The Fashionable Ancients

For many years, I’ve been teaching a class, titled, Dressing for the Ages. It is subtitled, History as Told By a Dress. The class stems from my two loves: history and clothing. I got the idea for the class as I made one of my many historical costumes. I realized one could learn history by looking at the clothes people wore. You could also date people by their clothing. Those wearing cote-hardies were from the 14th century. Mutton sleeves? Edwardian.  Another thing I learned is that fashions recycle themselves. That there are no new ideas when it comes to clothing. Once upon a time, men everywhere wore gowns. Many still do in Eastern and Pacific countries.

Modernists in the West could use a little history of clothing.

I’m turning  Dressing for the Ages into an online class, that will make its debut on Mardi Gras, February 21. It will be a self-guided class. There will be 6 classes, or more. What is different about the online version is that I will have time to examine the entire history of clothing. From its inception, forward. Which is to say, I begin the series with H. erectus. This lead us to a short study of the hunter-gatherer life. Not only was H. erectus a hunter-gatherer, so too were the Homo sapiens, both Neanderthals and Sapiens (that’s us). We H. sapiens, sapiens were the folks who decided to end the nomad existence, and put down roots. And rocks. Big rocks. And then around those rocks, farms and villages came into being.

Yes, there still are nomadic hunter-gatherers in this world. In Africa, Brazil and Australia, tribes still move around, to follow the food, and weather. They sing the old songs, and tell the stories of their gods, and wear skins for clothing. Anthropologists do not want them disturbed. Nor do I. Because, who knows, one day we may need them for our very existence. In the meantime, there are things to learn about the old ways that would do us some good. All knowledge is good for us.

Firstly,  it is from the old ways that we can learn to be more grateful for what modern life has given us. Cars, trains, airplanes that take us to see the world. We live longer, eat plenty of food, have clothes made for us, and our homes are comfy. Having longer life means we also have access to experienced people.

And yet, some of the advancements I would say are not advancements at all. We have more diseases because we are so intimate with so many people. We are squished into cities, of our own accord, therefore we exchange our germs with many others, without thinking about it. Until a new germ comes along and zaps us. And we still kill people in wars over lands and things that do not belong to us.

Going back to H. erectus, one of the most profound achievements of early humans is when they learned to control fire. They then learned to cook food. Those who study such things, we call them anthropologists, have this theory that when human’s learned to cook food, the cooked food led to chemical changes in their bodies. It may have made us smarter.

Fascinating, yes?

Controlling fire is development number 1. Tools are development number 2. Because it takes specific tools to make a garment. And the development of clothing is right up there with getting us to the moon. Think I’m exaggerating? Look at it this way; a tailor is an engineer because clothing isn’t made, it is constructed out of materials. Development #3? Chemicals. Again, this goes along with clothing, because to make garments from animals skins meant humans had to develop a formula to remove the organic matter from the skins.

Development 4 is the story of humanity. Humans, as they began to think more complex thoughts, had to come up with a history of themselves. Since they could not know that much about what had passed before, they looked up to the stars and talked to the gods. Oh the questions they must have asked.

A part of that human development was farming. Someone, somewhere, had figured out that flax and cotton had fibers that could be drawn out and turned into strings. If those strings could be woven like fibers were for baskets, then they could make cloth. So the farms were used to grow these plants. Flax can be eaten as well. Much flax was grown.

My theory is that once individuals began painting on walls, they painted people, with clothing, and eventually, they painted their gods. In this way, clothing design began. Some weaver of cloth came along, and seeing what was up on the wall, said,  “I can weave that!” So-radical thought here-the gods didn’t make us in their image, we made ourselves in their image. The painter made no distinction as to the cloth the god wore, but the weaver did. The woman with the machine, the loom, had the power.

When one studies the origins of humanity, one cannot help but ask the question, who made whom? The Greeks, in a partial answer, said we are like the gods, therefore, they made us, but

they made us like themselves: imperfect. Their gods did not, as a whole, have a love for us. Zeus would have left us in the darkness, if it were not for Prometheus. But did Prometheus love us, feel sorry for us, or, here’s the clincher, did he want to see what would happen to us if we did have fire?

Whatdaya think, Prometheus? Have we lived up to any idea you may have had about us?

The Jewish god, YHWY, made us perfect, but we threw that perfection over for the privilege of consciousness. But what do you think, YHWY, you gave us light, and, darkness,  then we figured out how to make the dark places light. A million years later, we discovered how to get ourselves up into the sky surrounding us. Perhaps that is the “God’s plan” people talk about? That we humans are in a relay race, passing the batons of development from one generation to another, until humans are, once again, face-to-face with God?

See what happens when you think about that cloth that touches your body? Sometimes I think the clothes wear us, we don’t wear them. They invented us to wear them.

Crazy, yes?

Clothing can be practical, or it can be a luxury. I prefer luxury that is practical. I suppose that is why I love the clothing of traditional India. Saris can handle the heat, and give the eye pleasure. And then there’s Jackie Kennedy’s elegance, the styles of the sixties that kept to the simplicity of line, which allowed the beautiful fabrics do the talking.

When I was a kid, I played a game I call, here’s what I’ll wear. I examined the clothing in the Sears and Penny’s catalogs that were delivered to the house. I would close my eyes and see, no, feel myself, wearing the various outfits. I always picked the most expensive outfits. My father told me I was a girl with champagne tastes on a beer budget. It wasn’t until I left my father’s house to move to my mother’s that I could live my dream. She took me to Bullocks, threw me in the dressing room, and started to pick dresses and ordered me to try them on.

My mother was the original preppy. I looked like a proper English school girl when she was finished with me. So I learned to sew because I wanted to be a proper French school girl. When you learn to sew, you learn about clothing from the ground up. And all about cloth, because that is where it begins. And tools, because it doesn’t happen without tools.

And that is where Dressing for the Ages begins. At the crossroads of tools and imagination.  It is a feat of engineering to look gorgeous. Never forget that. And it is a gift to, and from, the gods.