Last May Worn Through

My most recent post on Worn Through with a video about Livstycket.

Let me know what you think!

Cornflowers

Are also called bachelor's buttons!

Beware the courting young man whose cornflower boutonniere fades too quickly--so goes his love!

Thankfully, those in the wild bouquet I arranged for mamma (on the parents' 29th anniversary) are still bright...

Oh, good! You know about Harris!

Jane: You must be freezing, dressed in that!

Tom: It has a lining...

Nick: What kind of lining is it? You gonna wear a raincoat all winter?

Sally: Princeton's south of here, I guess it's a lot warmer.

Tom: No, I just didn't know where to get a good overcoat.

Nick: Uh, Brooks, J.Press, Tripler, ...

Tom: Actually, I just haven't had time to buy one.




From Metropolitan, 1990, dir. Whit Stillman.



Throughout this movie, Nick has old fashioned, matter-of-fact opinions on dress. Wears a top hat. Also says, as regards the economy of going to debutante balls and other events, "Dances are either black tie or white tie, so: you only need two ties."

Flawless logic.

Humanities II Sandals

"The first disappointment was Martha; she wore the wrong clothes. I had thought she had been planning to don her purple wool suit, toward which I had both a sentimental and aesthetic attachment, or at least the skirt to the suit and her white silk blouse. But when she rushed past me to answer the knock at the front door, it was not a woman that moved by but a circus--a burst of color and a clattering of ornaments. She had managed to tart herself up in a full orange skirt, an off-the-shoulder blouse with a ruffled neck, strands of multicolored beads, and on her feet what I shall refer to in the language of the streets (the streets around the University) as her Humanities II sandals. So that none of us would miss the point, she had neither braided her hair nor put it up. It was combed straight out, and when she tossed her head, the heavy blond mane draped down her back and almost brushed her bottom. Somehow her outfit managed to call into question the very thing we wished (or I wished) to impress upon Libby and upon Paul--the seriousness of our relationship. That the Herzes' lives were often more threatened than my own had led me on occasion to believe that their lives were also more serious than my own; whatever the mixture of insight and bafflement that had produced in me such an idea, it contributed also to the quality of my affections and anxieties where these two needy people were concerned.

The visitors peered out of the stairway; they were Paul and Libby Herz, they said, but it was this Mrs. Reganhart's apartment? Apparently Martha looked to them as though she could not be a Mrs. anything, which may indeed have been what was in her head as she had dressed herself before her bedroom mirror." (309)

Roth, Philip. Letting Go. London: Corgi Books, 1967 [1961].


Sorry for so much silence and repetition: I'm reading these two huge books, the James integral to the Roth.

What outfit would ruin a dinner in 2012? Where do I buy Humanities II sandals??

Maybe here:

Or are these too chic? The orange sure seems to fit...

New Worn Through Today!

Read my post at Worn Through about bodies in the Armémuseum!

And tell me what you think...

The Shell

"'I don't care anything about his house,' said Isabel.

'That's very crude of you. When you've lived as long as I you'll see that every human being has his shell and that you must take the shell into account. By the shell I mean the whole envelope of circumstances. There's no such thing as an isolated man or woman; we're each of us made up of some cluster of appurtenances. What shall we call our "self"? Where does it begin? where does it end? It overflows into everything that belongs to us--and then it flows back again. I know a large part of myself is in the clothes I choose to wear. I've a great respect for things! One's self--for other people--is one's expression of one's self; and one's house, one's furniture, one's garments, the books one reads, the company one keeps--these things are all expressive.'

This was very metaphysical; not more so, however, than several observations Madame Merle had already made. Isabel was fond of metaphysics, but was unable to accompany her friend into this bold analysis of the human personality. 'I don't agree with you. I think just the other way. I don't know whether I succeed in expressing myself, but I know that nothing else expresses me. Nothing that belongs to me is any measure of me; everything's on the contrary a limit, a barrier, and a perfectly arbitrary one. Certainly the clothes which, as you say, I choose to wear, don't express me; and heaven forbid they should!'

'You dress very well,' Madame Merle lightly interposed.

'Possibly, but I don't care to be judged by that. My clothes may express the dressmaker, but they don't express me. To begin with, it's not my own choice that I wear them; they're imposed on me by society.'

'Should you prefer to go without them?' Madame Merle inquired in a tone which virtually terminated the discussion." (179-80)


James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. Herfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics: 1999 [1881].

Phew, all that in one little page...if that doesn't establish Isabel's character perfectly! Proving the importance of clothing in fiction outside of outfit description. Another one of those 19th c. clothing sociologists!

Bric-à-Brac

"There was another guest to meet them, an amiable bachelor, an old friend of Ralph's who happened to be in town and for whom prompt commerce with Miss Stackpole appeared to have neither difficulty nor dread. Mr. Bantling, a stout sleek, smiling man of forty, wonderfully dressed, universally informed and incoherently amused, laughed immoderately at everything Henrietta said, gave her several cups of tea, examined in her society the bric-à-brac, of which Ralph had a considerable collection, and afterwards, when the host proposed they should go out into the square and pretend it was a fête-champêtre, walked round the limited enclosure several times with her and, at a dozen turns of their talk, bounded responsive--as with positive passion for argument--to her remarks upon the inner life." (130)

James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady, 1881.


I just...really wish Henry James would describe me. Even if it weren't wholly flattering, it sure would be beautiful.

Everything a Girl Could Have

"She had had everything a girl could have: kindness, admiration, bonbons, bouquets, the sense of exclusion from none of the privileges of the world she lived in, abundant opportunity for dancing, plenty of new dresses, the London Spectator, the latest publications, the music of Gounod, the poetry of Browning, the prose of George Eliot." (42)

James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady, 1881.

What a life!

Her First Act

"Mrs. Touchett might do a great deal of good, but she never pleased. This way of her own, of which she was so fond, was not intrinsically offensive--it was just unmistakably distinguished from the way of others. The edges of her conduct were so very clear-cut that for susceptible persons it sometimes had a knife-like effect. That hard fineness came out in her deportment during the first hours of her return from America, under circumstances in which it might have seemed that her first act would have been to exchange greetings with her husband and son. Mrs. Touchett, for reasons which she deemed excellent, always retired on such occasions into impenetrable seclusion, postponing the more sentimental ceremony until she had repaired the disorder of dress with a completeness which had the less reason to be of high importance as neither beauty nor vanity were concerned in it. She was a plain-faced old woman, without graces and without any great elegance, but with an extreme respect for her own motives." (31)


James, Henry. The Portrait of a Lady. Hertfordshire, UK: Wordsworth Classics, 1999 [1881].


A funny example of clothing practice, a web of propriety spun by James.

Dressed Up

"'Mona,' he said, lapsing into his W.C. Fields voice, 'get the boy a drink. The boy needs a drink. Have you noticed Charleen's boy friend, with the liquidy eyes--over there, with the damp lips? Also, Wallach, self-concerned. A big dumb beautiful girl like Charleen, married to an introspective dermatologist--'

Mona was standing now; she was dressed up, and because I like her so much I'd rather not describe her outfit." (290)

Roth, Phillip. Letting Go. London: Corgi Books, 1967 [1961].



Roth, master of civility.

Hon. Oliver Higgins

"The Hon. Mrs. Oliver Higgins was the wife of a delegate from a distant territory--a gentleman who had kept the principal 'saloon' and sold the best whiskey in the principal village in his wilderness, and so, of course, was recognized as the first man of his commonwealth and its fittest representative. He was a man of paramount influence at home, for he was public spirited, he was chief of the fire department, he had an admirable command of profane language, and had killed several 'parties.' His shirt fronts were always immaculate; his boots daintily polished, and no man could lift a foot and fire a dead shot at a stray speck of dirt on it with a white handkerchief with a finer grace than he; his watch chain weighed a pound; the gold in his finger ring was worth forty five collars; he wore a diamond cluster-pin and he parted his hair behind. He had always been regarded as the most elegant gentleman in his territory, and it was conceded by all that no man thereabouts was anywhere near his equal in the telling of an obscene story except the venerable white-haired governor himself. The Hon. Higgins had no come to serve his country in Washington for nothing." (241-2)

Twain, Mark. The Gilded Age. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2002 [1873].


STOP it, Twain. You are so good.

Washington

The following two passages describe the clothing/comportment of two groups of callers in Washington, D.C. Twain describes "three distinct aristocracies in Washington": the "Antiques", the middle-ground, and the Parvenus. These outline the first and the last.

(Warning: more racial slurs. Instead of taking it out, I've chosen to add this note. I think it's integral to the passage, and should be kept in. Let me know what you think.)

"They drove up at one in the afternoon in a rather antiquated vehicle with a faded coat of arms on the panels, an aged white-wooled negro coachman on the box and a younger darkey beside him--the footman. Both of these servants were dressed in dull brown livery that had seen considerable service.

The ladies entered the drawing-room in full character; that is to say, with Elizabethan stateliness on the part of the dowager, and an easy grace and dignity on the part of the young lady that had a nameless something about it that suggested conscious superiority. The dresses of both ladies were exceedingly rich, as to material, but as notably modest as to color and ornament. All parties having seated themselves, the dowager delivered herself of a remark that was not unusual in its form, and yet it came from her lips with the impressiveness of the Scripture: 'The weather has been unpropitious of late, Miss Hawkins.'" (239)

. . .

"The three carriages arrived at the same moment from different directions. They were new and wonderfully shiny, and the brasses on the harness were highly polished and bore complicated monograms. There were showy coats of arms, too, with Latin mottoes. The coachmen and footmen were clad in bright new livery, of striking colors, and they had black rosettes with shaving-brushes projecting above them, on the sides of their stove-pipe hats.


When the visitors swept into the drawing-room they filled the place with a suffocating sweetness procured at the perfumer's. Their costumes, as to architecture, were the latest fashion intensified; they were rainbow-hued; they were hung with jewels--chiefly diamonds. It would have been plain to any eye that it had cost something to upholster these women." (241)



From The Gilded Age, 1873. No question of which is which here. These are some of the best passages on clothing, in which Twain deliberately compares the two within a few pages of each other. Although he uses clothing much, much less than some of his contemporaries, this is one instance in which this aspect of one's presentation speaks volumes, both then and now. Definitely speaks to the idea of gilt vs. gold, huh?

Stay tuned for one last from Twain, a member of the latter party...

Vulgar Genteel

"Larry O'Toole, contractor. A showily dressed man of the style known as 'vulgar genteel,' had a sharp eye and a ready tongue. Had read the newspaper reports of the case, but they made no impression on him. Should be governed by the evidence. Knew no reason why he should not be an impartial juror." (389)

Twain, Mark. The Gilded Age. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2002 [1873].



What on earth does 'vulgar genteel' look like??? I want it.

Google obviously has the answer, providing a definition of sorts printed in the Eugene Register-Guard in 1869.

A fun link for learning how to avoid vulgar-genteel verbal mistakes (1829) can be found here.

And a speech given by Theodore Parker on "The True and False Ideas of a Gentleman" (1852) can be found through the New York Times archive here.

Lots of worry on the part of these writers! The false/true gentleman seems at once immediately and easily recognizable and insidiously difficult to recognize, so much that he apparently needs identifying in these sorts of speeches and texts. The Vulgar-genteel man is two-faced, his manners like clothing he puts on and takes off, or gas that can be turned on or off (say these sources). Always a genuine, good country man gone bad in the big city. So nineteenth-century!

Not a lot of clothing or visual description. Project Gutenberg even has an illustrated example--many jurors drawn, but not the one we want.

I am looking forward to reading The Fall of Public Man by Richard Sennett again soon (on the bookshelf), I will definitely keep this Twain passage (and these pieces) in mind when I do so...I would definitely suggest you pick it up as well!

Anyone have any other sources for the vulgar-genteel? Has this been written about before?

Polecat Skins

"His features were already dispersed throughout the room in which he had lived, and were sprouting in it, creating at some points strange knots of likeness that were most expressive. The wallpaper began in certain places to imitate his habitual nervous tic. The flower designs arranged themselves into the doleful elements of his smile, symmetrical as the fossilized imprint of a trilobite.

For a time, we gave a wide berth to his fur coat lined with polecat skins. The fur coat breathed, the panic of small animals sewn together and biting into one another passed through it in helpless currents and lost itself in the folds of the fur. Putting one's ear against it, one could hear the melodious purring unison of the animals' sleep. In this well-tanned form, amid the faint smell of polecat murder and nighttime matings, my father might have lasted for many years. But he did not last."

Shulz, Bruno. Father's Last Escape. Written 1937, part of Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass. Published in The New Yorker in 1978, translated by Celina Wieniewska. Listen to it at the New Yorker Fiction Podcast here.

One of my favorites so far.


Probably not similar, but interesting for comparison: Polecat sounds so....icky to me! But Klimt painted a polecat-fur coat:

Der Iltispelz (unfinished), 1916. Klimt. Privately owned.

Disinterested

“The disinterested mode of contemplation that privileges the visual over the tactile cannot do justice to our experience of fashion.” (50)



Negrin, Llewellyn, “Aesthetics: Fashion and Aesthetics–A Fraught Relationship”, in Fashion and Art, Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas, eds. London: Berg, 2012.

This is a great book, even for someone who isn't helt hundra on the topic (like me). I think this is one of the most important concepts in the whole theory of modern fashion exhibition, but we are so tied to the aspirational, devotional and visual. Give me dynamism!

What are your thoughts? What is your favorite way of consuming historical costume?

Worn Through

On patterns taken from extant garments in museum collections.

www.wornthrough.com

Tell me what you think!!

Two hats

"'Then what was terrifying about the visit?' I asked.

Kirkfield lit a cigarette. 'He was wearing two hats,' he said. There was a long pause.

'In his study?' I said.

'Two hats?' my wife asked, putting her realistic finger on the more incongruous fact.

'Two hats,' Kirkfield repeated. 'They were both grey felt hats, one on top of the other. The terrifying thing was that he didn't say anything about them. He just sat there with two hats on, trying to cheer me up.'" (11)



Fear of aging from Thurber, James. Lanterns and Lances. Special Time Inc. Edition, published in New York, 1962 [1955].

James M. Stay acquired this book 2 June 1981, but apparently only ever opened it to write that inscription, the dolt. Mint condition Thurber, 80 cents!

How do you think this would be expressed today? Even one hat--even outside--might seem like an eccentricity. Or maybe that's it--the fact that one would wear some sort of old-timey hat at all? I want to hear your suggestions!

Free

!!!


http://www.lacma.org/patterns

Awesome!

American

"In Europe my wife was sometimes taken for an American because of her dapper and jaunty way of dressing, and the curiously hygienic quality of her prettiness; in America she assumed an English softness and reticence." (229)

One more from Brideshead (can you blame me?), by Waugh, förstås. One of the only times I've read of someone being identified as an American in a sort of complimentary way.

Blue Flannel

"Ah, there's nothing like blue flannel for a man."


One of so many one-liners about dress spoken by Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, dir. Billy Wilder, 1950.

"'I love that line.'
'It's all padding, don't let it fool you.'"

You should see this film, if only for the tailoring of that damned tailcoat!

Worn Through

Another of my bi-weekly posts over at Worn Through!

This one about Samdok, "Samtids Dokumentation" [Contemporary Documentation]. I'd love to hear your thoughts about contemporary museum collection!

Read it!

Arch Street Meeting

"And then there was Broad street! Wasn't it the broadest and the longest street in the world? There certainly was no end to it, and even Ruth was Philadelphian enough to believe that a street ought not to have any end, or architectural point upon which the weary eye could rest.

But neither St. Girard, nor Broad street, neither wonders of the Mint nor the glories of the Hall where the ghosts of our fathers sit always signing the Declaration, impressed the visitors so much as the splendors of the Chestnut street windows, and the bargains on Eighth street. The truth is that the country cousins had come to town to attend the Yearly Meeting, and the amount of shopping that preceded that religious event was scarcely exceeded by the preparations for the opera in more worldly circles.

'Is thee going to the Yearly Meeting, Ruth?' asked one of the girls.

'I have nothing to wear,' replied that demure person. 'If thee wants to see new bonnets, orthodox to a shade and conformed to the letter of the true form, thee must go to the Arch Street Meeting. Any departure from either color or shape would be instantly taken note of. It has occupied mother a long time, to find at the shops the exact shade for her new bonnet. Oh, thee must go by all means. But thee won't see there a sweeter woman than mother.'" (108)


Twain, Mark. The Gilded Age. New York: Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., 2002 [1873].


Twain is almost up there with Hawthorne for contemporary observation of clothing practice in the nineteenth century. Love!

Iwo Jimas

"My mother went on, 'You may make more money than your father, but you don't make enough to support two women. Don't think she and Joan are going to eat peaceably out of the same dish. Joey, you've bought an expensive piece of property. These cute little Iwo Jimas or whatever they are and Lord and Taylor pants and transparent nighties aren't bought with just wishing.'


'Her nighties aren't transparent.'


'No, but her eyes are and I see my son's ruin in them.'" (103-4)


Updike, John. On the Farm. New York: Fawcett Crest, 1967 [1965].


Bikini Atoll ≠ Iwo Jima.



Also, Mr. Updike would have been 80 this month, and Fresh Air re-ran a 1988 interview with him in which he explains why detail is so important:

"Well, I find that the main charge, let's call it, that I get out of writing is when I feel I've gotten something down accurately. Uh, and the main bliss, whether I read Henry Green, or Nabokov, or Proust, or Tolstoy, is the sense that they've described precisely a certain moment of experience, whether it's a dress, or a chair, or how a person's face looks that really...the literary art is a parasitic one, and that its energy comes from the energy of the real, and so accuracy is one way of describing the close approximation to the real that we all sort of live for."

Man after my own heart.

Cawilla

Look!

www.cawilla.wordpress.com

Me 'n' my boyfriend, plugging '40s but rocking '50s! From the Vintagemässan in Stockholm a few weeks back. Nerd alert!

Original Duck

Early "jeans" from Levi Strauss & Co, in "duck", from the American History Museum/Smithsonian, c. 1873-96.

This must be the "yellow" that Twain talks about here, don't you think?

Except--not brand name, did you catch that Twain specifically wrote homespun? Levi's patented "jeans" in 1873, the same year The Gilded Age was first published. I wonder what portion of the market Levi's held at that time, and what it really meant to wear homespun jeans. Were Levi's patented version famous enough for these men to be wearing intentionally copied work pants?

The Smithsonian website suggests denim wasn't used by LS&Co. until the 1890s; do you think Twain's men were wearing denim or blue duck? But still called "jeans"....so interesting!

Homespun reminds of itchy sweaters and ugly crochet now, I think, but in costume history I most strongly associate it with American protest of British imports when were still only a colony. And, of course, the dense but awesome book by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich. Check it out, especially if you are interested in New England clothing/textile history like yours truly.