Ecthomo: The Unbearable Sheerness of Regency Gowns

My father and I have long maintained a correspondence of epic intellectual proportions. Usually these take the form of discussions on science and science fiction, Rick Gauger being an award-winning science fiction author, and all-around life of the party.

Recently I sent him a link to a collection of cartoons on the fashion wars of the early 1800s, which were as vicious as they were short-lived. Men and women abandoned the stiff, straight-laced wardrobes of the 1700s and briefly adopted a more modern, flowy, comfortable look. This was the famous Regency era, in which Jane Austen lived and wrote. Unfortunately for fashion, it was quickly destroyed by the severe repression of the Victorian age’s corsets, high heels, and silly hats. Dad, armchair fashion historian, elaborates [with my notes appended, thusly]:

Yes, I’ve always thought it odd that women went out of, and back into corsets in the early 19th Century. In our own time, the 60s got over in a hurry, as women went back to makeup and hairdos in the early 70s. In my century [Dad is 64], I think that the corporations panicked as they saw hair styles, makeup and tailored clothing apparently becoming obsolete, and they put on a major propaganda offensive. The majority of people (including women) never understood the 60s anyway, so they were ready to buy into it. We had a last hurrah of big cars, just at the moment when we should’ve been changing our ways.

Another reason for the quick loss of those styles was that a woman really has to be very good-looking [such as my mother, 54, who to this day refuses to learn how to use an eyelash curler, probably because she’s too busy beating men away from her door with a stout stick] to be able to go without makeup and tailoring. There were a couple of girls among the grad students of 1965 that made me froth at the mouth; most others, however smart and sweet they might be, just didn’t have what it took. One of them was the girl who welcomed me back from my first tour in Vietnam. She came out in a nightie that made her look like a joke. I would have rather died than hurt her feelings at that moment.

In the 1800-1820 period, there was a political element to the fashion upheaval. Reaction against the Revolution, and Napoleon, was a factor. Many people, like Beethoven, felt that Napoleon betrayed the good ideas of the Revolution. In the opera ‘Tosca,’ usually the woman who gives herself sexually (Tosca) to the bad (reactionary) governor (Scarpia) to save her husband is usually dressed somewhat loosely; I visualize her husband languishing in the dungeon, dressed in trousers and his own hair. Scarpia, however, is usally depicted in a black suit with knee britches and a small white wig. Conservative! Now, an aria! Shoot the governor! More aria! Jump off the parapet! What good this does for the the guy in the dungeon, I’m not sure. Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio,’ ditto. I think women’s lib took several steps backward in the 1820s.

Me, I never had the rapier figure I always wanted, the kind that makes ladies say behind their fans, “A fine figgah of a man.’ That’s off the subject, sorry.