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Dressed: The History of FashionHow to Read a Dress, an Interview with Lydia Edwards (Dressed Classic)
Dressed: The History of FashionHow to Read a Dress, an Interview with Lydia Edwards (Dressed Classic)
How to Read a Dress, an Interview with Lydia Edwards (Dressed Classic)
Update: 2024-12-20
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We revisit our 2021 interview with fashion historian and author Lydia Edwards who joined us to discuss her acclaimed book How to Read a Dress.
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Transcript
00:00:00
Please enjoy this episode from the Dressed Archive.
00:00:02
We will be back with Season 8 and on new dress content in February 2025.
00:00:07
There are 7 billion people in the world. We all have one thing in common.
00:00:18
Every day, we all get dressed.
00:00:20
Welcome to Dressed, the history of fashion.
00:00:23
A podcast where we explore the who, what, when, of why we wear.
00:00:27
We are fashion historians and your hosts, April Callahan.
00:00:30
And Cassidy Zachary.
00:00:31
April, I'm just curious off the top of your head, if you had to pick one favorite dress,
00:00:37
yes, one favorite dress in history of all the fashion, what comes to mind?
00:00:43
And it can be an extent dress or one you've seen in a magazine or a portrait or a film.
00:00:47
Cass, why are you so mean to me?
00:00:49
That's incredibly hard.
00:00:52
But I will say this and I have shown you this dress on multiple occasions.
00:00:57
If I had to pick just one, it's this Lucille dress, I think from 1916.
00:01:03
And it's very body conscious, it's draped on the bias.
00:01:07
And it's an evening gown, so it has a train in the back.
00:01:09
It's very slinky and sexy.
00:01:11
But one arm is fitted and the other one is this draped cape arm.
00:01:15
And it's just simply fabulous.
00:01:17
We have the original sketch for that dress and our collection at FIT Special Collections.
00:01:22
And then also that we have fashion photographs of it in Les Modes.
00:01:25
So that would be my top pick.
00:01:27
What about you?
00:01:28
I know exactly what Josh you're talking about.
00:01:30
It's very ahead of its time as our many of Lucille's designs from the 1910s.
00:01:34
And no fashion historian should ever be made to choose just one favorite of anything.
00:01:39
So I'm going to skip that question.
00:01:42
I see how it is.
00:01:44
It's such a fun exercise in recognizing the power and significance of this very specific
00:01:50
typo garment to what we do both as historians and lovers of fashion.
00:01:55
Arguably the field of fashion history is overwhelmed by people's continued fascination
00:01:59
with the dress and its evolution over the centuries.
00:02:02
And it is the significance of the dress, which is at the heart of Lydia Edwards's wildly successful
00:02:09
2017 book How to Read Address, a guide to changing fashion from the 16th to the 20th century.
00:02:16
And this book was so successful that just four short years later after its release,
00:02:21
it's actually being published in a revised edition, which takes readers all the way into the 21st century.
00:02:26
Lister's may remember that Lydia was already a guest on the show last season.
00:02:30
She came on to discuss her book How to Read a Suit.
00:02:33
And we are so pleased to welcome her back to the show to now teach us how to read a dress.
00:02:37
Lydia, it is a pleasure to welcome you back to dress.
00:02:40
Lydia, welcome back.
00:02:42
It's so great to have you back with us on dress.
00:02:45
Thanks for having me. It's absolutely pleasure.
00:02:48
We are, of course, here to talk about your recently released book How to Read Address,
00:02:52
a guide to changing fashion from the 16th to the 21st century.
00:02:57
This is, of course, the new edition of your wildly successful 2017 book of the same name.
00:03:03
And I am so pleased because you're actually going to be giving us all some lessons on how to
00:03:08
read historic dresses today. But before you do, I want to hear about how you came up with this
00:03:13
fantastic concept to dedicate a book to, quote unquote, reading one very specific garment.
00:03:19
And what do you mean by reading?
00:03:21
It all came out of wanting to produce a guide that would help people understand
00:03:26
how and why fashion's changed. Because there are similar books that exist for painting and for
00:03:33
architecture, but there's nothing really for fashion. And when you go around even the most
00:03:38
beautifully arranged museum exhibit, there's often not space or time to really grasp why styles
00:03:45
developed how quickly, where they came from what happened socially, politically, culturally,
00:03:51
to bring those shifts about. Because obviously a museum, however big it is, doesn't have the space
00:03:55
to always display such minute changes. And so I wanted to produce something people could take
00:04:00
with them to a museum or they could use while they were watching a period drama or just anyone who's
00:04:05
got any kind of interest in why we dress the way we do and how those shifts came about.
00:04:10
Dress is really my main research interest. So I knew I wanted to start my publication career by
00:04:17
looking at dresses. And reading I think really involves analyzing a dress as an object from the top
00:04:24
down. The way you'd look at a painting, as similar as the way you'd analyze art. And being able to
00:04:29
recognize different elements, so different historical elements, different design elements, different
00:04:35
artistic elements. And I guess read is probably the best word to use for that kind of approach,
00:04:40
because you're scanning and exploring an object while drawing on any previous knowledge and
00:04:45
associations that you might have. Yeah. And as you said with, especially with the period dramas,
00:04:50
it's such an app topic today. Probably it still was in 2017, but I know a lot of our listeners are
00:04:56
reveling and shows like Outlander or Bridgerton, for instance. So it's such a fantastic resource for
00:05:02
those sorts of watching experiences. But as you said, also museum-going experiences. Oh, thank you.
00:05:08
Yeah. So the time range for the first edition was from the 16th century to the 20th century,
00:05:13
but this new edition actually extends into the 21st century. It ends with the year 2020.
00:05:18
How did you come up with the original timeframe for the first book? And why did you change it for
00:05:23
the second edition? And also, what other changes editions might readers expect from this new edition?
00:05:30
I think with the first one, I was thinking by 1970, the idea of women only having the dress as a kind
00:05:36
of daily primary clothing choice had really shifted. So I stuck to that as a sort of guide. Not
00:05:44
that I didn't think there was anything important in terms of dresses afterwards, but just as a place
00:05:47
to end the book and to exhaust when somewhere in the beginning. But because that shift had happened
00:05:53
by the 70s, it doesn't mean that, of course, since there haven't been any changes in perception in
00:05:58
the way that men and women approach gendered clothing. And since I look primarily at Western dress
00:06:04
in the book, I also wanted to think about the ways that globalization, since the 80s in particular,
00:06:09
has influenced what we'd see as Western dress and the ways that increased wardrobe options for
00:06:15
women have changed the way they consume and wear dresses. So given the breadth of all discussions we've
00:06:23
seen particularly in the last few years about gendered clothing, since the book was published,
00:06:27
I really wanted it also to explore that area. So those are the main key themes I've looked at.
00:06:34
I think the only area we did talk briefly about whether I should look at COVID and then I thought,
00:06:38
I think it's mainly in some ways too early to think about how that's impacted the dress
00:06:42
specifically. We know that it's had an impact on casual clothing and the way people present themselves
00:06:48
in a more kind of leisurely way. But yeah, we thought maybe leave that and perhaps maybe in future
00:06:54
additions that could come in somewhere. But basically, yeah, there are lots more images. There's close-ups
00:06:59
of particular dresses. There's full-page spreads at the end of each chapter because I know that
00:07:04
given the way the pages have to be laid out, there's a lot of information and sometimes
00:07:09
some of the images in the first edition were small and I wanted people to get chance to see them
00:07:13
in more detail. There are also more examples of working-class dress. It's an area I'm really
00:07:18
interested in and I feel is glossed over far too often because we have so few surviving examples.
00:07:24
And I think it's funny because a lot of fashion historians start from our history, as I did,
00:07:30
but many people, I think that I've spoken to, still seems sometimes a bit unsure about using images
00:07:36
or particular types of images to read from. But I think it's a very transdisciplinary field and
00:07:41
the ability to read from more than one source is really important. So I wanted to include more
00:07:46
examples of portraits and engravings and those types of things to show how we can understand dress
00:07:52
from those different perspectives. So I've also included several key dress types that either weren't
00:07:59
considered or that initially it was felt there wasn't room for so morning dress, Debbie Tant dress
00:08:05
riding habits, that type of thing. So there's a bit more breadth in there as well.
00:08:08
Yeah, and I just want to say congratulations on this new edition because I love the first book and
00:08:13
I absolutely love this new edition, especially the very last dress featured in the book, which is
00:08:19
something we will talk about later on in this podcast, but it was such a welcome surprise. I think I
00:08:24
I like yelped out loud. I was so pleased. We'll talk about that. Also one of my favorite dress,
00:08:31
fashion history moments in history. So it was so great to see you here. So a little teaser dress
00:08:36
listeners are just going to have to wait until later in this interview. But so we're going to start
00:08:41
learning how to read dresses. But before we get into specifics, are there any basics or fundamental
00:08:47
skills? Our listeners should know to start reading a dress to begin this learning process.
00:08:53
I think hopefully that's what the book will teach. So I'm hoping people won't need to go into it with
00:08:58
too much prior knowledge. But I would say that I really love the slow approach to seeing as promoted
00:09:04
by Ingrid Maida with a dress detective book. That's an idea that's always very sensible when analyzing
00:09:11
items addressed. Don't rush in with too many preconceived notions about the age of the garment,
00:09:16
the life of the wearer. Don't let the presentation of it sway you too much. As I said before,
00:09:21
it's a question of scanning it from top to bottom really slowly noting down any immediate aspects
00:09:27
that strike you as important to our unusual. And crucially, I think noting anything that the dress
00:09:32
reminds you of whether that's something in another collection, a film costume, or even a contemporary
00:09:37
piece of clothing. And I think this helps to narrow down the date and purpose of the item. And then,
00:09:43
of course, the hope is that people will go away and do a bit of research and find out more
00:09:47
in terms of what their own interests are. Absolutely. And then you can be that annoying partner when
00:09:53
you're watching a TV show or a film and saying, that's not historically accurate or that is historically
00:09:58
accurate. I'm not annoying partner. My husband's always out there. You can actually just tell what
00:10:03
my question like inevitably is always, where is her chemise? Where is it? Or, yeah, she's wearing
00:10:09
a chemise, but I digress. So let's get to it, shall we? The dresses in this book are divided
00:10:16
across 12 chapters. So beginning with chapter one, you cover the years 1550 to 1600,
00:10:22
a period that our listeners were probably recognises most famously being associated with the reign of
00:10:27
Queen Elizabeth, the first of England. You do teach us how to read a dress worn by the queen in this
00:10:32
section, but you also teach us how to read the dress of one of her contemporaries and lady
00:10:37
Pope with her children is the title of the painting that you analyzed dating to 1596. So what made
00:10:44
this portrait so exceptional? And what can we learn from it? Oh, I love this one on so many levels,
00:10:49
and it's one that I was aware of. I've been aware of for a long time, and it's one of those examples
00:10:54
as well. I can't understand why I didn't include it in the first one. It just got put to the side and
00:10:59
then forgotten about as happens sometimes, but I love it because it's really intriguing as a record
00:11:04
and a celebration of Anne and her marriage, but also of her fertility. And I think although pregnancy
00:11:11
was still something that was not always openly talked about or openly shown, there was still in
00:11:17
Europe at this time. Yeah, lots of interest in portraying pregnant women because childbirth was so
00:11:22
risky and because it was such a kind of aim of any married woman to have lots of children, it was
00:11:27
almost as also pride to have a portrait of your family in which it showed your wife being pregnant
00:11:32
because it showed your fertility of both partners and the continuation of the line. And I think it's
00:11:38
also really poignant because, as I said, the chance that she would die in childbirth was quite high,
00:11:43
so it's a last portrait as well potentially. And what I really love about it is it shows her
00:11:48
wearing a dress without the big wheel, far-than-gale that would usually create that fashionable silhouette.
00:11:54
So we have the skirt just hanging down in these two sections, which you never see in pictures of
00:12:00
that area. So it shows us what the skirt looks like without its supports underneath. And obviously,
00:12:05
this is done because she's pregnant and she couldn't have worn that, but it's just a really
00:12:09
interesting way of looking at the dress and allows us to deconstruct that dress in a way that we aren't
00:12:15
usually able to. Yeah, so hang's down in the manner that's completely unseen in other elite portraits,
00:12:21
but other respects, it's very fashionable in terms of the bodice, showing a similar width to men's
00:12:26
doublets and worn with an open rough. And although I'm not looking at children's portraits specifically,
00:12:32
or children's dresses in this book, I do also love the fact that we get a glimpse at gendered children's
00:12:38
clothing too. How, on first glance, it's very difficult to tell the boys and the girls apart. And then
00:12:43
when we look at her little daughter, Jane, we can see that she's wearing pretty much a replica of
00:12:48
her mum's dress. And that puts her out as the girls. And the boys are still in dresses, but they're
00:12:55
little aspects that point them out as being more masculine. But it's that kind of idea we have today
00:13:00
of children being so gendered, which I think is even stronger at the moment than it has been,
00:13:05
is something that is so new, really. And I'd love to do more about that at some point.
00:13:10
Yeah, and specifically dress listeners, she's talking about the fact that at first glance,
00:13:15
it appears that the two boys are wearing dresses because they are. And you teach everyone about
00:13:19
the breaching, coming of age ceremony when they would actually be breached and get their payets.
00:13:23
So, yeah, it's a super interesting practice that we're not really familiar with today.
00:13:28
Yeah, exactly. I love it. We're going to fast forward a little bit because, of course,
00:13:33
we can't cover everything. Dress listeners are just going to have to get their hands on this book.
00:13:36
So we're moving to chapter three, which covers the years 1710 to 1790. You feature a wonderful
00:13:42
extant garment from the collection of the Met, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. And it's a
00:13:48
1730s robe of a launt. Please tell us about this dress. This is another one of those dresses that I
00:13:54
can't believe I didn't include in the first edition. And I was kicking myself not long after it first
00:13:59
came out. And why didn't I put this in because it illustrates that really important transitional
00:14:05
style between the late 17th century mantra and the 18th century sac dress or the robe of alphonsei,
00:14:10
which we're so familiar with. And this now originated in the court of Louis XIV,
00:14:15
who favored really elaborate and restrictive dresses for women of his court. And this was his
00:14:22
their way of asserting a bit of their own preference, particularly, of course, after he died in
00:14:26
1715. And although it's really well documented, there's a lot of imagery showing the robe of
00:14:32
a launt. There are only a few surviving examples. And I love this one from the Met. I love the way
00:14:36
it's been mounted and displayed because it so beautifully shows that kind of unstructured silhouette
00:14:42
and free flowing pleats that would soon be so we stitched down and be much more constrained.
00:14:47
But I think even though we look at it and see it as being much more of a leisurely loose garment,
00:14:54
it was still worn over stays in a stomacher, showing how indispensable these items were.
00:14:59
And what I love about it from an analytical sort of reading point of view is the way we can
00:15:05
so clearly see how the froncés was going to develop. In the book, there's a 1720s to 30s example
00:15:13
of an early sac dress next to it. And this shows how those loose folds seem on the valant,
00:15:18
gradually became tapered to the body, showing off the shape of the torso and the separate cuff
00:15:24
on the sleeves became broader and more distinctly pleated to accommodate the curve of the elbow.
00:15:29
So I think those billowing pleats are the valant are perhaps most representative of the sac dress.
00:15:35
And we can see in this example how well they help it live up to its name of valant,
00:15:41
which means flying. And in just a few short years, they would become, as I said, so much narrower,
00:15:45
stitch down about three inches below the neckline. And this allowed them to follow the curve of the
00:15:51
back and be far more dictated by the developing fashionable silhouette, which was so familiar within
00:15:56
the 18th century. So I think the dress shows a kind of early example of that leisureed wear,
00:16:01
but it also shows an absolutely classic silhouette in the making. And then it's something we can,
00:16:06
if you have valant in an early 18th century robe on froncè, and then an early a mantra before,
00:16:12
you can literally see those changes at quite a relatively short period of time occurring. So
00:16:18
I think it's one that I'm really happy I was able to include this time. Yeah, and you just outlined
00:16:23
how it's displayed or how it's organized. The book's organized. Do you have a mantra in front of it?
00:16:28
Then you have the robe valant and then a robe on froncè. So it's clearly, you're clearly showing
00:16:32
readers the evolution of that garment in a really digestible way. So one of my favorite things about
00:16:39
the breath of your book is that you incorporate dresses. As you mentioned earlier, worn by all classes
00:16:45
of society. And this is despite the lack of extant working class garments in museum collections. We know,
00:16:52
of course, that women working class women wore these garments until these garments couldn't be worn
00:16:56
anymore. So it's really rare that they survive. And an excellent example of the way you analyze
00:17:02
working class garments is demonstrated by your reading of the clothing worn by the woman depicted in
00:17:07
the 1814 illustration, the cranberry girl. So what does this illustration teach us about the clothing
00:17:14
worn by working class women of this period? Yeah, this is again one that I hadn't seen this image
00:17:19
before. I started searching for agencies working class dress. And there's not a great deal that's
00:17:25
been written about it that most of the stuff I could find was actually about history of farming and
00:17:29
history of cranberry picking. But looking at the garments, I think what it really shows is that
00:17:35
although highly fashionable, high quality dresses were only worn by a tiny minority of people,
00:17:41
that didn't mean that certain recognizable elements were completely denied to poorer women,
00:17:47
and that they wouldn't have striven to look as fashionable as they could or at least as close
00:17:51
to the contemporary silhouette. It hopefully highlights what most people would have worn in many
00:17:57
respects, what she would have worn also for work. So that also demonstrates what most women would have
00:18:02
worn because most women would have been doing some kind of employment. But it also raises come
00:18:06
sort of unanswerable questions, which I think is part of the fun. So one of the things I point out
00:18:11
is that she's got this ankle length skirt on, which is obviously for practical reasons,
00:18:16
picking cranberries, doing sort of hard physical work. She wouldn't wear a floor length skirt,
00:18:20
but also at the time the image came out in around 1814, we start to see ankle length skirts
00:18:27
anyway in the popular fashion. So we wonder whether it's purely practical or whether there is an
00:18:35
element as well of her adapting her dress in terms of what other people were wearing and what was
00:18:40
fashionable. I would imagine it's possibly a bit of both. Someone of her background might
00:18:45
well have owned a best dress that she wore to Churchill, that she wore for special occasions,
00:18:49
and that might have shown some contemporary trends. And she would have had some idea of what was
00:18:54
in fashion in terms of what was in fashion plates. If she lived in a village, there would probably be
00:18:59
some kind of shock where she'd be able to get an idea of what was being worn. And there are also
00:19:04
accessories in the image that were worn by women of all classes. So we have course straw bonnets,
00:19:10
feed chew, neck achieves, fingerless mitts. And in terms of the basic structure, these would very
00:19:16
similar to what elite women would have worn, but obviously very different materials, very different
00:19:20
trimmings, which would really is what would show the wealth and status. So I think above all, it
00:19:26
demonstrates that universality of the empire line and the efforts of all women to have it in their
00:19:33
clothing, no matter how plainly that might be done. Yeah, and it really challenges this kind of
00:19:38
trope that fashion was just reserved for the middle and upper classes, right? It really speaks
00:19:45
to the fact that fashion and clothing is so much so central to our identities, right? And to deny
00:19:51
that women of all classes and all backgrounds would have not chosen to dress themselves in certain
00:19:57
ways or not aspire to dress themselves in certain ways is denying their humanity in many senses,
00:20:02
right? Of course, these women had aspirations to dress their bodies a certain way. And you find
00:20:08
evidence of it in this kind of really unique reading, I would say, of this illustration that
00:20:14
probably hasn't been read in this way before. I don't think so, and I hope that it might spur some
00:20:20
people on to doing more of this, because I just think it's really important that we don't do fashion
00:20:24
in this very elite spectrum, and we're so familiar with doing that. It's a couple of say naturally to us,
00:20:29
but there's so much more out there we can look at. Yeah, and doing it in these kind of new methodologies,
00:20:35
too, I think it's a really important step that you've demonstrated that hopefully more people will
00:20:39
sit up and pay attention to. So you of course feature ballgowns throughout the book, everything from
00:20:50
ballgowns to sportswear, which really demonstrates this wide range of occasion-specific dresses,
00:20:56
women have worn throughout history. No more is this on view than in the 19th century,
00:21:00
when women of a certain class are changing so many times a day. But one example of occasion-specific
00:21:06
dresses are riding habits, and you have this wonderful 1826 or circa 1826 example from the
00:21:12
Reich Museum. So what do we learn from reading this dress? This is a really lovely example of a
00:21:17
garment worn both as a day dress and obviously for the express purpose of course riding, so something
00:21:23
very practical. And I was thinking about riding habits initially, and then I don't know, it's that
00:21:30
question, every evolving question of what a dress is, how we define a dress, and I think possibly because
00:21:36
it's seen still by people as sportswear because it's seen as it is not a sort of single-joined garment,
00:21:42
I thought I'd leave it until a later edition because it's a bit more complex. But what I like about
00:21:47
it is that at first glance it might appear to be a sort of normal floor-length police coat,
00:21:52
which were often styled on similar lines with military inside detailing. But when we look a bit
00:21:59
edit a bit closer, we can see aspects like the lack of volume and stiffening in the skirt, which was
00:22:04
fashionable in the 1820s, and its extra length kind of pooling around the feet show that it was made for
00:22:10
an activity like riding. And when we look even closer, we can see there is no front opening to the
00:22:16
skirt, which rules it out as a coat. And along with most habits at this time, it was almost certainly
00:22:21
two pieces, so a skirt and a jacket. And by this time as well, another aspect that I love is that
00:22:27
it would have been probably made by a female seamstress rather than a male tailor throughout the 18th
00:22:32
century, male tailor's provided this type of garment for women. And then we see this lovely shift
00:22:39
in the 1820s and slightly before of a female tailor is essentially starting to come forward and make
00:22:45
these, make these more practical garments for women. So it's really nice that we've got this sort of
00:22:49
feminine angle here as well. I also like the fact that it's not really how we would view, I think
00:22:55
when we think of riding habits in the 19th century, we typically still first imagine like the late 19th
00:23:00
century black two-piece tailored with the apron skirt. And this is of course a precursor to that,
00:23:06
but it draws much more on those 18th century redding goat menswear influences. And I think because
00:23:12
these were worn so often as traveling garments in their own right or as practical walking garments,
00:23:17
it shows something with a lot more breadth and a lot more scope than the later 19th century example.
00:23:23
And that green color is part of that too. I think we always picture them being black,
00:23:27
but they came in all range of colors earlier in the century. And it's, yeah, I just think it's a really
00:23:32
nice example of what that might have looked like. Absolutely. And speaking of range and breath,
00:23:38
can we talk about the maternity dress, 1880s maternity dress from the Antwerp's Mode Museum,
00:23:45
Fashion Museum. This has to be one of my favorite dresses in the book. One because it is unexpected,
00:23:50
I love that you have multiple references and examples of maternity fashion because again,
00:23:55
this is one of those topics that's not really often talked about when you're talking about the
00:24:00
history of fashion necessarily. So it was such a treat to see it. So what does this teach us about
00:24:06
19th century maternity wear and both outer and undergarments? I think the main thing it shows us is the
00:24:12
fact that there wasn't anything close to what we think of as maternity wear today. Today,
00:24:16
women are completely spoiled. You can get almost any style of garment adapted for being pregnant.
00:24:20
And at the time, although most women would spend pretty much the majority of their adult lives
00:24:27
pregnant or trying to become pregnant, and although bearing children was regarded as the main
00:24:31
role of a wife, women weren't encouraged to be seen out and about whilst pregnant. So the fact
00:24:36
that this dress was made for somebody who was in middle to late stages of pregnancy is also
00:24:42
quite interesting. She's probably about at least six months looking at it and her bump is unmissable.
00:24:48
And it shows that she was unwilling to compromise on style. It's obviously a fashionable
00:24:53
princess line designed from around 1880. And it's been very practically modified, but it hasn't
00:24:59
shift changed that silhouette. It hasn't covered it up. There's no kind of loose jacket over the
00:25:04
top. It's very much out and proud. And I showed an example of how that would be achieved with the
00:25:11
little picture of the gestation stays, which had front-fast things and adjustable hit gores and openings
00:25:17
for breastfeeding. And we don't know that this woman wore them. Since many people still persisted with
00:25:23
regular course, it's against medical advice, but you would hope that she would have worn something
00:25:27
a bit more flexible underneath the dress. But what it freaks me most is the fact that this dress
00:25:32
survived because so often, if something was adapted for pregnancy, it would then be changed back
00:25:37
afterwards, or taken apart and remade in the next style after she was pregnant again. So the
00:25:43
fact that it survived maybe suggests that she very sadly died in childbirth, or maybe she was wealthy
00:25:48
enough not to have to recycle. Or maybe she passed it on to a friend who was pregnant at the same time.
00:25:53
We don't know. And that's one of the nice things is that it raises all these questions and we produce
00:25:58
a kind of narrative about who she was and why she wore this particular dress and what kind of
00:26:03
encouraged her to, yeah, to wear something that was still so closely based on fashionable styles,
00:26:08
but accommodating to the situation she was in. I think there's a lot of unanswered questions there,
00:26:13
but that's all part of the detective work of fashion, really. Oh, absolutely. You did such an
00:26:18
incredible job. And I just want to go back a little bit to the gestation stays. I'm sure our
00:26:22
dress listeners figured it out that this is a maternity corset. You're talking to them. So yeah,
00:26:26
maternity corset. Yeah, I think it's always shocking. Our listeners have certainly heard us talking
00:26:33
about maternity corsets for a long time, but it's one of those things where you're just shocked and
00:26:37
taken aback, I think, for contemporary viewers of it. Although I think it's important to say that
00:26:42
it wasn't meant to hold a woman in or to let keep her pregnancy back. It was meant to maintain the
00:26:47
outer silhouette of the clothing. Yeah. And then the fact that these were an option that not everyone
00:26:52
took up is some people tried to wear normal ones. It's just unthinkable. Yeah. And they just loosely
00:26:58
lace them, right? Yeah. Yeah. Women weren't trying to torture themselves. I promise you.
00:27:03
But I think it's just that we need to remember it. It would have been so foreign for a woman not to wear
00:27:07
a corset. It was such a normal part of her body and her life and how she saw herself that it would
00:27:13
have been probably quite scary to think about going without one. I'm thinkable for a lot of people.
00:27:17
So yeah, many ways as we would say a bra today, just very different time. Yeah. But super interesting
00:27:24
thing to contemplate that we don't often get to talk about. So another new addition to this revised
00:27:29
addition is the circa 1900 wool morning dress that you feature. It's one of the dresses featured
00:27:37
in chapter 7, 1890 to 1916. Can you tell us about your decision to include this dress and what it can
00:27:43
teach us? Yeah. This is one that I was lucky enough to be given. It was a museum de-excession
00:27:50
from a friend of mine in Pennsylvania. And I just think it's a really lovely example of a woman who,
00:27:57
you know, is called a middle class, not particularly elite, but someone who lost her husband and would
00:28:02
have of course needed to dress in the appropriate way. So it's very practical. It's a dress that she
00:28:08
could have worn while doing almost any activity during the day. But it's in that first stage of
00:28:13
morning. So it shows the necessity of wearing all black for at least the first. I can never
00:28:17
remember exactly how many months it was, but I think it was the first year for it by this point maybe
00:28:22
slightly less. And I've shown an image on the left side of the page, which depicts women in other
00:28:28
stages. So after that point, you would move on to move or brown or other shades of purple or gray.
00:28:34
Yeah, the fact that it's this textured wool and crepe also shows the status because it was again
00:28:39
very practical and very easy for her to wear. And I've also depicted a little bonnet, which is also
00:28:45
one that was in my collection that is very much modeled in a slightly earlier style. We don't know
00:28:51
whether she, the particular owner of this dress wore this bonnet, but it certainly corresponds with
00:28:55
images of around this time of women in morning wearing hats placed on the very back of the head.
00:29:01
And in the early months, she would have worn a sort of a long veil over the front as well.
00:29:05
But I've also got a little quote there that by 1907, people were saying that it wasn't considered
00:29:11
longer, necessarily any longer, for a woman under 50 to wear a tiny little bonnet that just fits the
00:29:16
head with its white roozing and strings tied under the chin. So by this point, that was going slightly
00:29:20
out of fashion. And again, it makes us think like with the maternity dress, I think anything like
00:29:25
this where the dress is made for a very specific life purpose, you can't help but develop these narratives
00:29:31
in your mind. And I think these can sometimes detract from the analytical reading. But I think they're
00:29:38
also for many people part of what make analyzing dress so tantalizing and exciting is that you do draw
00:29:44
up these ideas in your head of who the wearer might have been and that can all add to your own
00:29:49
research and your own understanding of it. So anything like this, I think, yeah, that's emotional
00:29:54
as well and poignant is something I wanted to try and include a bit more of so people could have
00:29:58
that experience. And I'm just curious for you personally because this is something that's in your
00:30:02
personal collection. Does that help or change your approach to analyzing it because you can actually
00:30:08
I don't know how often you go to the museum collections. Obviously, I think you started this book
00:30:12
before COVID, obviously, but I don't know if you often have a chance to go into these collections and
00:30:17
look at the interior of the garments and handle these garments. So does the fact that you own this
00:30:22
particular garment help you or bring perhaps a different perspective that you might not get with the
00:30:27
other dresses? Oh, yeah, it's obviously we always say it's so important to go and see dresses and
00:30:33
hold them and look at them if you can. I think the fact that it's mine and I have spent so long looking
00:30:38
at it and touching it and enjoying it, I think makes does make a big difference. It means that
00:30:42
I'm very familiar with how it was constructed and it's got this beautiful kind of left front
00:30:48
opening with these all intact, hooken eyes in the front which are, it looks seem to be original.
00:30:53
The dress I think from I can introduce from that probably was worn for morning and maybe not
00:30:58
long after that because it's in very good condition. There's not a lot of wear around the
00:31:02
hem which you often see with dresses when they've been worn for a long time of course. So I think
00:31:07
it was obviously addressed that meant a lot to this woman. She wasn't a wealthy woman, but it's
00:31:13
something that she put aside as a kind of memorial to that period into her husband. So I think yeah,
00:31:20
those are aspects that you won't get if you're just working from photographs. Whatever questions
00:31:25
you can ask a museum, they don't always of course have time to look at something in detail and get
00:31:29
back to you and talk to you about the condition. This is something I was really glad to be able to do
00:31:33
and I've been able to include a few more of my own in other parts of the book and in future books,
00:31:38
I really want to do that as my collection has grown because obviously there are pieces you
00:31:43
won't see anywhere else, but there are also ones that I can hopefully add a bit more insight to
00:31:47
when I'm discussing them. Yeah, absolutely. And I will say those technology today has made it
00:31:53
really accessible in some ways like the Reich Museum has so much of their collection online and
00:31:58
they you can zoom really zoom in at detail, but that doesn't always give you access to the interior
00:32:03
of the garments and it's hidden secrets there. And as we know, the interior is so important,
00:32:07
they're often as important as the outside. Yeah, yeah, it's so much hiding in there. Yeah, yeah.
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00:33:21
So as you've mentioned with this book, and as we previously discussed with our discussion
00:33:27
of the 1814 cranberry girl illustration, your book makes clear that fashion was not something
00:33:33
exclusive to the wealthy of society. And jumping forward to the 20th century, you study the
00:33:38
simple house stress worn by a migrant mother of 11 in a 1939 photograph. What can we learn from
00:33:45
this deceptively simple cotton garment? This image really got me because we're all familiar with the
00:33:51
Dorothea Lang migrant mother picture from the Great Depression. And I really wanted to try and find
00:33:57
something that would show that period of history, but show the entire dress. And this image was from
00:34:03
the Florida memory collection and really beautifully shows what this woman's wearing. And I think
00:34:09
it demonstrates that as with the cranberry girl at their core elite and working class garments
00:34:14
often shared more similarities than we might imagine. And women from all levels of society at this time
00:34:20
might own a house dress. But as in the little sketch, I include on that page, as you can see in that one,
00:34:26
the more fashionable examples would often feature jaunty colors or little shaped pockets or in practical
00:34:31
things that really made it more of a kind of just leisurely comfortable fashionable option,
00:34:36
rather than an actual work dress. But the basic shape is something that a lot of women would have
00:34:41
experienced. So I think it's clear from looking at this that it might once have been a more
00:34:49
ordinary standard dress, completely fine quality and construction. But of course, the circumstances
00:34:56
that the families in and what's happened in the Great Depression have meant that it's being worn to
00:35:01
rags. So we see the irony of wearing a so-called house dress when she lived in a shack where
00:35:07
few traditional kind of wifely duties could be easily performed. And I really wanted to try and
00:35:13
show dresses from a few traumatic sort of periods in history. I've also got later on a dress worn
00:35:19
by a Jewish refugee who was in the Warsaw ghetto in World War II. And I think these emphasize the
00:35:26
power of clothing during this period, not to say that fashion was necessarily a priority. But I think
00:35:32
the clothing holds many clues to somebody's situation and background. And in the case of the refugee,
00:35:39
the fact that the dress was kept for so many years also illustrates its enduring value as a memorial
00:35:45
as well. The fact that someone could look back at a garment and it can bring so many memories
00:35:51
and so many associations back to them and that people would travel through very difficult times and
00:35:56
make sure they kept pieces of clothing, I think is really poignant. So obviously this dress,
00:36:02
the migrant mother dress would have been worn to rags or probably cut up and used to make clothing
00:36:07
for the children's. We don't know what happened to it and we don't have that luxury. But again,
00:36:11
we can summarize based on other sad stories and we can use it as a kind of base to look at that
00:36:16
era in a much broader way. Absolutely. So you feature one of my absolute favorite dresses in the
00:36:24
history of fashion in this new edition of your book. And that is Anne Lowe's exceptionally beautiful,
00:36:31
such an exquisite art of dress making. Her 1966-67 silk flower adorned evening dress. It's in the
00:36:38
collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Who was Anne
00:36:44
Lowe and what does this dress have to teach us about Anne's design aesthetic and skill but also
00:36:50
the fashions of the period? Yeah, I chose this dress because I also love it. I'd always been aware
00:36:55
of it but until some reason I hadn't I didn't know so much about her and Lowe herself until after
00:37:01
the previous book was published and I just found out a lot more about her and I thought yeah,
00:37:04
I need to feature this woman because she was such a game-changer I think and she made her name by
00:37:12
catering to well-known women from elite circles and was famously she made Jacqueline Kennedy's wedding
00:37:17
dress but she was still referred to as society's best kept secret and she went by time she died,
00:37:23
she had not made a fortune through her designs, she went bankrupt as well but she was an immense talent
00:37:30
and she was the first person of color certainly the first African-American to become a sort of
00:37:34
noted fashion designer which at the time especially it was a massive achievement and something that
00:37:40
was pretty I don't think there were many precursors to that not certainly not to the kind of level
00:37:44
that she was and although she hailed from a vastly different background as she was descended from
00:37:50
slaves and from people that had obviously very traumatic histories she this sort of innate
00:37:56
understanding of what her clients wanted these people from very different worlds and I love the
00:38:01
phrase I can't remember who said it but someone pointed out that she fought injustice through her
00:38:06
talent and although she remained on the download she wasn't out talking about her work there's one
00:38:11
article from Ebony magazine I think from 1966 that's still one of the main contemporary discussions we
00:38:17
have about her she was sought out sought after by by people she her name was known on the underground
00:38:22
as it were and her achievements are remarkable for anyone let alone a person of color who wasn't
00:38:28
even able to study alongside her classmates when she was a college and I think this particular dress
00:38:35
as you say it's absolutely luxurious luscious like those flat handmade flowers were her hallmark and
00:38:40
they just cascade down like they're growing out of the dress and I think it also shows this amazing
00:38:48
awareness of the latest trends it's beautifully shaped to the body with this low back and the kind
00:38:52
of empire line that were popular in the 60s so she really managed to create something that conforms to
00:38:59
what the young wearer of the dress so I think was yes she would have been late teens would have wanted
00:39:05
but she also maintained that sort of floor length skirt which the parents would have appreciated so
00:39:11
around this time we start to see Debbie Tant dressers with higher hens with more kind of choice
00:39:16
but she knew from the kind of background that this girl was from that she had to cater to what the
00:39:21
parents wanted as well so she kept it traditional and yet it created something that would be incredibly
00:39:27
exciting for this girl to wear so another thing we're talking about the interior of dresses and I
00:39:33
couldn't see the interior of this one but we do know that the deceptively kind of simple shape
00:39:39
can seals these really intricate cature construction methods lace line seams and a built-in slip
00:39:46
and bra that maintain that silhouette she wasn't only skilled at the exterior decoration she was
00:39:51
incredibly technically skilled at putting together something that would fit absolutely perfectly
00:39:57
to the individual client and yeah I think she is such a rare talent and there's been a lot more
00:40:03
written about her in the last little while but I think there's still more we can uncover about
00:40:07
and low for sure yeah and so many other black dress makers from throughout history that are
00:40:13
just waiting for scholars to get into the archive and learn more about these incredible people because
00:40:18
they're there people just need to look for them and dress listeners we promise we were doing an
00:40:23
an episode season five because it's long overdue all right we are nearing the end of our conversation
00:40:31
together as promised earlier we get to talk about one of my other all-time favorite dresses in
00:40:38
this book like I said I squealed with delight it was such a pleasure to see this as the last dress
00:40:44
featured in the book's final chapter so previously you ended your book in 1970 this new chapter
00:40:50
takes us from 1980 to 2020 ending with a dress that aptly reflects the dress's trajectory from a
00:40:57
distinctively gendered to genderless garment so please tell us about your wonderful decision
00:41:03
to end the book with actor Billy Porter wearing a Christian seriano tuxedo ball gown
00:41:08
hans down the best and most welcome surprise of the revised edition
00:41:12
yeah I was so happy to end it with I just thought there is no way I cannot end this book about dresses
00:41:21
by not featuring this wonderful man wearing a dress because this is where our conversations are
00:41:27
going now the future of the dress in terms of it being a gendered garment and of course this was
00:41:33
a perfect opportunity it the dress ties into so many increasing discussions about how masculinity
00:41:39
is expressed through fashion what masculinity means and obviously it links into really important
00:41:44
conversations about and drudgeny and gender fluidity in dress which we need to be having and
00:41:50
I'm delighted we are having with so much more frequency but I think it also ties into
00:41:56
something I've been thinking about recently which is the question of whether
00:41:58
the perfect dress for a man whether that be a cis man or a trans man will ever exist whether
00:42:05
a dress will arrive that men feel comfortable wearing whatever their kind of background whatever
00:42:11
their age whatever whatever their profession and I think we're away off that but I think what
00:42:16
Billy Porter managed to do was get these conversations started whether they were positive or negative
00:42:22
he got the narrative out there in a way that I don't think any other celebrity really on the red
00:42:27
carpet it managed to do before and although his dress was elite although it was created by a designer
00:42:33
that not many people could afford it opened up the floodgates really and what I love about his gown
00:42:40
as well is that it self-consciously references both male and female fashions and it creates a kind
00:42:47
of effective I guess a hybrid of sorts and this is subtly portrayed I think through the use of black
00:42:53
which has suggested sobreness and respectability for men for for at least a couple hundred years
00:42:59
and more recently it's synonymous with elegance and fashion for women from the 20th century onwards
00:43:07
so it also draws on a lot of historical references like the shape of the skirt kind of
00:43:12
reminded me of mid 1860s cringelands with their fullness moving towards the back and he's got
00:43:18
underneath the tuxedo sort of bodice jacket he wears this kind of high necked glows with
00:43:24
frilled cuffs which are reminiscent of a 15th and 16th century women's wear and men's wear
00:43:30
I really love the fact that there is so much in there that on the first glance you don't see
00:43:35
obviously there's the tuxedo reference and the ball gun reference but there's a lot more going on
00:43:40
and the way he wore it was such confidence as well with something that I think really caught people
00:43:46
and made people think maybe this is something that men can aspire to you maybe not something
00:43:51
quite as out there to start with but it's really got the conversation going as I said and I think
00:43:56
I hope that by ending the book in this way it leaves that discussion open and I hope to make it clear
00:44:01
this is really only the beginning of a very exciting new chapter in the history of the dress I think
00:44:07
if I come back in 10 years who knows where we're gonna be like we might be looking at a very different
00:44:12
landscape absolutely and I just have to say that I was asked to review your book I was it was such an
00:44:18
honor and my review appears on the back of the book I'm not this was completely news the first time
00:44:24
I've ever done anything like this so it was a huge honor for me but the thing that I say in my review
00:44:29
is that this book is such a potent reminder that not only can we all read a dress but we can all
00:44:34
wear one too and I absolutely think that this is the future of fashion moving beyond gendered fashion
00:44:41
to de-gender fashion I think the dress still remains one of those gendered garments but as Billy
00:44:46
Porter and others are demonstrating it certainly is not going to stay that way for long so thank you
00:44:52
so much for that oh thank you and thanks to your beautiful review as well I really appreciate
00:44:56
that Lydia thank you this has been such a pleasure I know our listeners are going to rush out to
00:45:01
buy your books if they have not already thank you for joining us again on dress by discussing if
00:45:07
having me Lydia concludes her discussion of Billy Porter's Christian Seriano dress by writing
00:45:13
that quote Seriano's piece is a pertinent final offering and a book exploring the dress being
00:45:19
appointment musing on the garment's potential to become a genderless equalizing force in an
00:45:24
increasingly non-binary society and quote and we are absolutely here for all of it as our regular
00:45:31
listeners know and if you want to learn a little bit more about de-gendered fashion check out our
00:45:36
two-part interview with Alok Ved Menon from earlier this year and dress listeners go out and get a
00:45:41
hand on Lydia's books the revised edition of how to read a dress a guy to changing fashion from the
00:45:46
16th to 21st century and of course how to read a suit a guy to changing men's fashion from 17th to
00:45:53
the 20th century but does it for us today dress listeners may you contemplate the power the history
00:45:58
of the dresses and your wardrobe next time you get dressed
00:46:02
dress will be back with season eight and all brand new episodes in February of next year
00:46:11
but until then remember we love hearing from you so if you would like to write to us you can do
00:46:15
so at hello@dressthiscreet.com dressthiscreet.com is also where of course you can register for our
00:46:22
tours our trips our new class anything else that we have up our finely tailored sleeves that includes
00:46:29
april's twice weekly in-person fashion history tours of the metropolitan museum of art as well as
00:46:35
our brand new dress to school a fashion live online course the 1950s golden age oak coachur
00:46:40
which is now open for registration and we do have gift cards available for both april's tours
00:46:46
and the class so just send us an email at hello@dressthiscreet.com and also send us an email if you want to get
00:46:52
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00:46:58
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00:47:02
open in January and we do expect them to sell out so send us an email to get on those lists thank you
00:47:08
as always for your continued support dress will be coming back your way for season eight and early
00:47:14
February dress the history of fashion as a production of dress media
