#fashion historian

[ophanim-vesper]

FASHION HISTORIANS OF TUMBLR HEADS UP!!!!!!

What do you call this kind of sleeve

[fleursscaptives]

2 hour portrait done by meee!!

[lezbucky]

ok so I saw this here BEAUTIFUL 1860s gown in a fairly popular fashion history book from the Kyoto Costume Institute and wanted to recreate it but could not find any pics of the front of the dress. What follows is the internet digging of a costume historian on a fucking mission.

As always I went to facebook for help and found 1 (one) image out of hundreds of people who interacted with the post. It’s from someone’s THESIS PAPER in what I believe is portuguese but I’m not sure: 

Super fucking blurry and no view of the collar BUT I am unstoppable and emailed the museum itself and they responded:

with a fucking LINK TO A MERCARI PAGE of a pamphlet from 1999 which features the front of the dress:

Posting these 3 together here so anyone looking for shots of the front and side views of the gown has them!! Please let me know if you have others :)

[halfhumanhalfpotato]

can a YouTube fashion historian PLEASE do a costume review of Ever After?? PLEASE

[sowhatnotcreative]

Fashion historians are the female version of the male war historian change my mind

[iregreteverything19]

*kinda* more accurate merlin era fashion

[lindonwald]

for @lactodebillus-bulgaricus who asked for bul + medieval (I tried haha,,,,,)

[nochangeintheplan]

Hijikata...

[marzipanandminutiae]

hi! i was reading an article on fashion history today, specifically the 1840s, and it seemed to focus heavily on the idea of clothes relating to female oppression. i was wondering your opinion, if you have the time?

the article is here, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1840-1849/

in particular, the article says “Women’s clothes became so constricting that her passivity in society was clear (C.W. Cunnington 135)”. i suppose i’m not entirely sure how valid that is? i’m just looking for another opinion, especially since i’m a complete amateur at fashion history. i know that you’ve talked before about some misconceptions around victorian womenswear, especially with corsets, so i’d love to know if this is of a similar vein to that or if it’s something different with a different background.

if you take the time to respond, thank you so much! i hope you’re doing well :)

This is. A very strange article, providing citiations for opinions as if they were facts. Like...why are you giving a citation for an interpretation of 1840s feminine clothing? I guarantee you won't find anybody in contemporary literature saying "ah yes, women dress like this because they are passive! that is the conscious reason we do this and we have all agreed on it." So it's not really a fact, is it? And therefore, why is it being cited as if it were?

They also seem very determined to believe that these clothes restricted movement to an unmanageable degree. While it's true that you can't bend at the waist easily in 1840s stays, you can still bend at the hips or kneel down. Preventing you from moving in one very specific way doesn't necessarily prevent you from accomplishing the same action with a different movement. It's also bizarre because they talk about women of limited means having access to fashion via ladies' magazines, but don't carry that through to its logical conclusion: working-class women wore similar clothing styles to their upper-class counterparts. And therefore were also wearing stays (practical applications thereof aside). And could ill afford to have their physical action limited. And therefore...? Maybe these garments weren't whalebone cages that kept women from living their lives, perhaps?

Also, this Cunnington fellow they cite for their FactPinions died in 1961. He was active primarily during the period of greatest disdain for all things Victorian- the early to mid 20th century. Are we examining those biases and comparing the opinions expressed therein to modern scholarship, World-Renowned Institution F.I.T.? No! Of course not! Why would we, when Everybody Knows Victorian women's clothing was horrible and restrictive and kept them from doing anything ever? Their society was highly misogynistic, so it must follow that every single thing about their lives was designed to actively oppress them! That's how human beings work, after all! Ahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Don't get me wrong, he was one of the founders of my main field. He and his wife saved a vast number of garments from being lost forever, and I appreciate that. But he was, as we all are, a product of his time- and that time just happened to absolutely loathe everything about the era he was examining. So I'm not sure why we're taking his word as gospel here- especially when it's not even hard fact.

Like, for example, he says that the scoop bonnets of the era acted like blinders for women, a "moral check" keeping them focused on "the straight and narrow path ahead."

Except. Mr. Cunnington.

Women can turn their heads.

You can just. You can look in another direction. You're not a horse in a head-rein when you put on a coal-scuttle bonnet, so it hardly keeps you from seeing "immoral" things. It is, quite frankly, Not That Deep.

Aaaaand there's the old bugaboo of children's corsets, with a direful comment that girls began "corset training" as young as ten years old. I've gone over this before but, whatever salacious literature of the day may imply, it was not at all common to waist-train young children. Indeed, most so-called "children's corsets" that I've encountered are more like lightly stiffened vests designed for posture support, and can't even be tightened.

There was also at least one very weird technical observation about clothing in here, which surprised me for a fashion school where you'd think at least one person editing their articles would have sewing experience: the comment that the tightly-fitted armsceyes (arm holes) of 1840s bodices kept women from raising their arms above 90 degrees.

I could be wrong, but in my experience a more fitted armsceye allows for MORE freedom of movement, not less. One of the biggest issues I've encountered- and heard other sewists complain about -with modern mass-produced garments is armsceyes cut too large. This may seem counterintuitive, but the principle is something like: Armsceye Cut Close To Armpit = Less Pulling On Body of Garment = Can Raise Arm Higher Without Disturbing Rest Of Shirt/Dress/Whatever. And for an extremely close-fitted garment like a Victorian bodice, that effect could mean that you really CAN'T raise your arm above your head. Trust me; I know this from having made the mistake too many times in my own historical sewing. Now, if the armsceyes were cut very small in general- high in the armpit but very low on the shoulder, too -that maybe could restrict movement somewhat. And I haven't examined many 1840s bodices; it's possible that's how the sloped-shoulder silhouette of the day was achieved.

But I really doubt that all women went around being unable to raise their arms above their heads given that, again, many of them had to work. And it seems weird that a fashion school would simply say "tight armsceyes Bad" without explaining themselves more specifically. Potentially, depending on what they meant, it's even downright ignorant.

In conclusion: the article is correct in a lot of specifics, like the shapes and silhouettes concerned, the trend towards historical inspiration and very subdued ornamentation, etc. It's just when they start trying to interpret the imagined Deeper Meaning of the garments, or extrapolate about the lived experience of wearing them without ever trying it/examining what women actually said about it in the period (or didn't; absence of discussion can be telling in itself) that it starts to go off the rails.

I also feel like it's emblematic of a larger issue within the field, namely: You Can Just Say Whatever The Hell You Want About Dress History And People Will Believe You. One might think academia would be immune to this and more rigorous in its fact-checking, but. One would be wrong. Probably because there have been so many myths floating around for decades, getting repeated over and over, never being questioned because- as I said above -everyone is very very ready to believe that the past was a total hellhole. And most of these myths bolster that image, so...why would anyone doubt them?

Besides the small, unimportant fact that, you know. They're not true.

I don't know. It definitely puts my professional imposter syndrome to flight, I can tell you that much.

[alliluyevas]

🔥 the entire discipline of history

deer in highlights

okay i guess my hot take is i feel like people just have this knee jerk condemnation of history focused on wars and i say this as someone who finds military history generally rather boring. like a) even if i'm not into it i do think it's a valid form of study b) the number of like Old White Men Who Are Obsessed With Battle Formations And No Nuance is not as high as you think it is!

I honestly think it's like really offensive when I see all these posts like "when men say they love history they mean they love reading about wwii and what i mean is i love fashion history" i think it's like...sorry that wwii affected millions of people and the world as a whole and our world today profoundly. it's a very shallow and internalized-misogynistic way of speaking about history.

also like...wars affect women! wars affect everyone! wars may, shockingly, have a greater impact on people's lives and deaths and existences than fashion!

[fleursscaptives]

does anyone else see the similarities or am i delusional

[sneez]

fairfax in 70s clothes because i think seventeenth-century men would love flares and incredibly loud shirts and questionable woollen tank tops. i don't have a better explanation than that i am afraid

[shadow-puppetts]

tf are the shinsengumi wearing cravats for? for other men to grab? okay… 📸🤨

[ididntseeyoucomein]

The squad did a little swap - and ended up in the 60s!