[OSMH] Comfort and Style: 17th and 18th Century Fabrics

Last Thursday I went to the first of this month's Middays at the Meeting House. This month's theme is "Fashion Conscious: A History of New England Style" (this assumes, of course, that "New England Style" isn't an oxymoron :-). I realized when I'd already left my floor that I'd intended to bring paper and pencil this time, not just my crocheting, so it's whatever I remember (now compounded by being 4 days too lazy as well). The speaker was Diane Fagan Affleck, a senior research associate at the American Textile History Museum.

The biggest impression I got was the emphasis on how much material cost. A merchant in pre-Revolutionary days bought a carved mahogany bed for 12 pounds, and other furniture for prices about that, while the bedclothes (including the hangings all around the four poster, to keep the heat in) cost 52 pounds (!). Rather different than today. So fabric would be used very carefully, and clothing would be repurposed if possible (adding inserts in the back of a vest if one gained weight, changing just the top of a dress to fit changed fashion, and so on).

There were sumptuary laws on the books in Massachusetts, and the magic number was 200 pounds: if you (as a man; or the breadwinner in your family, for anyone else) earned that much, you were entitled to wear fancier materials, and have slits in your clothes (the kind that show the fancy garments underneath, not the artfully mangled jeans kind), and so on. Not that this was commonly followed, but it was kept on the books anyway (the legislature occasionally bemoaning the sad times they lived in, when poor people wore fancy clothes above their stations.).

There were slides showing the progression of fashion, much slower than today, of course, and only for those with sufficient income; working people had to wear things that were practical in cut and length. For women, corsets that emphasized a straight front went over the shift and under everything else. Dresses changed to emphasize the hips, first by draping fabric, then by putting ever-more-involved frameworks underneath, until women had to go through doorways sideways. For men, the changes weren't as dramatic, as waistcoats got shorter and jacket shapes changed some.

The handwork on fabrics could be pretty impressive, though usually only where it would be noticed. One slide showed a fabric rectangle with odd embroidered shapes on it, ready to be cut out by a local tailor and turned into a waistcoat (complete with button coverings).

There was some talk of other textiles. Rugs used to be too expensive to be put on the floor and worn out, so they'd be on tables instead. Upholstered furniture went through styles as well, as new fabrics from India became available, for instance.

Interesting stuff, if a bit of a mishmash in overview.

Midwinter Midsummer

Thursday night I went to the first performance of BTW's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare). I knew it wouldn't be a standard production as soon as I saw the set: a moveable plinth angled in on one side, a tall "sapling" that was just a long branch (some others farther back), a claw-footed bathtub angled in from the other side, and most of the rest of the area with lots of bright red Gerbera daisy-style flowers sticking up. Not what I'd think of first for this play.
edit And how could I forget the armless clock high on the wall, the timeless moon? /edit

The second indication it would be interesting was in the program: there were only eight actors. Each actor had a couple of roles, and how they chose to match them was interesting, with one actor playing Hippolyta and Oberon, another playing Theseus and Titania. All the young lovers also fairies and in the workers' play-within-the-play, as were Puck and Demetrius. It's not a production filled with spectacle: the changes were effected with simple costume differences. Athenians all wore dark overcoats. Workers had mechanics-type shirts with their names on them (except for the actor who also played Puck; his name tag said "Robin," which I thought a nice touch) and rubber rain boots. Fairies wore silk bathrobes over the basic leotard-like costumes (royalty getting flowers as well). And the play-within-a-play got their own costumes, of course, and used to great advantage, too.

The gender flopping in the two royal couples was interesting, oddly not as strange as I would have thought. I had more of an issue with Hippolyta not giving any kind of impression of Amazonian-ness; I'm not sure how that would've been done, given that the actor is not as tall as her partner, and is a middle-aged white woman.

There are bits of the play I never care for (Hermia running after a guy who despises her for that long, Oberon duping his queen just to get a boy she has reason to keep), but this time those were small annoyances as the play flowed on. The Pyramus-Thisbe play was done amazingly well, lots of physical humor; I was not the only one helplessly laughing. My least favorite part was how the fairies were chosen to be played, since their slithering sensuality didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the show. Puck was also a sensual fairy, but his interactions were more straightforward, his movements more precise, and it made a difference (OK, and his shoulders, etc, were quite nice to look at).

Definitely worth seeing.

( local actors )

That can't be a good sign

When the little heaps of ice melt pellets are frozen to the still-slightly-icy pavement.