FASHION EXTREMISM
Originally published in spanish at Ssstendhal.com
The more we study the history of fashion, the more we realize how surprising it can be, both for the unexpected and the excessive. With the sign of the times, styles change dramatically. Sleeves and skirts are lengthened or shortened, volumes and silhouettes are exaggerated to the extreme just before disappearing; and, from time to time, history seems to go completely nuts.
Since fashion emerged in the 14th century, its complexity has only increased. To think of its development as a clear timeline of styles is a mistake. As in all social, political, artistic and ideological phenomena, comings and goings, sudden changes of orientation and utter revolutions are inevitable. The history of fashion is thus more like a scalextric-like tangle of sinuous roads rather than a wide and beautiful avenue. Throughout this complex system, however, it is possible to glimpse certain rules that seem to be always complied with, and that are intimately related to the social and political context of each historical moment. One of the most important ones, and perhaps the most evident, implies how a fashion trend tends to exaggerate to the limit just before completely vanishing. It has always happened this way, as it is happening now. Or does anyone think we will be able to endure such ugliness and maximalism for much longer?
We can find an early example of this when fashion was still in its adolescence. In the Late Gothic period the poulaine, an eminently masculine shoe with a characteristic pointy end, was at its peak. Although initially this tip was rather restrained, inevitably the concept developped in such an exaggerated way that it became impossible to walk with it, even to the point of having to bend it up and secure it to the ankle with a little string. Many times, even a rattle was added, which sounded suggestively when the man walked. All this mania is understandable if we consider that this poulaine had clear erotic implications, and that the sound of the rattlesnake referenced sexual excitement, as centuries later would the delicate rubbing of the silk petticoats of Belle Époque dresses. Fashion is born by and for seduction, and in this game, as we already know, there are no rules.
Also concerning footwear, we find the chapines. Considered to be the first example of platform shoes in history, they were sometimes worn so high that made walking virtually impossible. However, the most eye-catching "extremes" in fashion can be found in flesh and blood characters with their own names. Personally, one of my favourites are the wonderful macaroni. These fashion-obsessed mid-eighteenth-century men were the epitome of exaggeration, to the point of becoming a true caricature, both of themselves and the fashions that reigned at the time. They displayed lavishly coloured garments and extravagant prints, wore elaborate powdered wigs, and made use of all the accessories they had at hand, from gloves to glasses, including intricatedly embroidered handkerchiefs, ebony and golden canes and, of course, beautifully made high heels. Their style was not limited to dressing, however; they conducted themselves in an affected way and lived nonchalantly, devoting their days to the pleasures of betting, drinking, sex and social life. We can recognize in their behaviour a clear indication of the decadence of the Ancien Régime (1789 is not far away) and, perhaps, a glimpse of what we would know in the future as dandis.
Less than half a century later, the post-revolutionary environment of the French Directory era would give birth to the Incroyables and their female counterparts, the Merveilleuses. After Robespierre´s execution, young Parisian aristocrats used the power of fashion to rebel against the newly established system. Men wore jackets with large lapels, long ribboned trousers, huge scarves, thick glasses or monocles and bicorn hats, with hair falling over their ears. They usually carried heavy truncheons they mockingly called their "executive power". There were those who even simulated affectation when speaking and stooped violently when walking through the chaotic streets of post-revolutionary Paris. On the other hand, their female equivalent, the merveilleuses, began to imitate the ancient Greco-Roman dress, styling fine loose garments of almost transparent cotton and silk gauze and blond, black or even green and blue wigs with carefully combed loops. They usually carried a reticulum (or ridicule, given its lack of practicity) and crammed their hands and feet full of the finest jewelry. Incroyables and merveilleuses together, dancing deliriously in one of their bals à la victim, must have been for sure a sight to be seen, a spectacle of doom fit for those times of darkness.