The Victorian Academic, Part 1

"It mightn't be of any use, but I would feel in it as if it were a part of me--that it grew on me and wasn't just bought and put on. I want one dress like that in my life-time.”

—L.M. Montgomery, Emily of New Moon

I’m Cee, a fiction writer and a definite Victorianist (well, it’s broader than that, but the Victorians were my first and truest loves). My critical focus is on eighteenth and nineteenth century woman writers (I love Gaskell, all the Brontes, Austen, Burney, etc.), and I also have a soft spot for researching the period. My first love of clothes came from reading Victorian children’s fiction and watching those adaptations. For my first post here, I’d like to discuss some of the things I love to pull from Victorian sartorial sensibilities. What can we take from that particularly constraining time?

Since this post got away from me, I’m splitting it into two sections. In Part Two of this post, I want to examine some of the problematics of historical fashion, and see if I can reconcile my love of crinolines and chemises with knowledge of the imperialist, racist, classist, and sexist past. But in this section, I want to (in true fiction-research form) examine the underlying principles of Victoriana, and see what’s there besides the pretty.

But the first question, is what can we realistically take from Victorian fashion? As much as I love period costuming, and as much as my sartorial fantasies might involve a full bustle, I am probably not going to be wearing a corset outside my bedroom. And as much as I would love to reproduce all elements of period dress, it’s neither comfortable nor really appropriate for the classroom.

Victorian clothing wasn’t the somber affair that many remember it to be: people loved and celebrated jewel tones, patterns, and even arrangements that look bizarre to our eyes. There was a flamboyance to Victorian clothing (women’s in particular, but read Sarah Waters’ Tipping the Velvet for loving descriptions of Victorian men’s clothing that tempt me to give up my femme ways) that makes a lot of historical clothing a joy to see. I love so many aspects of Victorian fashion: not only the silhouettes, but also the smaller attributes: buttons, stripes, watches, lace, and skirts. Mostly it’s the dedication to craftsmanship that always snags me.

Looking back to Victorian clothing has encouraged me to embrace different textures as well as colors. Things like lace, velvet, silk— textiles that are often seen as exclusively special use— can be incorporated into daily wear. Looking for natural fibers: cotton, wool, etc. and respecting the source of those materials have become increasingly important to me as a consumer. I am especially frustrated by brands that have begun to offer their clothes in cheaper, artificial materials that wear out more quickly and irritate the skin. Although there are drawbacks to traditional textiles as well, questions of both ethics and production, I still value something that I can wash at home, or that will remain part of my closet for longer than six months at a time.

Victorian, to me, means pieces and combinations that look unique and evoke the period: I mix prints, treasure stripes, lace, and florals, add a necklace that suggests a particular neckline. I love wearing gloves (and am a total sucker for gloves or anything that feature buttons). I wear skirts and dresses much more often than pants, and try to evoke particular silhouettes: the oxford blouse and the tweed vest, the lace-front blousy top and a long cardigan. I like to look to both historical pictures (like this completely amazing Victorian cyclist) and period films for inspiration. It can be a fun exercise to try to reproduce the color scheme of a favorite ensemble, or to recreate the lines of a dress in a more contemporary way.

One of my biggest problems with fashion today is how monotonous a lot of mainstream clothing stores have become. When I walk from one end of the mall to the other, I’m frustrated by how many times I could buy the same ruffle-lined cardigan in slightly different colors. Compare to this to a list of possibilities offered by just one lace merchant: “Point de Bruxelles, point d’Alasce, Point de Venice, Milano, Genoa, and Greece: Medici lace, real Valencienne and imitation Ecru; real and imitation black Spanish and Chantilly laces; fichus, ties, wrappers, falls, mantillas, handkerchiefs; hand-made embroidered underlinen. . .” (Judith Flanders, The Victorian Home). One of the most unique aspects of Victorian dressing was being able to put your own stamp on your choices: trimming your own hats, or hemming a skirt to the length you preferred. Industrial manufacturing and invigoration of the middle class opened up availability of materials, but before ready-to-wear clothes took off, homemaking clothes reached new possibilities.

Obviously ready-to-wear fashion freed us from having to make our own clothes, but also opened the door to sweatshop labor, consumerism, and simply having fewer choices. But re-fashioning, upcycling, and handmaking clothes allow us to to mitigate some of the waste in the fashion cycle and to keep valuable/signature pieces in our closets longer. One of the biggest frustrations I experience with clothes are fluctuations in my weight, and letting down hems/adjusting zippers (or, okay, turning clothes over to my mother/personal tailor) allows me to hang onto some pieces that I wouldn’t otherwise be able to. And even upper-class Victorian ladies tried to modify old clothes or to make their own, in interests of saving money. Flanders (in the same excellent book) discusses a woman who, although wealthy enough to afford forty dresses a year, might still do the bulk of her own dressmaking.

Another thing that I’ve liked about the Victorian model of dress is that, as academics, we’re often called upon to play dramatically different parts: I dress up for teaching, but tend to look more formal than I would for class, and comfort is a process of attrition. How do we move from spending five hours reading for exams to teaching a class? One thing that Victorians give us is a reminder that clothes are intended for specific purposes: what you put on in the morning may not be what you eat dinner in. And while they were obsessed with making sure they changed for meals, sometimes it’s much easier to dress for a morning class and then wear yoga pants for the rest of the day (or vice versa, depending on your schedule). And even though this seems like it might be an occupation for people of leisure alone, it’s interesting to remember that even a maid-of-all-work would change clothes at least twice in the day, from a printed morning dress to a more formal afternoon dress.

For those of you who love historical fashion, how do you incorporate it into your everyday life? What eras do you love? How do you incorporate elements of period clothing without making it into a costume? What sartorial principles do you pull from your favorite time period?