#17th century fasion

[zetathegrouch]

Red 1650?

Here she is!

Prompt: Send a year between 1960 and 1400 and a colour to my askbox and I’ll try to paint someone from that time period. (Status: Open)

1730s Black, 1900 Pink | 1848 Violet | 1914 Green | 1890s White | 1700 Dark Green | 1860 Black |

Disclaimer: Though I do try to research things and look at historical images and portraiture, I do make mistakes and make no promises that what I paint will be entirely historically accurate. 

[dresshistorynerd]

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

[littlx-songbxrd]

so I just went on a really fascinating rabbit hole on historical hair dye-warning for some disgusting cosmetic methods (this is also way longer than I though it would be but I got very fascinated by the topic)

as for going blonde:

during the roman empire, prostitutes were actually required to have blonde hair and it is through analysis of this that we have most of the early information of hair coloring. wigs were used, which obviously doesn’t help answer our question, but there was also a method of burning certain plants and nuts and using the ashes to lighten hair colors.

now we get into gross stuff. in the modern day if you have dark hair that you are dyeing pretty much any color (aside from specific circumstances) you are absolutely 1000% going to need to bleach it. Great!! modern science has created safe synthetic bleach that is specifically for use in hair. however this was only created in the later twentieth century when hollywood popularized light colored hair.

prior to the invention of what we modern humans know as bleach, people still needed to bleach things (leather used a bleaching process, as did cloth/thread, and of course it was used in cosmetics) so, you might ask, what did people use as bleach?? the answer is urine (human or animal) as it contains natural ammonia in it, which is one of the primary ingredients in bleach. (one of the most disgusting methods I discovered was used was putting the ashes of the crushed up plants and nuts together with literal bird poop to create a paste and then peeing on it. I almost gave up here😭)

later in the elizabethan era in england blonde and red hair was popular. blonde was achieved by using cumin seeds, saffron, and oil and celandine. this method was wildly expensive though.

one doctor in the 1600s successfully used straight up acid to dye hair blonde but that was wildly unsafe so for a long time women just started wearing wigs.

it wasn’t until 1856 that hair coloring became popular again and it was due to the invention of the first synthetic dye, which was the purple shade called Mauvine

once again though, this does not help alastair as it is not until 1920 that true blonde hair was achieved with synthetic dyes, and even through the mid twentieth century it was sometimes an outright dangerous venture because of the unsafe nature of the chemicals.

as for going back to black:

originally, black was the most popular choice for dyeing hair, primarily to cover the signs of aging, as well as for women to distinguish themselves from prostitutes. ancient Egyptians actually used henna to cover gray hairs, and during the same time greeks and later romans used various plant extracts. these extracts were highly toxic though so one method also used was fermenting leeches (like the actual animal) in a lead container for several months. (ew) henna was probably the most popular during ancient times, but berries and crushed nutshells could also be used to darken hair tones

wikihow suggests using henna or indigo powder mixed with coffee ground to get a black color, but it also says that this wouldn’t get lighter colored (such as blonde) hair dark enough. henna is definitely the most historically accurate and it seems that the common consensus is that it was the most reliable method.

it is important, however to note a few things historically here.

1. aside from the ancient egyptians covering gray hairs, men rarely used unnatural hair color. in the western world men used powder and pomade (as well as wigs) to keep hair clean and presentable during the 17th and 18th centuries, which is the closest the modern world came to popular modifications for men’s hair.

2. since women were the primary targets of hair dye, it was generally incredibly ornamental and not very practical. there was a trend in the 18th century of pastel hairstyles, often using wigs, and for the past three centuries before alastair was dyeing his hair, styles achieved notoriety through shape as opposed to color.

3. by the time alastair was dyeing his hair, unnatural colors weren’t popular at all really. natural styles were coming back into popularity in all aspects of fashion, and since women were the only people who ever dyed their hair and the styles didn’t demand it at all it would have been incredibly hard to find access to any of it.

4. it is important to remember that alastair dyed his hair to appear more eurocentric like his father. with how racist and classist the western world was at this time there was absolutely no reason for white europeans, especially the english, to have the necessary products to appear more ideal accessible for those they didn’t want to benefit from the eurocentric society.

tldr: if alastair wanted to bleach his hair he would have had to do some pretty disgusting stuff to it (or I found another suggestion that said using something highly acidic like lemon or lime could work!! all hope may not be lost lol) and to dye it back to black his best bet was henna or a similar plant based stain!

I don’t know how clear this is since i’m on mobile but I hope you found this as fascinating as I did! I really like doing this stuff so if there’s anything else your curious about let me know!!

I absolutely found this incredibly fascinating! I am also on mobile now so I am sorry for my spelling mistakes already

Acid??? ACID????? OH GOD NO

So according to CC Alastair had

And I QUOTE FROM THE ANON WHO SENT ME HER ANSWER

✨magic dye✨ which she never elaborated on

So now I'm imagining if hed miss the vender (i hope there was a vender to this magic dye) to get to him, imagine him trying one of the methods you told here

God thatd be horrifying

Highly acidic lime works pls i cannot think acid-

Oh no now I wanna write an angty fict about thus anon what have you done

It is all very interesting thought! Didnt know they used to dye hair to distinguish from prostitutes!

Also now that I remember Cordelia DID use henna on her hair if I remember correctly, they probably DID have it in the house

So I'm sure it wouldnt have the immediate result it had on Alastair in canon

But we can always dream he used henna and CC just unrealistically described

Or what? Did he find MAGIC DYE in one night?

Anyways

I LOVE ALL THIS AND ITS SO FASCINATING

You are making my inner fasion nerd thrive truly