Sociology of Dress

The article discusses Byzantine attire by focusing on imperial and courtly dress from early to late Byzantium, with main emphasis on Constantinopolitan styles. The visual evidence - mosaics and illuminations - is seen in relation to the written and material sources. Key looks from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries are presented.

Lavinia Fontana was a late Italian Renaissance painter of exceptional and formidable skill, particularly when it came to her depictions of fabric and ornamentation. The nobility of Bologna flocked to have her paint them bedecked in their silk, jewels, and lace. She solidified her place in Bolognese society through her considerable skill in painting, and became somewhat coveted as both a friend and a creator. In this paper, I focus on Fontana’s depiction of noblewomen and their place in society as conveyed through dress. By the means of her astute renderings of garments completed with painstaking detail, we are able to clearly see many elements of late Renaissance dress as applied to noblewomen in Northern Italy.
I base my studies on a close reading of the garments depicted by Fontana in both her self-portraits and commissions. I compare these with the work of contemporary scholars in analyzing her artwork, as well as with publications that ran in 16th Century Bologna. In particular, I analyze the fashions portrayed by Fontana to those pictured in Cesare Vecellio’s De Gli Habiti Antichi, et Moderni Di Diverse Parti Del Mondo. Through these close comparisons, one is able to see particular fashion trends, such as the abundance of pearls and silk, and the meaning behind the overelaborate representation of such materials. It is evident that portraits assisted Fontana’s patrons in solidifying their place in late Renaissance Bologna as being the most fashionable – and morally devout – women in the city.
This examination is furthered by a review of social etiquette and governmental oversight during this time period, including an investigation of traditional customs surrounding ceremonial moments in women’s lives, such marriage, birth, and mourning. Sumptuary laws in place in Northern Italy greatly affected what women could and could not wear. Furthermore, without a royal court, the nobility of Bologna clamored to fill the vacuous social space left; the surest way to solidify their place as fashionable members of the first class was through portraiture. Fontana was careful to observe these laws and unofficial codes, thus the women she depicts are immortals with morals.
Fontana’s pictures walked a fine line of extravagance within moral boundaries. Renaissance dress was important to the painter; her subjects’ social standing depended on her accurate depiction of their overconsumption within legal confines. This enhances our understanding of the garments worn in Bologna during the late 16th Century, as well as our understanding of the personality of Lavinia Fontana. Fontana painted her noble patrons as they wished to see themselves. She aggrandized them through their dress, but their morality was always of the utmost priority to her. In her portrayals, all of the noblewomen adhere to strict sumptuary laws, seemingly forever being enacted and repealed in late Renaissance Italy. She further glorified particular patrons, such as Eleanor de’ Medici and Isabella Ruini, through allegorical myths that furthered their beauty and their morals simultaneously.
Acting in the role of a woman painter was not an ordinary thing to do for someone in this era. Lavinia Fontana balanced her life through her temperate dress and enthusiastic religiosity. She expected nothing less from the proper women who sat for her. Through her innocuously rebellious career her star was catapulted, and Fontana herself became a noblewoman by association.

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Objectives: To help students: (1) think critically about how they perform gender through clothing choices; (2) recognize how different cultures define masculinity and femininity.
Courses: Communication Theory, Gender and Communication, Popular Communication, Rhetorical Theory, Visual Rhetoric

Clothing in the concentration camps during World War II served to cover the human body, but above all to identify individuals as prisoners. Research has shown that prisoners in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps did not always wear striped uniforms; a wide range of other garments, including civilian clothing marked in specific ways, was used to identify inmates as well. Their prisoner status was underlined by numbers, tattooed on their arms, as well as by various markings worn, sewn or painted on their clothing. This chapter draws valuable information both from archival testimony given by prisoners and from unpublished evidence documented in personal interviews with former camp inmates who survived and are still alive today. Selected material from these survivors’ recollections is presented in order to elucidate certain personal aspects of the clothing they wore
and the way they dressed in the concentration camps. Such aspects relate to the desire for personal expression, the need to look as good as possible and to facilitate their daily lives, to the possibility of improving their chances of survival, as well as to the very remote possibility of escape.

In the recent Bloomsbury publication Fashion Victims: The Dangers of Dress Past and Present, author Alison Matthews David chronicles the disturbing history of the failure of clothing to protect its wearers, despite the fact that protection has always been a primary motivation of dress. Even more alarming is the frequency of incidents in which clothing actually caused harm and even death to sufferers who were in many cases unaware of the source of their misfortune. Those with an interest in fashion history may be aware already of the basic types of clothing-related injuries; deformities of the foot and the spine from binding, strangulation from items such as scarves (most infamously in the case of actress Isadora Duncan), skirts prone to rapid ignition around an open flame, clothing as transmitters of infectious diseases, and garments laden with poisonous lead and mercury, among other dangers. The text provides a thorough and comprehensive overview of all of these fashion-related threats and others. David does not limit the scope of the text solely to clothing and accessories; descriptions of beauty and grooming health dangers are included, and the author goes into great detail about the ill effects suffered by wearers of various powders and creams in the pursuit of porcelain skin, of hair and eyelash dyes that caused blindness and other trappings of vanity. Since many of the same production techniques used in clothing production were also used in textiles for home furnishings, decorative items such as wallpaper are also included. David takes a broad view of what constitutes a fashion victim, the distinction is not limited to wearers of dangerous styles, but includes those individuals

Isabel Burdiel on Queen Isabel of Spain argues that post-revolutionary monarchies would have to fulfill three fundamental functions in order to survive: politically, socially and symbolically. In this sense, the symbolic image of the monarchy would be built from its public image and of the multiplicity of its materializations: the artistic representations of the monarchs, the news about royal personalities, their acts, ceremonies and rites. Thus, clothing and fashion functioned as a political instrument that imposed patterns of behavior, leading to another aspect of the monarchy-show.
In the Portuguese case, and particularly at the end of the Constitutional monarchy, when the Portuguese State was in the midst of a severe financial crisis, and even went bankrupt, Republican propaganda accused Queen Maria Pia of sumptuous expenses related to her wardrobe, being its official residence, the Ajuda Palace, compared to a gigantic closet.
The Queen's spendthrift was a recurring theme in court society, disapproved by her relatives and criticized by many of the courtiers. The Portuguese and foreign periodical press reported excessive expenses on dresses, notably with the French House Worth, founded in 1858 by Charles Frederick Worth, responsible for supplying crowned heads like the Empress Eugénie of France, but also opera and theater stars, as Nellie Melba or Sarah Bernhardt.
In contrast, the image of her daughter-in-law, Queen Amelia contrasted strongly with that of her mother-in-law. Contained in expenses and discreet in public ceremonies, one does not attribute these excessive spending with wardrobe and fashion. However, the analysis of the private correspondence and diaries of people close to the Royal family shows that her public image was criticized, unlike the mother-in-law, understood as a model of Queen, from the point of view of clothing. The aim of this paper is to analyze this double dichotomy and understand the extent to which clothing and fashion have contributed to a public image of the monarchy in its last years.

A horse hair and cotton bustle (Figs 1a, 1b) dating from the 1870s (?) was found during an MA upholstery project whilst working on a Victorian walnut chaise lounge c.1855. The bustle was acting as padding material amongst other textile fragments. Bustles were widely used as underpinnings during the late Victorian period to help enhance fullness towards the back of a skirt.
The aim of the treatment was to make the bustle more ‘readable’ as an object for display and stable enough for long-term storage. The bustle was conserved by the author as a student project at the Textile Conservation Centre, Winchester, UK in 2009.

The study of playing card figures reveals a history of some political significance, but what was the relevance of playing card motifs on Maori items of clothing? In 1882, the Austrian Andreas Reischek recorded seeing the senior wife of King Tawhiao, Hera, wearing a dress 'on which all kinds of card games were printed in a strange manner'. The collection of Te Papa Tongarewa holds a colourful feathered cloak with bold card motifs worked into it; and the followers of Rua Kenana reportedly wore card motifs on their garments. What do these symbols have in common? And how might they reflect the influence of empire?

By examining the evolution of morris costume alongside the context of performance, this paper demonstrates that the costumes worn were and are, by their very nature a product of their time. The costumes do not have an unchanged history rooted in morris tradition. Concepts of historical precedent, tradition and propriety cannot be substantiated by looking at costumes through a historical perspective. Costumes should be considered to be a product of their specific context, ever evolving not immutable.

"Morris dancers are a source of fun. They are bearded elderly men wearing breeches or white trousers and bells and they dance outside enchanting rural pubs as they have done since time immemorial. Today morris costumes are often designed to imply historical continuity, but change is in the air. Since the early 1990s gothic, biker, S+M, and pagan morris groups have been formed, their costumes influenced by sub-cultural fashions. Morris Offspring formed in 2003 even dance...without bells! They are part of the new attitude towards morris which emphasises the physical nature of the dance.
This presentation is based upon my undergraduate research which analysed information from 137 contemporary morris teams. This presentation charts the changes in morris costumes over the last 110 years. From Mary Neal and her Esperance club bedecked in gaily clad ribbons as if for “a village festival on a village green ” (Neal 2010:14),  to the second folk revival and the influence of John Kirkpatrick’s Shropshire Bedlams. Costumes can act as a catalyst for both a wider understanding of contemporary society and modern morris dancing. Costumes evolve alongside contemporary fashions and wider societal attitudes. They act as a visceral indicator for both the personal aspirations of the dancer and the wider desires of the folk dance community.
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A Public Lecture for Stony Arts and Heritage Week

Ever wondered why morris dancers where bells?  Or white? Or have black faces? Or quaint straw hats? This talk explores the evolution of morris costume from the 15th century to the present day. Hold on to your baldrics...it’s going to be quite a ride

This essay investigates the non-existence of national costume in England. It examines the creation of national dress in its neighbouring countries and establishes how, historically English nationalism has been of an essentially different nature to that of its Celtic neighbours. This essay explores the late 19th century English folk dance revival and examines clothing which could have been adopted as an English national costume. Finally this essay examines clothing which is seen as implicitly English. Contextualising these garments within wider cultural perceptions of Englishness.