised in saying Italian men were showing their whole ass. For the life of me I could not find this painting that had a glorious butt on the foreground, because I couldn't remember the name of the painting or the artist and for some stupid reason had not save it to my pinterest, so I had to just give you that side booty. But as I was closing my hundreds of open tabs (maybe, just maybe, there's a reason why I couldn't find it...) I found it and to amend my mistake here it is. Look how lovingly that ass is painted.

For fun I checked the name of the painting and artist, and found out it was detail of a large triptych, which has even more just as glorious booties, and I can't keep them all to myself, I owe to share them. So here's some more details.

(Side note: I love the guys hooking up at the background here. The pose is... just more interesting the more I look at it.)

That is one hell of a butt.

So these are from The Story of Patient Griselda by Florentine painters Domenico and Davide Ghirlandaio dated to 1494. (High quality images can be found here if you want to zoom in on the butts. I apologize to the lesbians there's only some goofy looking titties) One of them or someone in their workshop painting these booties must have been gay as fuck. (They were Italian Renaissance painters so could be all of them.)

Also on a more serious point that this triptych made me think. It has a reminder, which is good to have as we're talking about colonialism here, that Renaissaince Europe was not white, Europe was never white. People of color are all over European art, through the whole European history, and you don't even have to look for POC specifically to find them, they are so commonly depicted. White Europe is a later colonial construction and POC have been actively erased from European history. So if you haven't seen a lot of historical European art with POC just casually being part of the society, it's not because those paintings don't exist, but because they have been intentionally kept from you.

So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

#to counter that narrative i have been specifically collecting paintings and illustrations with poc into my primary source collection #i think it's important to include those depictions also in contexts that aren't directly about race #but maybe i should also make a post where i show some of the paintings i've saved from different eras?#to like really hammer that point home #also sorry again from the whiplash of going from butts straight to colonialism again #painting #primary sources

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dresshistorynerd · 4 days

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So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

#i just realised the screenshot of the tags was super low quality and looked very small on phone kjgfdg #on desktop it had looked okay #so i took a new one and updated it #sure you could read the earlier one by clicking it but aesthetically it looked terrible on phone

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dresshistorynerd · 4 days

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So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

662 notes · View notes

dresshistorynerd · 4 days

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So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

662 notes · View notes

dresshistorynerd · 4 days

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So I got this tag on my answer to an ask about when it became acceptable for western women to wear pants, and you know it's all I need to go on a tangent.

When did skirts stop being socially acceptable for men?

#this has been sitting in my drafts almost finished for like a year or something #historical fashion #fashion history #fashion #history #dress history #men's historical fashion #renaissance fashion #medieval fashion #western fashion #western fashion history #landsknecht

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dresshistorynerd · 18 days

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it’s official, ya girl was featured on Vogue for the vibes!!

#oh wow what a gorgeous photo #historical costuming #1780s costuming

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dresshistorynerd · 21 days

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Vivienne Westwood gown from SS94 “Café Society” Collection

#this is very cool #historically inspired fashion

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dresshistorynerd · 22 days

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How did cotton win over linen anyway?

In short, colonialism, slavery and the industrial revolution. In length:

Cotton doesn't grow in Europe so before the Modern Era, cotton was rare and used in small quantities for specific purposes (lining doublets for example). The thing with cotton is, that's it can be printed with dye very easily. The colors are bright and they don't fade easily. With wool and silk fabrics, which were the more traditional fabrics for outer wear in Europe (silk for upper classes of course), patterns usually needed to be embroidered or woven to the cloth to last, which was very expensive. Wool is extremely hard to print to anything detailed that would stay even with modern technology. Silk can be printed easily today with screen printing, but before late 18th century the technique wasn't known in western world (it was invented in China a millenium ago) and the available methods didn't yeld good results.

So when in the late 17th century European trading companies were establishing trading posts in India, a huge producer of cotton fabrics, suddenly cotton was much more available in Europe. Indian calico cotton, which was sturdy and cheap and was painted or printed with colorful and intricate floral patters, chintz, especially caught on and became very fashionable. The popular Orientalism of the time also contributed to it becoming fasionable, chintz was seen as "exotic" and therefore appealing.

Here's a typical calico jacket from late 18th century. The ones in European markets often had white background, but red background was also fairly common.

The problem with this was that this was not great for the business of the European fabric producers, especially silk producers in France and wool producers in England, who before were dominating the European textile market and didn't like that they now had competition. So European countries imposed trade restrictions for Indian cotton, England banning cotton almost fully in 1721. Since the introduction of Indian cottons, there had been attempts to recreate it in Europe with little success. They didn't have nearly advanced enough fabric printing and cotton weaving techniques to match the level of Indian calico. Cotton trade with India didn't end though. The European trading companies would export Indian cottons to West African market to fund the trans-Atlantic slave trade that was growing quickly. European cottons were also imported to Africa. At first they didn't have great demand as they were so lacking compared to Indian cotton, but by the mid 1700s quality of English cotton had improved enough to be competitive.

Inventions in industrial textile machinery, specifically spinning jenny in 1780s and water frame in 1770s, would finally give England the advantages they needed to conquer the cotton market. These inventions allowed producing very cheap but good quality cotton and fabric printing, which would finally produce decent imitations of Indian calico in large quantities. Around the same time in mid 1700s, The East Indian Company had taken over Bengal and soon following most of the Indian sub-continent, effectively putting it under British colonial rule (but with a corporate rule dystopian twist). So when industrialized English cotton took over the market, The East India Company would suppress Indian textile industry to utilize Indian raw cotton production for English textile industry and then import cotton textiles back to India. In 1750s India's exports were mainly fine cotton and silk, but during the next century Indian export would become mostly raw materials. They effectively de-industrialized India to industrialize England further.

India, most notably Bengal area, had been an international textile hub for millennia, producing the finest cottons and silks with extremely advance techniques. Loosing cotton textile industry devastated Indian local economies and eradicated many traditional textile craft skills. Perhaps the most glaring example is that of Dhaka muslin. Named after the city in Bengal it was produced in, it was extremely fine and thin cotton requiring very complicated and time consuming spinning process, painstakingly meticulous hand-weaving process and a very specific breed of cotton. It was basically transparent as seen depicted in this Mughal painting from early 17th century.

It was used by e.g. the ancient Greeks, Mughal emperors and, while the methods and it's production was systematically being destroyed by the British to squash competition, it became super fashionable in Europe. It was extremely expensive, even more so than silk, which is probably why it became so popular among the rich. In 1780s Marie Antoinette famously and scandalously wore chemise a la reine made from multiple layers of Dhaka muslin. In 1790s, when the empire silhouette took over, it became even more popular, continuing to the very early 1800s, till Dhaka muslin production fully collapsed and the knowledge and skill to produce it were lost. But earlier this year, after years lasting research to revive the Dhaka muslin funded by Bangladeshi government, they actually recreated it after finding the right right cotton plant and gathering spinners and weavers skilled in traditional craft to train with it. (It's super cool and I'm making a whole post about it (it has been in the making for months now) so I won't extend this post more.)

Marie Antoinette in the famous painting with wearing Dhaka muslin in 1783, and empress Joséphine Bonaparte in 1801 also wearing Dhaka muslin.

While the trans-Atlantic slave trade was partly funded by the cotton trade and industrial English cotton, the slave trade would also be used to bolster the emerging English cotton industry by forcing African slaves to work in the cotton plantations of Southern US. This produced even more (and cheaper (again slave labor)) raw material, which allowed the quick upward scaling of the cotton factories in Britain. Cotton was what really kicked off the industrial revolution, and it started in England, because they colonized their biggest competitor India and therefore were able to take hold of the whole cotton market and fund rapid industrialization.

Eventually the availability of cotton, increase in ready-made clothing and the luxurious reputation of cotton lead to cotton underwear replacing linen underwear (and eventually sheets) (the far superior option for the reasons I talked about here) in early Victorian Era. Before Victorian era underwear was very practical, just simple rectangles and triangles sewn together. It was just meant to protect the outer clothing and the skin, and it wasn't seen anyway, so why put the relatively scarce resources into making it pretty? Well, by the mid 1800s England was basically fully industrialized and resource were not scarce anymore. Middle class was increasing during the Victorian Era and, after the hard won battles of the workers movement, the conditions of workers was improving a bit. That combined with decrease in prices of clothing, most people were able to partake in fashion. This of course led to the upper classes finding new ways to separate themselves from lower classes. One of these things was getting fancy underwear. Fine cotton kept the fancy reputation it had gained first as an exotic new commodity in late 17th century and then in Regency Era as the extremely expensive fabric of queens and empresses. Cotton also is softer than linen, and therefore was seen as more luxurious against skin. So cotton shifts became the fancier shifts. At the same time cotton drawers were becoming common additional underwear for women.

It wouldn't stay as an upper class thing, because as said cotton was cheap and available. Ready-made clothing also helped spread the fancier cotton underwear, as then you could buy fairly cheaply pretty underwear and you didn't even have to put extra effort into it's decoration. At the same time cotton industry was massive and powerful and very much eager to promote cotton underwear as it would make a very steady and long lasting demand for cotton.

In conclusion, cotton has a dark and bloody history and it didn't become the standard underwear fabric for very good reasons.

Here's couple of excellent sources regarding the history of cotton industry:

The European Response to Indian Cottons, Prasannan Parthasarathi

INDIAN COTTON MILLS AND THE BRITISH ECONOMIC POLICY, 1854-1894, Rajib Lochan Sahoo

#annoyingly the older version with the misleadingly worded beginning is still circling around ugh #so i'll try to make this version stuck again

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dresshistorynerd · 24 days

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Goal of being a real life impressionist painting, realized. x

#historical costume

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dresshistorynerd · 28 days

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I think we can all agree that this is dumb, right? Though the title is highly misleading and the quote marks around "ban" do a lot of work here. These companies just no longer requires actresses to wear structural garments. Still a dumb and bad solution to the problem of badly made costumes.

Couple of my issues with the article:

The purpose of the corset or any other similar structural garment wasn't to reduce waist, but to provide support and shape the silhouette. In the article someone from Netflix commented that they shouldn't promote that women should make their waists smaller, apparently it's "bad optics". And from Neflix the main series where corsets are no longer required is Bridgerton, because one of the main actors had bad time with her stays. But if you take just one quick look at the Regency silhouette you will see the waist is far from reduced. Literally there is no waist. Completely covered. They have been doing something terribly wrong if they have made Regency stays that pinch down the waist. Some actors also seem to think the waist is supposed to be reduced all the time. I remember that one actor in HBO's The Gilded Age complained about the corset, but then in the same breath admitted that she had asked the costumers to make it purposefully a little too small so she could be tight-laced all the time (a practice some fashionable rich Victorian women did for high society events, and definitely not all the time). But beyond the inaccuracies in the article, there is an issue here. Structural garments supported the bust yes, but also in many periods they supported the weight of the dress. In 17th and 18th centuries and Victorian Era the skirts of rich women especially had a lot of heavy fabric which would be hard to deal with and move around with, if all the weight is only on the waist. But with a structural garment it distributes the weight to the whole torso, especially on the hips.

A structural garment needs to be fitted well and worn with with a shift underneath. It absolutely can be uncomfortable, create bruising and restrict breathing, if it's not well fitted. If you have ever used too small jeans that contain no spandex at all, you know how nasty the effects can be on the skin. Especially TV sets often have very little time for creating costumes and they might have just one fitting or at tops two or in worst case scenario none at all, which very easily leads to ill fitting costumes. That is a huge issue with structural garments. I've been making transitional short stays for myself and I have never made a garment like that so I'm still struggling fit it well (it's unfinished), and I can say it's not comfortable when it doesn't fit well. I haven't watched Bridgerton but I have seen couple of screencaps of different scenes with characters wearing stays and no shift to be seen anywhere. I really do hope they actually are wearing shifts when they have the full outfits on and just didn't wear them in these scenes for aesthetics or something. Because, yes, that will absolutely give you bruising, if you wear any type of fitted and structured garment against your skin without any fabric between it and the skin, against which the structural garment can slide against. It would be irresponsible to put your actors in such garments without shifts. I don't blame the actors for complaining about the "corsets", since I can believe they are uncomfortable if they are not well fitted or god forbid if they aren't wearing shifts.

I don't know how many times this needs to be said: corsets are not torture devices. While I don't blame the actors for complaining, reading comments like this kills one brain cell every time: "Women existed in that for such a long time, which does give you a lot of sympathy for that time period and what they were going through. For the first month, I couldn’t breathe." I'm sorry, but women literally did physical labour in corsets. They climbed mountains in corsets. (I have a whole post related to this.) Do these people really think so little of women in the past that, if corsets really were torture devices, they would have just endured them quietly for centuries? Of course the most fashionable clothing in a lot of the periods were uncomfortable and hard to move in, even restrictive, but those were the court gowns and ball gowns the young fashionable elite wore for the special evening occasions to show off to the high society. But does that really differ from today? If you look at the MET galas and stuff, do these actors really claim the outfits are comfortable? The everyday clothing and the clothing of the working class was fairly comfortable, and yes, they all wore corsets.

Yes, you can make properly fitted, comfortable supportive garments for costumes in any production. The proof is in opera. Opera singers wear corsets in a lot of productions. I have read many accounts by opera singers who talk about how their corsets are well fitted and actually makes singing easier, because you can "lean" on the corset (I don't know anything about singing, but that's what I have seen them say). Also they tend to wear those large and heavy period dresses and as alluded earlier moving on them on stage without corset would be very hard. Singing also would be harder as the singers could easily become breathless from moving the heavy dress without using the muscles on the whole body. Operas have much smaller budget than these big tv and movie productions, so there's really zero excuses for making badly fitting corsets.

So yes, it's dumb, it's inaccurate and kinda infuriating. But it's also actually pretty sinister. The issue isn't actors wearing corsets for many hours, that's what people have done for ages and still do in re-enactments, opera etc. The issue is that there's too little time for fitting and sewing the corsets in modern tv and movie production. And this is part of a much broader issue. Costume designers and makes are unionized in Hollywood and for a while now Hollywood studios have tried to cut the amount of unionized behind the scenes labour they employ.

Making profit from a movie or a tv show is not good enough anymore. Now productions that don't "perform as expected" are seen as flops. The production companies make predictions of profit and green light projects they have calculated to make most profit, and if they don't make that high profit, it's a flop and it won't get the planned sequel or the next season. To achieve those high profits they also do everything they can to lower the production costs, and one way is by employing as little unionized labour, to whom you have to pay fair wages, as possible. So costume departments are then very often understaffed and they have way too little time to produce the costumes in proper quality. This can be seen very blatantly in the clear drop in quality of movie costuming during the past couple of decades. So the reducing of structural garments in costumes seems like yet another attempt to reduce unionized labour disguised as feminism.

Obviously the good and smart solution to the problem of uncomfortable structural garments is to hire enough costumers for long enough time so they can have multiple fittings and make them better.

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