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ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING AND FASHION " ~~ ~l,^i, . •:'"'*' Women wearing bustles. Bustles have been an element of Western fashion intermittently since the seventeenth century. Women's dresses were form-fitting on top and created with a tuck and flounce in the back, below the waist, to avoid appearing masculine. © BETTMAN/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. from all classes, as well as by little girls with their short skirts. As The Delineator noted in February 1886 (p. 99), some women did not wear a bustle pad, "except when such an adjunct if necessitated by a ceremonious toilette," relying instead on a flounced petticoat to support the drapery of simpler dresses. After about 1887 the bustle reduced in size and skirts began to slim. The skirts of the early 1890s featured some back fullness, but emphasis had shifted to flared skirt hems and enormous leg-of-mutton sleeves, and bustle supports were not as fashionable. With skirts fitting snugly to the hips and derriere in die late 1890s, however, some women relied on skirt supports to achieve a gracefully rounded hipline that set off a small waist. While not as extreme as examples from the mid-1880s, the woven wire or quilted hip pads worn beyond the turn of century show the tenacity of the full-hipped female ideal. Despite some historians' view that bustle fashions were surely the most hideous ever conceived, this very feminine silhouette has continued to fascinate. In the late 1930s, ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING AND Elsa Schiaparelli made playful homage to the bustle in some of her sleek evening dresses, while late-twentiethcentury bustle interpretations by avant-garde designers, such as Yohji Yamamoto and Vivienne Westwood, have utilized the form with historically informed irony. See also Mantua; Skirt Supports. BIBLIOGRAPHY Blum, Stella. Victorian Fashions and Costumes-from Harper's Bazar 1867-1898. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1974. Cunnington, C. Willett. English Women's Clothing in the Nineteenth Century. London: Faber and Faber, 1937. Reprint, New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1990. Gernsheim, Alison. Fashion and Reality: 1840-1914. London: Faber and Faber, 1963. Reprint as Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey. New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1981. Hill, Thomas E. Never Give a Lady a Restive Horse. From Manual of Social and Business Fonns: Selections. 1873. Also from Albmn of Biography and Art. 1881. Reprint, Berkeley, Calif.: Diablo Press, 1967. FASHION 205 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING ( S H O E S , WOMEN'S •> N ^^_ ^f PHYSICAL C U L U R E ANOTHER WORD FOR NOW ONLY NEW FOOT NOTES Physical Culture women's shoes advertisement, 1938. By the 1930s, the color, shape, and decoration of shoes had expanded to offer numerous options for fashionable women. © LAKE COUNTY MUSEUM/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. and the shapes of toes varied, with no one style predominating. The square toe, introduced as early as the 1790s, did not become the main style until the late 1820s but would remain so for the next half century. As factories disfigured the horizon, many longed for the picturesque qualities of an unspoiled landscape. A naturalism movement brought long country promenades into fashion; ladies began to wear "spatterdashes," leggings adapted from men's military dress that protected stockings from spatters and dashes of mud. Walking became a fad called "pedestrianism" and a prescribed activity for women. Boots were worn for this activity as a sensible alternative to fashion shoes. Ankle boots, referred to as demi-boots or half boots, found international appeal in this period. By the time Queen Victoria ascended the throne in 1837 a sentimental, romanticized movement had swept popular thought. Women became expressions of virtue and femininity, their conservative costume and demure decorum reflected conscious gentility. Fine slippers of kid and silk were made in great quantities in Paris and exported around the world. Soles, which had been made without left or right definition for more than 200 years, were exceptionally narrow now and the delicate uppers 176 AND FASHION tended not to last long ; at the ball of the foot, Colored footwear founi kle-length skirts, but J "" T^U decades. 1 he 1long, hill tury hid the feet from view, with perhaps the occasional peep at a vamp when the woman walked or waltzed across a floor. By the mid-1850s, black or white footwear was deemed by fashion delineators to be the most elegant and tasteful choice, a standard that would last for many years. However, after the mid-1850s, with the introduction of wire frame "crinoline" skirt supports, skirts tended to tip and swing, exposing the foot and ankle. This brought about interest in the decoration of shoe vamps. Machine chain-stitched designs with colorful silk underlays, dubbed "chameleons," became fashionable for home and evening wear. For daytime, however, boots became modest essentials underneath the wire-frame supported skirts. Side-laced boots called "Adelaides" in England, after William IVs consort, were made for most outdoor occasions until improvements in the elasticity of rubber resulted in the development of elastic thread which, woven into webbing, was used for ankle-boot gussets. Elasticsided boots were referred to as "Garibaldi" boots in Europe after the Italian statesman who united Italy during the 1860s, and as "Congress" boots in the United States after the American Congress. Front-laced boots came back into fashion by 1860. Called "Balmorals," after Queen Victoria's Scottish home, the style was deemed suitable for informal daywear and sporting occasions at first, but by the 1870s had become the more common closure of all boots. Button boots were introduced in the 1850s, but were generally not favored until the 1880s when their tight fit and elegant closure flattered the slim ankle and foot more than laced styles. Heels were re-introduced on ladies' footwear during the late 1850s, but did not find universal appeal until the late 1870s. Historicism was an important movement of the mid-nineteenth century; Rococo and Baroque styling was evident on shoes in the 1860s with a return to buckles and bows. Large, multiple loop bows were called "Fenelon," after the seventeenth-century French writer. Mules, too, came back into fashion as part of the historical revival of the ancien regime. Exoticism was another important movement of the nineteenth century. Via the Crimean war, Turkish embroideries were exported for the production of shoe uppers in the late 1850s and when Japan opened its doors to foreign trade in 1867, a taste for all-things Oriental made a strong comeback. Chinese embroidered silks or European embroidered silks in the taste of Chinese and Japanese textiles were in fashion and a Japanese-influenced palette of colors resulted in brown leather footwear coming into vogue, which would become a fashion staple. By the late 1880s the square toe had finally fallen from fashion, replaced by rounded and even almond- E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D F A S H I O N ENCYCLOPEDIA OF CLOTHING ROMA AND GYPSY Y \a men. A group AND FASHION must not touch any clothing on the lower body. © WOLFGANG KAEHLER/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. The presentation of self through dress and fashion is very important to the Roma and part of their public performance as Roma. Roma fashions do change over time and place. Furthermore, fashions for men and women seem to be based on different criteria. Whereas men dress to present an image to the outside world that they associate with power and authority, women dress to present an image to the Roma that is associated with Roma ideas of the power of purity and pollution. Men In the United States Roma have adopted fashions that project a particular masculine stereotype, often gleaned from the movies. Their public and private appearance is a performance of a certain recognizable style that they associate with masculinity and authority. They are not concerned with being stylishly up-to-date, rather they are concerned with the images of power projected by the clothing. Examples of commonly seen styles include: 1. Urban cowboy—hat, cowboy shirt, bolo tie, jeans, and boots; sometimes a Western-style jacket. E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D 2. 1930s Chicago gangster—loose pants, two toned shoes, wide splashy tie, and double breasted jacket. 3. Palm Springs golfer—white or loud color pants, red golf shirt, Irish hat. 4. Casual modern—polo shirts, white shirts, or Hawaiian shirts, long pants. Young men who are not yet old enough to present an image of power may adopt a more youthful modern dress. For example: (1) Beatles attire—pencil thin tie, loud tight shirt, and stove pipe pants; (2) Spanish or Hungarian Gypsy musician—longish hair, red diklo at the neck, "Gypsy" shirt; or (3) Modern—shirt and baggy shorts. Women Women are interested in fashion that shows their sense of "shame" and their status as guardians of purity for the family. Because of this role, women are expected to cover their legs at least to the mid-calf. Married women traditionally cover their head with a scarf and tie their long hair up or braid it. There is no shame associated with F A S H I O N 115 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF Occult Dress to Zoran, Index CLOTHING TO<;A AND FASHION question whether it is a physical possibility for women to reduce their natural waist measure below 17 or 18 inches." This is not to say that women did not use corsets to reduce their waists. Writing in 1866, the English author Arnold Cooley claimed that, "The waist of healthy women . . . is found to measure 28 to 29 inches in circumference. Yet most women do not permit themselves to exceed 24 inches round the waist, whilst tens of thousands lace themselves down to 22 inches, and many deluded victims of fashion and vanity to 21 and even to 20 inches." The discourse on tight-lacing needs to be analyzed in ways that move beyond simple measurements. Because the practice of tight-lacing was so ill-defined and yet was perceived as being so ubiquitous in the nineteenth century, it became the focus of widespread social anxieties about women. Tight-lacing disappeared as a social issue with the decline of the corset as a fashionable garment in the early twentieth century. However, there still existed individuals who wore tightly laced corsets. In the mid-twentieth century, Ethel Granger was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for having "the world's smallest waist," which measured 13 inches. In the early twenty-first century, the most famous tight-lacer is probably the corsetier Mr. Pearl, who claims to have a 19-inch waist. His friend Cathie J. boasts of having reduced her waist to 15 inches. See also Corset; Fetish Fashion. BIBLIOGRAPHY Kunzle, David. Fashion and Fetishism. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1982. Steele, Valerie. Fetish: Fashion, Sex and Power. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. . The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001. Summers, Leigh. Bound to Please. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Ward, E. The Dress Reform Problem: A Chapter for Women. London: Hamilton, Adams, 1886. Valerie Steele TOGAThe toga was a wrapped outer garment worn in ancient Rome. Its origin is probably to be found in the tebenna, a semicircular mantle worn by the Etruscans, a people who lived on the Italian peninsula in an area close to that occupied by the Romans. Several Roman kings were Etruscan and many elements of Etruscan culture were taken over by the Romans. The toga may have been one of these elements. The toga was a highly symbolic garment for the Romans^ It had numerous forms, but the toga pura or toga virilis was the most significant. In its earliest form the toga pura was a semicircle of white wool. E N C Y C L O P E D I A O F C L O T H I N G A N D Statue of Emperor Augustus in a toga. The toga, a garment wrapped around the body and over the shoulder, was worn by all ancient Roman men, though larger and longer togas were generally reserved for Romans with status and wealth. © ARALDO DE LUCA/CORBIS. REPRODUCED BY PERMISSION. At the time of the Roman Republic (509 B.C.E. to 27 B.C.E.) and after, only free male citizens of Rome who were at least sixteen years of age could wear this toga. It was the symbol of Roman citizenship and was required dress for official activities. Men wore togas to audiences with the Emperor and to the games played in the Roman arena. The toga was worn outermost, over a tunic. (A tunic was a T-shaped woven garment, similar in form to a F A S H I O N 329