Yesterday I attended the first half of the symposium Frontier Style: Culture and Fashion at the Edge of Empire, Mohawk Valley of New York, 1700-1800 at the Fulton-Montgomery Community College in Johnstown. I did buy the collected papers over the mid-afternoon break, but I took notes before then - and then the penultimate presentation was … Continue reading Frontier Style (1700-1800) Symposium
Category: 17th century
Artistic Neoclassical Costume
I began discussing this in my post on the mantua. As the wealthy began to create separate public and private lives, they desired paintings of themselves in private, dressed in ways they could never appear in public. Some of the sitters wore actual negligée dress, but some were painted in an invented costume meant to … Continue reading Artistic Neoclassical Costume
The Mantua
I was thinking about making this post the other night, when a profound revelation came upon me: I am a costuming/fashion history hipster. In American Nerd, Ben Nugent defines two important aspects of hipsterism. One is purism, as a reaction against the Baby Boomer eclecticism, and the other is an attachment to an "unfashionable" subject … Continue reading The Mantua
English and French Women's Court Dress
What I really want to do is a post just on the mantua, but I know that if I do that I'm going to have to explain court dress first to feel like it's complete. But court dress is interesting on its own merits, anyway! In the later seventeenth century, court dress was basically the … Continue reading English and French Women's Court Dress
Mimic of Modes 