Prefatory Note
CLOTH is a social tissue.
By means of its convenient sheathing we move among one another freely, smoothly, and in peace, when without it such association would be impossible. The more solitary we live, the less we think of clothing; the more we crowd and mingle in “society," the more we think of it.
The evolution of textile manufacture is as long and interesting as any chapter of our social growth.
From braided hair, perhaps, or thongs, to the plaiting of reeds and grasses and stripped bark, up to the fine tissues of cotton and flax, wool and silk; from the coarse accidental felt of matted camel's hair to the finest of laces; it is as vivid a picture of natural growth as human life can show.
Other creatures grow their clothing on their individual bodies; scales, or bristles, fur or feathers—they have but one suit, self-replenished. They may clean it perhaps, but cannot change it—save indeed for the seasonal changes, the difference between youth and age, and—the chameleon.
The human animal shows in its clothing as conspicuously as in many other ways, the peculiar power of extra-physical expression.
As by his tools and weapons he surpasses in varied efficiency the perhaps more perfect, but limited, mechanism of any other creature; so in clothing he is enabled to adapt himself to conditions more rapidly than by moulting or casting the skin; and from this basic advantage goes on to a widening range of uses even yet scarcely appreciated.
Our clothing is as literally evolved to meet our needs as the scales of a fish or the feathers of a bird. It grows on us, socially, as theirs grow on them individually.
Because we manufacture a substance, consciously and through a number of hands and brains, it is none the less a natural product of society.
Because a substance or implement does not physiologically grow on us, it may be nevertheless an integral part of the social tissues; and, equally may be a superfluous, a detrimental part, or a positive disease and danger.
Clothing studied in this way, is a sort of social skin, adapting itself to conditions of heat and cold as do the coverings of other animals, only more quickly. If the polar bear in our menageries could take off his underflannels; or if the equatorial monkeys could put them on—they would suffer somewhat less.
But our clothing, through its changeability and its variety, has become, even more than is an epidermis, a medium of expression. The most our skin can do, to show emotion, is to blush, to pale, to contract so that the hair rises; but with clothing we may express a whole gamut of emotions from personal vanity to class consciousness.
In our various fabrics we have created something without parallel in nature. The nearest to it is, of course, the animal integuments. As a manufactured article the web of a spider comes nearest perhaps, or the nest-building material of some birds and insects.
A smooth, soft, continuous substance, of equal thinness and flexibility throughout, cloth itself fluttering in the breeze as flags do, or hanging in rich folds of drapery, is an addition to the beauty of the world.
When those soft folds, those rippling undulations, are added to the grace and action of the human body, we have a new element of beauty, recognized by sculptors and painters of all time.
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To follow the industrial evolution of textiles would be a great work in itself, not here attempted. Similarly to study the evolution of costume is another great work, of which but the nearest sketch of a skeleton is given here.
As a natural phenomenon, subject to natural laws of development under all our arbitrary modifications, it is interesting to note the few and simple seeds from which have grown the mighty efflorescence of our coverings.
For warmth the shivering savage wraps the skin of his victim around him. To keep it on he cuts a hole for his head. To hold it close he ties a thong around it.
Here is the origin of the first Garment, the tunic, or shirt, still in constant use.
As ingenuity increased the loose folds were sewed together and the surplus cut out. When cloth was woven in long strips the simpler straight-down shape naturally developed.
With or without sleeves, loose or fitted, long or short, this is the parent of most of the clothing of humanity.
It may be abbreviated to the scantest undershirt, or trail for yards on the floor as a voluminous robe—its ancestry is one.
The skirt is but the lower half cut loose from the upper; the “petticoat." as the name implies, once but a smaller undergarment otherwise similar to the outer coat; jacket and jerkin have but the distinction of being open in front and varying in length; every garment that goes over the head, or is put on arms first, is descended from the primitive tunic.
From the lower extremities come the rest of our garments.
First the sandal for protection, the moccasin for warmth, the upward elongating “leggings," which appear at length as trousers; every variety of shoe and stocking, boot and garter, foot and leg-wear of all sorts, grew from those small beginnings.
Things to be dropped from above and hang down; things to be lifted from below and fastened up; these are the two main lines of evolution in garments.
This much is easy to hold in mind, and also the main influences affecting the development, such as climate, or methods of industry.
The trousered races seemed to begin in colder countries; bare legs are not comfortable in snow. Yet trousers linger, turned to muslin, when northern races invade and remain in more southern lands.
When studying in more detail certain articles of dress, or tendencies, the evolutionary process comes in as reference, but it is not the principal part of the subject as here considered.
This study treats in the main of the relation between dress and women; in different races, in different classes, in different periods, and particularly in regard to the present status of modern women, and the hastening changes in that status now so evident.
Chapter I.
Primary Motives in Clothing
The motives which underlie the wide variations of human costume are reducible to a few main lines of causation.
We may define these five, not as absolutely exclusive, but as roughly accounting for the majority of phenomena in clothing:
- Protection
- Warmth
- Decoration
- Modesty
- Symbolism
These may at times overlap, but there is a clear distinction, even between the first two. The five are arranged in their order of ap pearance.
The very first article put on and worn by human kind, for long the only one, is that so feelingly described by Kipling in “Gunga Din."!
"The garment that 'e wore
Was nothin' much before,
And a little less than 'arf o' that be'ind"—
namely the breechclout. This is worn purely for protective purposes, not for warmth or decoration, and long before modesty was thought of.
So the sandal and shoe originated from the same need—to protect the foot from injury—and so the hat, in its remote beginnings, was really intended to protect the head.
Among women the coverings for head and feet had this same origin, little as one would think so now; and as a purely protective appliance some form of stay or breast girdle early proved its usefulness.
This mechanical influence in dress may be traced all up the line of growth, often obscured and sometimes contradicted by the other modifying forces, but always discoverable.
The leather-patched riding-breeches, the driver's gloves, the fisherman's hip-boots, the farmer's wide-brimmed straw hat, the rubber overshoes, the motor-veil or goggles—these are evolved for protective purposes.
Closely allied to this motive is that of warmth; garments of wool and fur being devised as a “protection” against cold. But the distinction is seen in those examples used in hot countries and existing long before man had succeeded in facing northern climates.
The need of warmth, as a modifying influence in clothing, is one of the greatest. It might be hastily called the greatest if we were not familiar with developments of costume in the southern countries; or if we failed to understand the influence of the last three motives—decoration, modesty, symbolism.
The direct use of dressed hides with the fur on is still the mainstay of arctic or antarctic peoples. The Russian mujik's sheepskin, or the shaggy “chaps" of the cowboy, meet the same need in the same way as the Eskimo “paki"—they retain bodily heat.
Mackinaw coat, Jaeger underwear; flannel peticoat (a vanished rudiment with many women today)—there is a vast array of clothing based on this single necessity of keeping warm.
In temperate climates we “moult" our flannels in the Spring, and put on thicker coats in the Fall just as the animals do—though with more trouble and expense.
In these first two, and in part of the next—Decoration, we do by manufacture what other creatures do by growth. Beyond these our human coverings show new forces at work.
The animal develops callosities, as of the camel's knees; cushions of thick hair or horny pads for the feet; water-proofing for feathers, and other protective appliances; and for warmth he does just what we do—puts on a covering—grows it, to be sure, but grows it for that purpose.
In decoration he sets us a splendid example. “He" is used here not only in our usual incorrect androcentric sense, as representing the race, but most correctly as representing that part of the race essentially given to decoration.
The earliest development in decoration is unquestionably along sex lines, and is peculiarly masculine.
Among some insects such as butterflies, whose brief winged career is for the mating period, this decorative effect appears in both sexes, though even here the male leads for the most part; but speaking generally of animal life, the “decorative appendages" appear exclusively upon the male.
We are quite familiar with this fact as instanced by birds. It is the cock of all sorts, from the combed and wattled barnyard rooster to the bird of paradise, ostrich, turkey-cock or peacock; it is always the male who struts and spreads his impressive tail feathers, raises his crest and flaps his showy wings.
Decoration in human clothing follows two distinct lines; the earlier one of displav for motives of sex-attraction, and the later one of that higher beauty sense in us, which delights in color, in form, in design, for an aesthetic pleasure, quite disconnected from the first.
A child's delight in new shoes, or the preference of one of us for a given color, or for a special fabric, is not based on sex-attraction. A broad and discriminating study might be made here, with some history of costume as a base, taking up garment after garment, period after period, and showing, in the decorative quality of a given article of dress just how much is due to the sex-impulse and how much to a later, purely human aesthetic sense.
Where we find certain fabrics, shapes or colors used mainly in the mating season—youth, and preferred neither in childhood or in age; especially where such choices are made by men, or by women intending to attract men, such decorative effects may be attributed to the sex impulse; but where choices are made on grounds of personal taste lasting through life, or changing with our growth to higher perceptions, we may trace them to the beauty sense of humanity.
Take the primitive and intensely personal decoration of tattooing, carried to a high point of intricacy and precision in certain tribes. There may be special patterns and distinctions as between men and women, but both sexes admire that delicate tracery of design as we admire lace or embroidery, or as we admire similar ornamentation on pottery, tools or furniture.
The primal laws of design and our pleasure in them reach deeper and higher than sex. From simple repetition and alternation, on through symmetry, radiation, and the rest, we respond to regularity, to balance, to the lifting and soothing effect of line, form, color, having no connection whatever with sex or sex-attraction.
For the male bird to manifest lovely plumes, for the male baboon to manifest unlovely callosities, for the young man to burst forth in glowing neckties, for the young woman to prink and preen for his allurement—all this is sex-decoration, but the beadwork put on her baby's wrappings by the patient squaw, or on her close-woven basketry, is decoration, to be sure, but not of sex.
We shall see later how these two distinct influences contradict one another often in our human dress, and especially in the dress of women.
Modesty, as the word is commonly understood, is a distinctly human invention.
There is the modesty which is alied to humility, as of youth, of inexperience, of comparative knowledge (I was about to say “of comparative ignorance," but ignorance is not modest; real knowledge is), but this is not what we mean in our common use of the word.
We mean by modesty a form of sex-consciousness, especially peculiar to woman. For a maiden to blush and cast down her eyes when a man approaches her is an instance of this “modesty." It shows that she knows he is a male and she is a female, and her manner calls attention to the fact. If she met him clear-eyed and indifferent, as if she was a boy, or he was a woman, this serene indifference is not at all “modest."
So “modesty" in dress, as applied to that of women, consists in giving the most conspicuous prominence of femininity.
The mere insistence on a totally different costume for men and women is based on this idea—that we should never forget sex.
A most variable thing is this modesty. It is one of the innumerable proofs of our peculiar psychic power to attach emotions to objects without the faintest shadow of real connection.
We showed this power in earliest savagery in our rich profusion of signs and omens. Fear, hope, anger, discouragement, were arbitrarily attached to bird, beast or falling leaf—to wind, cloud or water—anything would do. Like those cumbrous “memory systems" where you learn to remember a thing by first remembering another thing, we filled our mental world with arbitrary associations. This was “sacred," "holy"; this was “tabu," and this, “anathema."
So in regard to the human body, its functions and its clothing, we have obscured the simple truths of nature by a thousand extravagant notions of our own.
The clothing of men is most modified by physical conditions
The clothing of women is most modified by psychic conditions. As they were restricted to a very limited field of activity, and as their personal comfort was of no importance to anyone, it was possible to maintain in their dress the influence of primitive conditions long outgrown by men.
And as, while men have varied widely in the manifold relations of our later economic and political growth, women have remained for the most part all in one relation—that of sex; we see at once why the dress of men has developed along lines of practical effciency and general human distinction, while the dress of women is still most modified by the various phases of sex-distinction.
A man may run in our streets, or row, visibly, on our rivers, in a costume—a lack of costume—which for women would be called grossly immodest. He may bathe, publicly, and in company with women, so nearly naked as to shock even himself, sometimes; while the women beside him are covered far more fully than in evening dress.
Why it should be “modest" for a woman to exhibit neck, arms and shoulders, back and bosom, and immodest to go bathing without stockings, no one so much as attempts to explain.
We have attached sentiments of modesty to certain parts of the human frame and not to others—that is all.
The parts vary. There are African damsels, I have read, who will snatch off the last garment to hide their faces withal. The Breton peasant woman must cover her hair, to show it is an indecency.
We need not look for a reason where there never was one. These distinctions sprang from emotion or mere caprice, and vary with them.
But whatever our notions of modesty in dress may be, we apply them to women for the most part and not to men.
The next great governing influence in dress is Symbolism.
We do not commonly realize how strong is this influence in modifying our attire.
Even in the more directly practical garments of men, the symbolic element cries loudly, though unnoticed.
See, in instance, that badge of dignity, the “top hat." Since the days of the Pharaohs, and earlier, men have sought to express a towering sense of personal dignity by tall head-gear. The bishop's mitre, the lofty triple crown of the Pope, the high black head-gear of ancient wise-acres—these and more form instances of this quite natural effort to loom large in the eyes of lower folk.
No rounded head-fitting cap, no broad-brimmed shelter, gives that air of majesty, the truly noble head-cover must stand high.
In simple early times rude warriors wore horns on their heads, and other fear-inspiring decorations. In old Japan fearsome masks were supposed to awe the enemy. As this direct attempt was outgrown the subtler symbolic forms appeared, and crested helms bristled above the fierce-eyed fighters, just as the stiffened hairs of fighting beasts rise above their red visages.
The whole field of military uniforms shows us more symbolism than use. Only now are we beginning to wear the plain, inconspicuous khaki, or dull grey, since concealment has been expensively proved to be more profitable than ostentation. Our soldiers now are clothed in a “protective mimicry" worthy of nature's best efforts.
One modern necessity of gentlemen's dress which rests on symbolism alone is starch. The workman, warm, perspiring, delving in dirt, eschews starch. His toiling wife has labor enough to make his shirts clean, let alone “doing them up."
But he of wealth and leisure, or one whose occupation allows him to imitate the aspect of wealth and leisure, shines in starch.
Starch is not beautiful. To clothe a human figure, or any part of it, in a stiff glittering white substance, is in direct contradiction to the lines and action of the body. One might as well hang a dinnerplate across his chest, as the glaring frontlet so beloved of the masculine heart.
Starch is not comfortable, not even when the supporting integument is smooth and whole, and when worn to a raw edge, then starch becomes an instrument of moderate torture.
Starch is not cleanness. Soap, warm water, rubbing, boiling, rinsing—these remove the dirt from our clothing and leave it clean, as the sunlight bleaches it. To smooth the wrinkled surface with a hot iron makes undergarments feel better and any garment look better. But to take a cleaned article and soak it in paste, afterwards polishing it as we do our shoes, does not add to its cleanness.
Besides, starch is worn in a conspicuous exterior position, for show. No gentleman gladdens his soul by starched underwear. And those most anxious to look clean, that is, to present unbroken glittering starch to view, change the outer shirt oftener than the under shirt—which needs it most.
In Veblen's illuminating book, The Theory of the Leisure Class, he shows how much of what is done by the rich is done merely to exhibit their riches—in pure symbolism. Either in “conspicuous leisure" or "conspicuous waste," they seek to blazon forth the fact that they do not have to work, and that they are abundantly able to pay.
The Chinese Mandarin's prolonged finger-nails—growing to such a length that he must needs wear the slender “nail-case" to protect them, are pure symbolism. No man who did anything with his hands could possibly have such nails. They furnish visible proof of the complete incapacity of such hands.
We are not so extreme in our contempt for hand labor, but the display of pink and pointed nails is found among those who neither sew, wash dishes nor tend the baby.
So our starched linen, while not extreme enough to prevent all action, finds its main value in proving that the wearer is not “a working man"—at least not a hand-worker—and that he is able to pay for the useless labor of stiffening and polishing his linen.
The element of symbolism is interwoven with even such a practical garment as the trousers. The small boy's mad desire to get into his first trousers is not based on added comfort or freedom, but on the proud exhibition of the fact that he is a boy.
Some mothers, meekly accepting the ignominy attached to their sex and therefore to their garments, dress a little boy in petticoats—for a punishment.
Yet in countries where women wear trousers and men skirts, the same sentiments would doubtless be aroused by the exactly opposite garments. These feelings are purely associate, and are attached, detached and re-attached with no real reason.
The deeper symbolism of form, of fold and line, is amusingly shown when men, in high positions of impressive majesty, still wear robe and gown, with the same pride that they wear trousers. The high Ecclesiastic, the eminent Judge, the College Dignitary, the King—these add to their dignity by full flowing lines, using a natural true association directly counter to the current arbitrary one.
Every kind of livery and uniform is based on symbolism, save inasmuch as it directly is modified to use. That is why American-born persons, even if they must be servants, dislike what they call “the badge of servitude," a livery.
A cook's cap, to keep the food from touching his hair—or his hair from touching the food, is a reasonable article. He doesn't wear it merely to announce that he is a cook—unless in a play. But the splash of white on the head of a “correct maid" is not a cap at all—it is only a symbol, as in the scant film of frilled muslin which passes for an apron.
Time was when dress was so heartily accepted as a form of symbolism that sumptuary laws were passed, dictating what kind of fabrics, furs and decorations should be worn by different classes.
We have nothing left of sumptuary laws except the basic requirement that people shall be clothed—that for reasons of modesty only.
But without law, old custom, mere habit, the long persistence of tradition, and our well-less, brainless tendency to imitate one another, keeps up the symbolic motive in our modern dress.
(To be continued)