Call me Caitie

Shoe studies by Julia Zhuravleva

Azzi & Osta | Spring/Summer 2020

Mens Fashion  - www.GoGetGlam.com

…. *scribbles furiously on notepad*

Tips

For the guys, butch women and non binary people all there. I’m a woman, but I’m reblogging this for anyone who finds this useful. ❤️

for all my guys out there…!

men look so good in suits 😊

Wish I could pin this

it’s hilarious to me when people call historical fashions that men hated oppressive

like in BuzzFeed’s Women Wear Hoop Skirts For A Day While Being Exaggeratedly Bad At Doing Everything In Them video, one woman comments that she’s being “oppressed by the patriarchy.” if you’ve read anything Victorian man ever said about hoop skirts, you know that’s pretty much the exact opposite of the truth

thing is, hoop skirts evolved as liberating garment for women. before them, to achieve roughly conical skirt fullness, they had to wear many layers of petticoats (some stiffened with horsehair braid or other kinds of cord). the cage crinoline made their outfits instantly lighter and easier to move in

it also enabled skirts to get waaaaay bigger. and, as you see in the late 1860s, 1870s, and mid-late 1880s, to take on even less natural shapes. we jokingly call bustles fake butts, but trust me- nobody saw them that way. it was just skirts doing weird, exciting Skirt Things that women had tons of fun with

men, obviously, loathed the whole affair

(1864)

(1850s. gods, if only crinolines were huge enough to keep men from getting too close)

(no date given, but also, this is 100% impossible)

(also undated, but the ruffles make me think 1850s)

it was also something that women of all social classes- maids and society ladies, enslaved women and free women of color -all wore at one point or another. interesting bit of unexpected equalization there

and when bustles came in, guess what? men hated those, too

(1880s)

(probably also 1880s? the ladies are being compared to beetles and snails. in case that was unclear)

(1870s, I think? the bustle itself looks early 1870s but the tight fit of the actual gown looks later)

hoops and bustles weren’t tools of the patriarchy. they were items 1 and 2 on the 19th century’s “Fashion Trends Women Love That Men Hate” lists, with bonus built-in personal space enforcement

Gonna add something as someone who’s worn a lot of period stuff for theatre:

The reason you suck at doing things in a hoop skirt is because you’re not used to doing things in a hoop skirt.

The first time I got in a Colonial-aristocracy dress I felt like I couldn’t breathe. The construction didn’t actually allow me to raise my arms all the way over my head (yes, that’s period-accurate). We had one dresser to every two women, because the only things we could put on ourselves were our tights, shifts, and first crinoline. Someone else had to lace our corsets, slip on our extra crinolines, hold our arms to balance us while a second person actually put the dresses on us like we were dolls, and do up our shoes–which we could not put on ourselves because we needed to be able to balance when the dress went on. My entire costume was almost 40 pounds (I should mention here that many of the dresses were made entirely of upholstery fabric), and I actually did not have the biggest dress in the show.

We wore our costumes for two weeks of rehearsal, which is quite a lot in university theatre. The first night we were all in dress, most of the ladies went propless because we were holding up our skirts to try and get a feel for both balance and where our feet were in comparison to where it looked like they should be. I actually fell off the stage.

By opening night? We were square-dancing in the damn things. We had one scene where our leading man needed to whistle, but he didn’t know how and I was the only one in the cast loud enough to be heard whistling from under the stage, so I was also commando-crawling underneath him at full speed trying to match his stage position–while still in the dress. And petticoats. And corset. Someone took my shoes off for that scene so I could use my toes to propel myself and I laid on a sheet so I wouldn’t get the dress dirty, but that was it–I was going full Solid Snake in a space about 18″ high, wearing a dress that covered me from collarbones to floor and weighed as much as a five-year-old child. And it worked beautifully.

These women knew how to wear these clothes. It’s a lot less “restrictive” when it’s old hat.

I have worn hoop skirts a lot, especially in summer. I still wear hoop skirts if I’m going to be at an event where I will probably be under stage lights. (For example, Vampire Ball.)

I can ride public transportation while wearing them. I can take a taxi while wearing them. I can go on rides at Disneyland while wearing them. Because I’ve practiced wearing them and twisting the rigid-but-flexible skirt bones so I can sit on them and not buffet other people with my skirts. 

Hoop skirts are awesome.

Hoop skirts are a fucking godsend in summer. Nothing’s touching your legs. It’s like wearing a big box underneath whic you’re naked, temperature wise.

Did this with a bustle rather than a hoop skirt, but was quite comfortable running around in said bustle, shirt, full corset, gloves, and overskirt in 117 degrees for a con. It was far more comfortable than the more modern dress i wore the next day.

Writer Note: this is fascinating research information not restricted to just the Victorian era under discussion. Though it’s stating the obvious, the obvious often needs to be stated: when seemingly-awkward garments like crinolines and hoop-skirts (or ruffs, or houppelandes, or etc.) were everyday wear, the wearers knew how to move in them because of practice.

For instance, how not to clear a table with a gesture while wearing sleeves like these…

Fashionable footwear has been weird for centuries. Think of chopines, pattens, poulaines, non-fetishy-y high heels, or platform boots worn with bell-bottom jeans so long and wide that without the platforms they trailed along the ground. The 1970s is called “the decade that style forgot” for good reason.

Elton John’s stage platforms aren’t as exaggerated as you think…

And then there are the doeskin breeches claimed in some fiction as fitting so tightly the inside had to be soaped to get them on, going commando was compulsory, and the wearer couldn’t sit down.

You’d certainly believe it from portraits like this one, “Hunter in a Landscape with his Dogs”, said to be General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas the novelist, with legs apparently clad in just a thick coat of paint. (X-skin breeches would seem more suitable for hunting, but these may represent cotton “inexpressibles” which really did fit like that.)

Like the supposed problems with crinolines etc., not true. Research and reconstruction has shown that doe / buck / sheepskin breeches have natural stretch and recovery; a common comparison is to old, well-worn jeans. Of course the artist also wanted to show that his subject “had a good leg” (look up “artificial calves” and be amused) and wasn’t letting realism get in the way of doing so.

This is a bit more like it.

Nowadays “deportment” seems to have an aura of outdated snobbishness - upper-class debutantes learning to curtsey, or walk with books balanced on their heads - but ”porte” in French means “carry” and the old meaning of deportment was “how to carry yourself”; how to move properly, without inconveniencing yourself or others.

Various historical-costume books point out that “moving properly” in some periods - memory suggests the court of Louis XIV at Versailles was one - meant a sequence of artificial, prescribed gestures, partly enforced by the clothing and partly by court protocol. IIRC one description was of “movements as precisely delineated as the steps of a formal dance”, and getting them wrong resulted in social mockery.

Elizabethan men were taught, as part of their deportment, how to move while wearing the long rapiers of the period; that hand-on-hilt stance in portraits isn’t drama, it’s control.

Once familiar with the length of the sword, they know exactly what shifting the hilt one way or another will do to the rest of it - and the people, furniture and crockery behind them - without needing to look. IIRC the technique is still taught to actors today.

Crinolines, bustles, bloomers, breeches, inexpressibles and all the rest were clothing; after reading about peculiar but oh-so-stylish ways of standing and moving like the “Grecian bend” and “Alexandra limp”, the Kink’s satirical 1960s hit “Dedicated Follower of Fashion” isn’t just a song any more…

:->

Even better than the version I posted before.

I would note that I have a RenFaire style corset and I have run significant distances, sword fought, and danced in various styles without any discomfort. The only thing I can’t do is bend over. It actually forces you to pick things off the ground safely. It’s not wasp waist tight, partly because I have abs and don’t compress like that (which might be part of the wasp waist thing. Being able to do that said you didn’t have abs…and thus didn’t work for a living, which has often been a thing with women’s fashion).

This is all really interesting and new to me! And I have thought of deportment as a snobbish thing all my life, but now I’m wondering if early lessons in it would have been a good thing for clumsy and oblivious folks like me. 

Somebody should…I wonder if I can convince some cosplayers to do a panel about this. Both for authenticity and because some of them need to learn what happens to their sword when they turn around quickly…

I’m amazed how few people understand what wearing a real corset is like. It isn’t uncomfortable in the slightest to me, and it’s actually quite fun. People think if you wear a corset you’re going to crush your bones or something. It just simply isn’t true.

If you’re intentionally waist training (it’s a kink with some people) then it will have an effect. Otherwise, a correctly-fitted corset provides more support than a typical bra, it also supports your back - I do wonder if women had fewer back problems in times when they were common, and I do know women who wear them instead of back braces…

I found this website about sewing your own plus-sized clothes so if any of you are interested in sewing your own clothes but can only find patterns for smaller people, here you go.

Naoko Takeuchi (Sailor Moon) inspiration/references for her art  ♡ ♡ 🌙 🌙

Star Cape / Northern Sky Dress

Fairytas on Etsy

WTC | Pre-Fall 2019

There is something so beautiful about woman dressed in historical clothing that’s usually only worn by men.

Like, a man wearing historical fashion: eh, ok I guess, I mean it’s still cool cause- history! but still just ok…

But a woman: More beautiful than Aphrodite, a queen! I aspire to look like this. Woman, honestly, can pull of historical men’s historical fashion so well, and they all look like queens and badasses.

For example: Normal historical dressed, ok I guess, I mean we still stan Horatio,

but-

This? :

Yes yes yes!!! A thousand times cooler and djfksksosjdjj!!! Amazing!

@captainwaltons​ you should take a look at eva noblezada in hadestown, methinks

look at this. is this not the raw height of sensuality

Great addition!!! And yess I absolutely love both Hadestown and Eurydice

@sapphicsamwise

Not gonna lie, i would wear like half of these outfits

i wore my mashup of Trouble With Tribbles green fatshirt Kirk and Dior’s new look Bar Suit to the Dior exhibit at the dallas museum of art❤️

IG | Ko-fi | DA 

I love this so much it hurts.

And the hat!! <3

@nonasuch relevant to your interests

That’s some Guinan level haberdashery right there

To all of my Good Place followers, a lot of Tahani’s wardrobe comes from/resembles Chi Chi London which is actually super affordable and has stock for petite, tall and curvy women in addition to regular size dresses! The dress she wears in the most recent episode is one of the more expensive ones:

You can get similar looking dresses for way less than that!

Shop away all you who dream of having her clothes!

help what were those little graspy hands that held stuff people used to wear on their skirts called

Chatelaines!!!!!

concept: instead of like. a bunch of belt pockets or wtf ever give your character a tricked out steampunk version of THESE PUPPIES

Men not giving you pockets is the mother of invention

CHATELAINS ARE MY SHIT

Following up to this post, here’s a fantastic look at Victorian “fancy dress balls”–they were all the rage at the time, but really picked up in the later half of the century where the focus was more on self-expression than hiding oneself, as was the case at 18th-century masquerades (Phantom hearkens back to this earlier tradition, but the idea of a masquerade hiding one’s true identity also works perfectly for its theatrical setting).

Here are some wackier costumes from fancy dress balls. I’m in love with this one:

And look! A bee!

Here’s a fashion plate with some costume ideas from across the centuries (and of course, we wouldn’t be in the Victorian era if there weren’t a bit of tone-deaf cultural appropriation with the Native American costume.):

It was actually common for women to wear shorter skirts at these balls so they could show off their fabulous boots (as you see above, and as is the case with Christine’s stage version of the Star Princess dress):

Depending on your host, masks of all kinds were welcome, so you were free to be as unsettlingly disturbing as you wanted while you lounged by the punch bowl and made rabbit eyes at the eligible young heiress whose hand in marriage comes with fifty thousand pounds a year and a lifetime of resentment because women’s rights didn’t exist yet:

Suppose you can’t make it to the most fashionable balls London or Paris this season. If it’s 1883 and you are Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt and happen to have $6 million of disposable income at your fingertips, why not throw your own fancy dress ball for New York City’s elite (and spend millions on champagne alone)? And why don’t you one-up every single one of your guests by dressing as that most wondrous of new inventions, Edison’s electric light? I defy the Rockefellers to steal your spotlight when the spotlight in question could very easily electrocute them.

Like flowers? Of course you do. Like spring? Oh, my God, do you ever. Like pretending you’re but a mere shepherdess, giggling and flouncing away from the advances of the blacksmith’s apprentice? GOOD LORD, YES. Like  the 18th century? HELL YES, OH MAN, GIMME THAT ROCOCO SPRING FLOWER EXPLOSION:

BUT WAIT! You’re not gonna let that Rococo Spring Flower Explosion HARLOT flounce away with your suitor, are you? HELL NO, YOU ARE NOT. Which is why you are prepared to send her running dressed as a GORGEOUS FREAKING BUTTERFLY:

But where would a butterfly be without a lovely flower upon which to perch? Enter your secret lesbian lover, the Rose:

Or, if you’re uncomfortable with NOT being the center of attention every waking moment, you could just pull the equivalent of one-upping the bride at a wedding by wearing white and come dressed as the DAMN SUN:

But maybe you’re more of the goth persuasion. Might I suggest a tasteful sorceress?

A dainty Batman ensemble to match your wife’s delicate moth angel gown?

Vampire mistress of the night, perhaps?

Actually, bat motifs were an extremely popular costume option, not just in the 19th century, but also at 18th century balls:

But if it’s 1880 and you want to carry on grandma’s bat tradition, this might be a more modern take on a pocket-sized blood-sucking demon:

Or this:

You are so thrilled to attend the costume ball like the goth nightmare you are, you can hardly contain your enthusiasm:

Here is a tastefully acceptable take on Satan. Might I sample your punch, Mrs. Higgenbottom, before I make away with your soul?

“Oh, Ella!”

“Yes, Constance?”

“Oh, I do so love your seagull gown.”

“Oh, why thank you, my dear friend!”

“But I’ve not the slightest idea what I shall wear to the ball!”

“Why, Constance, it is a simple matter of identifying something near and dear to your heart and then adapting it into a suitable costume. I, for example, find solace in the sea, particularly in the birds of the sea, and most particularly when they nose-dive into and defecate upon the boat, shrieking like banshees in heat. Hence, the seagulls adorning my gown. What do you like the very most, Constance?” “MOTHER-EFFING LOBSTERS.”

Or, maybe you’re just a shameless ho and don’t give a brass farthing about showing your ankles, your calves, your thighs, or your hoo-ha at the Embassy Ball, in which case, blaze it:

Sign me up for one lobster dress please

@artekka

♫ Freddie Mercury Outfit Appreciation ♪

Follow @laylamars for similar posts

it’s sort of funny that the current cultural idea of the flapper dates not from the 1920s, but the 1950s when costume designers took the radical, gender-fluid, sexual, sexually liberated ideas and fashions of the 20s and made them sexy.  as in sexual objectifying.

because 1950s and fuck female agency.

If you would like, I would love to hear more about this. What, exactly, happened, and what was the true 1920s aesthetic, untainted by 50s views?

hokay.  so it’s the 1950s and it’s the heyday of the studio system and writers and movie makers (and audiences) want rom coms and frolicking films and lighthearted fun, but there’s just one problem.

WWII

but that was the 1940s! you say

you’re right.

but in order to set a film in the 1950s, writers and film makers have to establish what the male lead character did during the war or risk it coming across like he didn’t, well, serve.  can’t have a shirker or a coward and rejected for medical reasons really doesn’t fly in the 1950s.  and there’s only so many times you can write about soldiers and sailors and airmen and the occasional spy before it starts to become stale.  and it doesn’t terribly fit with the fluffy writing because, well, war and death and tens of millions of people dead.  contemporary films more fall in the line of what we now call film noir.  men and women who have been damaged by war, but that’s another topic.

sooooo, you do period pieces.  no one wants to do the 1930s because that’s the great depression.  so 1920s.  frolicking and gay and fabulous!

(Great War, what Great War?)

but the thing is, the 1920s, especially in Paris and Berlin, were a massively transgressive, reversal, and experimental time period in art, fashion, society, and all over.  but only a little bit in america because honestly we were barely touched by wwi so it’s not like we’re partying to forget an entire generation of young men killed off and entire towns wiped off the face of the earth using weapons the likes of which had never been seen before.  the us as a whole mostly heard about sarin gas, not see it poison entire landscapes and men and animals dropped to the ground and die in truly horrific ways.

the europe that emerged from wwi was massively shell shocked, angry, and living in a surreal dream of everything being upwards and backwards and live now because tomorrow you may die and it’s all nonsense anyway.  it’s a world in which surrealism and dadaism and german expressionism make sense because fuck it all.

you get repudiation of the old, experimentation, deliberate reversals, transgressive behavior, and if there’s an envelope to push, you tear it open.  France calls the 1920s “Années folles”, the crazy years.

the things we’re doing now, with fluidity and experimentation and exploration of gender and sexuality and presentation?  the 1920s did that already.  it’s drag and androgyny and blatant homosexuality.  it’s extramarital affairs and sex before or without marriage, it’s rejection of marriage as an idea and an institution, it’s playing with gender and gender roles and working women and unrestrained art and

it’s everything the 1950s hated.  or more accurately: absolutely terrified of.  

the flappers of the 1920s went to college and cut their hair to repudiate a century of a woman’s hair being her crowning glory.  they wore obvious makeup and makeup in ways that are not terribly appealing now and weren’t terribly appealing then, but they signaled you were part of the tribe.

they were women who wanted independence and personal fulfillment.

“She was conscious that the things she did were the things she had always wanted to do.“

so the 1950s didn’t want that.  they wanted films with dancing and chorus lines and pretty girls to be looked at.  they wanted spaghetti straps and fringed dresses that moved pretty when the chorus girls danced.

1920s fringe doesn’t.  1920s fringe is made of silk, incredibly dense, incredibly heavy, sewn on individually by hand, and rather delicate.  the all-over fringe dress didn’t exist until the 1950s invention of nylon and continuous loops that could be sewn on in costume workshops by the mile on machines.

(this is before “vintage” exists.  to the 1950s, the 1920s (or earlier) wasn’t vintage, it was old-fashioned.  démodé.  out of style.  last last last last last season.)

1950s 1920s-set movies have clothes that are the 1950s take on it.  the dresses have a dropped waist, but they’re form-fitting, figure-revealing.  the actresses are pretty clearly wearing bras and 50s girdles under them a lot of the time.  they’re not

the woman on the far left is basically wearing a man’s suit with a skirt.  la garçonne.  some women went full-out and wore pants.  you could be arrested for that.  they were.  still wore pants.  and pyjama ensembles in silk and loud prints.

or class photo of ‘25

or even

not that 1920s dresses could be sexy or sexual; they often were.  i’ve seen 20s dresses that were basically sideless and held together with straps.  but it’s sort of like how the mini skirt went from being a thing of sexual liberation to an item of sexual objectification.

it’s ownership and it’s agency and it’s hard to put a name or finger on it, but you just know.  sex goddess versus sex icon.

My Grandmother used to have to bind her chest to get the silhouette fashionably androgynous.