I present to you the Gallery of Scary Early Attempts. Have fun!
Not Dead, Really!
I’m not dead, I swear! I’ve been having some crappy stuff going on in my life, and in order to cope I needed to hibernate a bit and let myself off the hook for keeping up with things like my website. But things are better now, so you can expect some regular updates to start up again! I’ve done a bunch of sewing on my 1839 Le Follett day dress, I saw The Illusionist and the new BBC Jane Eyre miniseries (so reviews soon), I haven’t yet seen Marie Antoinette (GASP) but will very very soon. Last weekend I was a docent for the San Francisco Victorian Alliance house tour, so I actually got out in costume. I wore my black & ivory striped 1876ish reception dress – only got a few pictures (here and here).
So – back from the dead! More content Monday. Oh, and there are a bunch of dead links in the Real Women’s Clothing directory — I’m slowing going through and fixing them (sigh!). I’ll post a notice when I’ve finished.
The “Ouch” Factor
One of the weird things about making and wearing historical costumes is getting into the “but doesn’t that hurt?” debate. As a modern feminist who wears what to some is a physical and visual marker of women’s oppression or women’s traditional roles, I’m conscious of trying to counterbalance those views. The point I usually try to make is that yes, wearing corsets and multi-layered clothing does feel less comfortable than wearing a bra, jeans, and t-shirt. But women of earlier eras had different priorities than we did, wore these garments from childhood, and in general simply wouldn’t have felt dressed or presentable for public viewing without those corsets and layers of clothing.
This review article from the Chronicle of Higher Education (which is a few years old) nicely summarizes some of my thoughts and the changes taking place in fashion/costume research. Two quotes that are really working for me: “‘Fashion’ can not logically be reified as a magic power that causes women to behave in ways contrary to their own best interests,” (Valerie Steele); and “You can’t possibly argue that for 1,000 years Chinese women were morons and Chinese men were sexual perverts. You have to ask, what stakes did women have?” (Dorothy Ko).