ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

CLOTHINGAND FASHION

" ~~ ~l,^i, . •:'"'*'

Women wearing bustles. Bustles have been an element of Western fashion intermittently since the seventeenth century. Women'sdresses 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 shortskirts. As The Delineator noted in February 1886 (p. 99),some women did not wear a bustle pad, "except whensuch an adjunct if necessitated by a ceremonious toilette,"relying instead on a flounced petticoat to support thedrapery of simpler dresses.

After about 1887 the bustle reduced in size and skirtsbegan to slim. The skirts of the early 1890s featured someback fullness, but emphasis had shifted to flared skirt hemsand enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves, and bustle supportswere not as fashionable. With skirts fitting snugly to thehips and derriere in die late 1890s, however, some womenrelied on skirt supports to achieve a gracefully roundedhipline that set off a small waist. While not as extreme asexamples from the mid-1880s, the woven wire or quiltedhip pads worn beyond the turn of century show the tenac-ity of the full-hipped female ideal.

Despite some historians' view that bustle fashions weresurely the most hideous ever conceived, this very femi-nine silhouette has continued to fascinate. In the late 1930s,

Elsa Schiaparelli made playful homage to the bustle insome of her sleek evening dresses, while late-twentieth-century bustle interpretations by avant-garde designers,such as Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood, haveutilized the form with historically informed irony.

See also Mantua; Skirt Supports.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blum, Stella. Victorian Fashions and Costumes -from Harper's Bazar1867-1898. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974.

Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nine-teenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1937. Reprint,New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990.

Gernsheim, Alison. Fashion and Reality: 1840-1914. London:Faber and Faber, 1963. Reprint as Victorian and EdwardianFashion: A Photographic Survey. New York: Dover Publica-tions, Inc., 1981.

Hill, Thomas E. Never Give a Lady a Restive Horse. From Man-ual of Social and Business Fonns: Selections. 1873. Also fromAlbmn of Biography and Art. 1881. Reprint, Berkeley, Calif.:Diablo Press, 1967.

E N C Y C L O P E D I A OF C L O T H I N G A N D F A S H I O N 205

( S H O E S , WOMEN'S •>N^^_ ^f

PHYSICAL C U L U R EANOTHER WORD FOR

NOW ONLY

NEW FOOT NOTES

Physical Culture women's shoes advertisement, 1938. By the1930s, the color, shape, and decoration of shoes had expandedto offer numerous options for fashionable women. © LAKE COUNTYMUSEUM/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

and the shapes of toes varied, with no one style predom-inating. The square toe, introduced as early as the 1790s,did not become the main style until the late 1820s butwould remain so for the next half century.

As factories disfigured the horizon, many longed forthe picturesque qualities of an unspoiled landscape. A nat-uralism movement brought long country promenadesinto fashion; ladies began to wear "spatterdashes," leg-gings adapted from men's military dress that protectedstockings from spatters and dashes of mud. Walking be-came a fad called "pedestrianism" and a prescribed ac-tivity for women. Boots were worn for this activity as asensible alternative to fashion shoes. Ankle boots, re-ferred to as demi-boots or half boots, found internationalappeal in this period.

By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in1837 a sentimental, romanticized movement had sweptpopular thought. Women became expressions of virtueand femininity, their conservative costume and demuredecorum reflected conscious gentility. Fine slippers of kidand silk were made in great quantities in Paris and ex-ported around the world. Soles, which had been madewithout left or right definition for more than 200 years,were exceptionally narrow now and the delicate uppers

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

CLOTHINGAND FASHIONtended not to last long ;

at the ball of the foot,Colored footwear founikle-length skirts, butJ "" T^U 1decades. 1 he long, hilltury hid the feet from view, with perhaps the occasionalpeep at a vamp when the woman walked or waltzed acrossa floor. By the mid-1850s, black or white footwear wasdeemed by fashion delineators to be the most elegant andtasteful choice, a standard that would last for many years.

However, after the mid-1850s, with the introductionof wire frame "crinoline" skirt supports, skirts tended totip and swing, exposing the foot and ankle. This broughtabout interest in the decoration of shoe vamps. Machinechain-stitched designs with colorful silk underlays,dubbed "chameleons," became fashionable for home andevening wear. For daytime, however, boots became mod-est essentials underneath the wire-frame supported skirts.Side-laced boots called "Adelaides" in England, afterWilliam IVs consort, were made for most outdoor oc-casions until improvements in the elasticity of rubber re-sulted in the development of elastic thread which, woveninto webbing, was used for ankle-boot gussets. Elastic-sided boots were referred to as "Garibaldi" boots in Eu-rope after the Italian statesman who united Italy duringthe 1860s, and as "Congress" boots in the United Statesafter the American Congress. Front-laced boots cameback into fashion by 1860. Called "Balmorals," afterQueen Victoria's Scottish home, the style was deemedsuitable for informal daywear and sporting occasions atfirst, but by the 1870s had become the more commonclosure of all boots. Button boots were introduced in the1850s, but were generally not favored until the 1880swhen their tight fit and elegant closure flattered the slimankle and foot more than laced styles.

Heels were re-introduced on ladies' footwear duringthe late 1850s, but did not find universal appeal until thelate 1870s. Historicism was an important movement ofthe mid-nineteenth century; Rococo and Baroque stylingwas evident on shoes in the 1860s with a return to buck-les and bows. Large, multiple loop bows were called"Fenelon," after the seventeenth-century French writer.Mules, too, came back into fashion as part of the histor-ical revival of the ancien regime.

Exoticism was another important movement of thenineteenth century. Via the Crimean war, Turkish em-broideries were exported for the production of shoe up-pers in the late 1850s and when Japan opened its doors toforeign trade in 1867, a taste for all-things Oriental madea strong comeback. Chinese embroidered silks or Euro-pean embroidered silks in the taste of Chinese and Japan-ese textiles were in fashion and a Japanese-influencedpalette of colors resulted in brown leather footwear com-ing into vogue, which would become a fashion staple.

By the late 1880s the square toe had finally fallenfrom fashion, replaced by rounded and even almond-

176 E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D F A S H I O N

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

CLOTHINGAND FASHION

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

must not touch any clothing on the lower body. © WOLFGANG KAEHLER/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

The presentation of self through dress and fashionis very important to the Roma and part of their publicperformance as Roma. Roma fashions do change overtime and place. Furthermore, fashions for men andwomen seem to be based on different criteria. Whereasmen dress to present an image to the outside world thatthey associate with power and authority, women dress topresent an image to the Roma that is associated withRoma ideas of the power of purity and pollution.

MenIn the United States Roma have adopted fashions thatproject a particular masculine stereotype, often gleanedfrom the movies. Their public and private appearance isa performance of a certain recognizable style that theyassociate with masculinity and authority. They are notconcerned with being stylishly up-to-date, rather they areconcerned with the images of power projected by theclothing. Examples of commonly seen styles include:

1. Urban cowboy—hat, cowboy shirt, bolo tie, jeans,and boots; sometimes a Western-style jacket.

2. 1930s Chicago gangster—loose pants, two tonedshoes, wide splashy tie, and double breasted jacket.

3. Palm Springs golfer—white or loud color pants, redgolf shirt, Irish hat.

4. Casual modern—polo shirts, white shirts, or Hawai-ian shirts, long pants.

Young men who are not yet old enough to presentan image of power may adopt a more youthful moderndress. For example: (1) Beatles attire—pencil thin tie,loud tight shirt, and stove pipe pants; (2) Spanish or Hun-garian Gypsy musician—longish hair, red diklo at theneck, "Gypsy" shirt; or (3) Modern—shirt and baggyshorts.

WomenWomen are interested in fashion that shows their senseof "shame" and their status as guardians of purity for thefamily. Because of this role, women are expected to covertheir legs at least to the mid-calf. Married women tradi-tionally cover their head with a scarf and tie their longhair up or braid it. There is no shame associated with

E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D F A S H I O N 1 1 5

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

CLOTHINGAND FASHION

Occult Dress to Zoran, Index

question whether it isa physical possibility for women to reduce their naturalwaist measure below 17 or 18 inches."

This is not to say that women did not use corsets toreduce their waists. Writing in 1866, the English authorArnold Cooley claimed that, "The waist of healthywomen . . . is found to measure 28 to 29 inches in cir-cumference. Yet most women do not permit themselvesto 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 20inches."

The discourse on tight-lacing needs to be analyzedin ways that move beyond simple measurements. Becausethe practice of tight-lacing was so ill-defined and yet wasperceived as being so ubiquitous in the nineteenth cen-tury, it became the focus of widespread social anxietiesabout women.

Tight-lacing disappeared as a social issue with thedecline of the corset as a fashionable garment in the earlytwentieth century. However, there still existed individu-als who wore tightly laced corsets. In the mid-twentiethcentury, Ethel Granger was listed in the Guinness Book ofWorld Records for having "the world's smallest waist,"which measured 13 inches. In the early twenty-first cen-tury, the most famous tight-lacer is probably the corsetierMr. Pearl, who claims to have a 19-inch waist. His friendCathie J. boasts of having reduced her waist to 15 inches.

See also Corset; Fetish Fashion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kunzle, David. Fashion and Fetishism. Totowa, N.J.: Rowmanand Littlefield, 1982.

Steele, Valerie. Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. New York: Ox-ford University Press, 1996.

. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven and Lon-don: Yale University Press, 2001.

Summers, Leigh. Bound to Please. Oxford: Berg, 2001.

Ward, E. The Dress Reform Problem: A Chapter for Women. Lon-don: Hamilton, Adams, 1886.

Valerie Steele

TOGAThe toga was a wrapped outer garment worn inancient Rome. Its origin is probably to be found in thetebenna, a semicircular mantle worn by the Etruscans, apeople who lived on the Italian peninsula in an area closeto that occupied by the Romans. Several Roman kingswere Etruscan and many elements of Etruscan culturewere taken over by the Romans. The toga may have beenone of these elements.

The toga was a highly symbolic garment for the Ro-mans^ It had numerous forms, but the toga pura or togavirilis was the most significant. In its earliest form thetoga pura was a semicircle of white wool.

TO< ;A

Statue of Emperor Augustus in a toga. The toga, a garmentwrapped around the body and over the shoulder, was worn byall ancient Roman men, though larger and longer togas weregenerally reserved for Romans with status and wealth. © ARALDODE LUCA/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION.

At the time of the Roman Republic (509 B.C.E. to 27B.C.E.) and after, only free male citizens of Rome who wereat least sixteen years of age could wear this toga. It was thesymbol of Roman citizenship and was required dress forofficial activities. Men wore togas to audiences with theEmperor and to the games played in the Roman arena.

The toga was worn outermost, over a tunic. (A tu-nic was a T-shaped woven garment, similar in form to a

E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D F A S H I O N 329