The image of the ballerina is a familiar one that evokes romance, elegance, whimsy and grace and is most ingrained in our memory as a figure in a fanciful tutu. The ballet tutu is a skirt usually made of tulle or some other light and diaphanous fabric that retains a bell-like shape, wrapping the dancer’s waist in a mist of cloth and revealing enough of her legs to showcase the intricate steps she is capable of.
As ballet changed and performances altered to accommodate a more expectant viewing audience, the tutu also transformed to highlight still more of the dancer’s leg work. The classic tutu that eventually surfaced is known to us in the form of the stiffened tulle fabric cut very short to reveal almost all of the dancer’s legs. It is a fashion that lends itself to the appreciation of the ballerina’s aesthetic footwork and maybe also contributes to one’s sense that the dancer lives on a different plane, with her gauzy, cloud-like skirt lifting her along with her legs to other levels.
There are people who collect coins and there are people who collect stamps and these days, as consumption and particularity have combined in some fashion circles people collect (or seem to collect) sneakers, an aspect of fashion that once might have been thought of as an afterthought or as an anti-fashion statement belonging more to the realm of sports and comfort.
In urban areas especially, sneakers have skyrocketed as fashion emblems and are often associated with street style and subcultures like gangs or skaters or graffiti artists who prefer the rubber-soled shoe over any other as they navigate their asphalt territory. In the last two decades or so sneakers have become both remarkably ubiquitous and sometimes remarkably refined and peculiar to particular tastes.
Shoes with rubber soles that could be considered the modern sneaker’s antecedent date from the end of the 19th century. An American company began mass producing canvas shoes with rubber soles towards the end of World War I and the popularization of the quiet, ’sneaker’, shoe began to spread from then. Initially, through sports stars like Chuck Taylor (who would endorse the Converse brand) and Jesse Owens (who would run track in Adidas and win the Olympics) sneakers were linked to athletics. The spill-over into popular fashion, though, began in the 1950’s when teenagers appropriated the rubber-soled shoe and forever changed its status. Today the sneaker is made by any number of different brands and comes in multiple varieties of colors, shapes, detailing and even technology. There is a sneaker for every type of runner and for every athlete, those who prefer tennis over basketball or vice verse, and there is a sneaker, as well, for every fashion type who is keenly aware of what it he or she is wearing that gives that extra bounce to their step.
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image: photograph, movie/fashion icon James Dean in Jack Purcell sneakers
image: photograph, Olympic track star Jesse Owens
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In England at the end of the 18th century a movement in fashion was finding its voice through young British aristocrats set on defining themselves apart from the average gentleman. A generation of young and world-wise aristocrats, young men whose custom it was to take the ‘Grand Tour’ of the great European cities of antiquity, returned to England wearing ostentatious clothing that remarked on their cultured travels. They had tasted the fashions in Italy and France at the end of the 1700’s and had returned celebrating and perhaps exaggerating these. It is thought that they themselves applied the name ‘Macaroni’ to their set or maybe the label was given to them but it is sure that a distinct style of dress and presentation came to be associated with the term.
The unofficial ‘Macaroni Club’ of young fashion-setters were the opposite of the staid, traditional, and older ‘Beefsteak Club’ of 18th century England. Whereas the prior generation was content with conventional formality and prided itself on its patriotism, the Macaroni’s were devoted to excesses in fashion and the general consumption of things and conferred great importance on their European experience. They wore their trousers tight and their waistcoats short and sported wigs of exaggerated pomp with curls dangling at their ears. They were also known to adorn their jacket lapels with flowers such as nosegay and to wear the narrowest of shoes that almost impaired their manner of gait. The Macaronis would carry canes embellished with tassels and have as accessories pocket watches and spy glasses and they chose to wear wigs of extreme proportions to further set themselves apart.
When we talk about fashion or costume we tend to refer to garments or some type of ornamentation that is external to the body. However, throughout history, cultures have also used the body itself and human skin as a decorative medium to relay aesthetic significance as well as social status or rites of passage. The human epidermis is a remarkable organ that provides a barrier between the inner organs and the external environment and helps us regulate temperature. It is also what we present of ourselves as individuals to the world around us and so the way we treat our skin, or manipulate it, or adorn and change it, can convey a lot about who we are or who we want others to see us as.
The most conspicuous and familiar forms of body adornment to Western eyes are probably cosmetics (including lip coloring, eye shading, nail polishes, etc.) and ear piercings and, more recently, tattoos and piercings on other parts of the body. The history of cosmetics certainly has to be a long one since its application is easy and the sources for natural dyes and treatments are abundant. Other forms of bodily adornment include more painful forms of manipulating the skin, such as body piercings or scarification. Both are a form of ornamentation that tampers with the skin and creates wounds for the purpose of distinguishing that part of the body, whether by attaching further adornment (such as earrings) or changing the surface texture of the skin itself to create patterns (such as through scarring).
Tattooing, also a potentially painful practice, has a long history as feature of human ornamentation; remains of a human preserved in ice, dated to about 5000 B.C.E, show various tattoo patterns and attest to a fairly early use of tattoos. Tattooing as a distinct tradition in some cultures, such as those of Oceania, is further example of its relevance as a form of display/adornment. Today, tattoos are a cultural phenomenon in the West and have become fashion indicators more than social indicators but in cultures where the tradition is longer, tattoos have been a signifier of much deeper binds. In the cultures of Polynesia, different islands had their own traditions and styles of tattooing and the variety of tattoo motifs and patterns and their placement on the body also offered different layers of meaning, both for the person adorned with them and for anyone encountering him.
When Queen Victoria ascended to the throne of England in 1837 she cut a particular image. She was a diminutive woman, about 4′ 11″ in height, but had all the power of an empire behind her and she carried herself as such in the fashions she chose. She came to the public spotlight at a time when the fashion for women’s clothing was becoming more restrictive and confining in some ways yet these she promoted as being exemplars of a woman’s strive for virtue and uprightness. Her reign would be characterized by a high sense of decorum and moral code and developed a confirmed identity that we have since classified as the Victorian era.
With Victoria, as England entered the Industrial Age, censure of wayward social attitudes and actions paralleled an increase in opportunities (through urban life) to stretch the boundaries of social etiquette. Queen Victoria was paramount in popularizing a fashion of constraint and reform. Bodices were close-fitting, ending in a V-shape, and shaped by fine whalebone frames that contained the female figure formidably. Tailoring was precise in the cut of the seams so that a woman’s arms were somewhat constrained by the cut of the wide collared and low-shouldered chemises and by the narrowness of the sleeves. By the mid 1840’s the woman’s fashion in skirts had become more exaggerated and compiled of excessive cloth and bustling. The bell-shaped skirt was favored and, as the addition of fabric increased the weight on the garment, the shaping of the skirt was aided by metal or whalebone frames.
