Culture on a Personal Level: Historic Fashions on the Web

“Clothing is culture at the most personal level.”
—Sally Queen in an interview with National Public Radio’s Scott Simon as they discussed the Costume Society of America’s 2003 calendar of historic fashions.[i]

National Gallery of Art

OVERVIEW

Clothing, like food, provides an entrée point into the lives of people in the past; one that is readily open to us and captures the interest of people of all ages. From clothing we can learn about everything from aesthetic preferences and social interaction to textile manufacture. Since historic fashions is a rather broad topic, this survey looks at sites that treat 18^th century costuming. The resources available for studying historic fashions on the web fall into two broad categories: museum sites, and individual scholar sites.

Museum Sites

Many museum sites approach historic fashion as an aesthetic study, highlighting the artistry of the clothing. The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, the Kyoto Costume Institute, and the Museum of Costume, Bath each have some wonderful examples of 18^th century costuming.

The Kyoto has begun to expand on their web presentation, providing a few garments in high-resolution imaging, with longer descriptions that discuss the fashion in context. Museum of Costume, Bath includes notes on social context of the clothing, and some construction notes as well (see the description for “Corset, about 1775 - 1780” under Highlights, Dress before 1800) to accompany the images of clothing. The Met’s presentation of 18^th century clothing describes the article, but gives limited context. If we stretch to the beginning of the 19^th century (1804), there is a more detailed description of a gown, providing social context of the once-presumed owner. Unfortunately though the text suffers from that particular Achilles heel of web sites, inattentive, poor editing after a cut & paste rewrite.

The National Gallery of Art has interesting information about historic fashion from an unexpected source. Rather than photos of extant garments, the NGA web site has digitized images from the Index of American Design. The “exhibit label” text identifies the drawings, and the informational text discusses details of the fashions. The gallery for 18^th century clothing contains 6 items; the exhibit contains 26 total, and stops in the year 1895.

Colonial Williamsburg has a section dedicated to 18^th century clothing on its web site. In keeping with its emphasis on education through living history, the site does not present museum photos of extant garments, but rather resources to begin learning about period clothing. There is a little something for everyone at this site, from an interactive lesson for children to learn how 18^th century women got dressed, to scholarly articles, adapted from previous print publication by Colonial Williamsburg.

Individual Scholar Sites

The second category of sites dealing with historic fashion, independent scholar sites, is rather uneven. One of the sites that looked promising based on a quick glance at the listing for 18^th century attire, the Costume Gallery, turned out to be a list of mostly non-functioning links. The Costumer’s Manifesto, has mostly period sketches of clothing, with some fragments of commentary about the images. Sally Queen and Associates has scholarly articles on historic fashion, as well as information on print sources available for purchase.

The 18^th Century Woman List focuses primarily on clothing of the period, and ranges from study and discussion of extent garments to “how do I make” and “can I wear” type questions from those seeking to reproduce period fashions. Primarily a list-serve, the posts are archived at Yahoo! for list members to access via a web site. The site serves to help create a community of scholars (867 members), and there is some excellent information about historic fashions contained within the archive of 28,699 (and growing) messages.

There are numerous “Make your own [fill in the blank]” sites out there, many of them put together by individuals who create reproduction clothing. A rare gem among mostly undocumented sites, the patternmaker, JP Ryan includes historical notes about each garment, as well as collection notes about the garments she used to draft the pattern.

DIGITAL HISTORICAL FASHION

Three Sites In More Depth

Colonial Williamsburg combines some of the “look & see” approach of the art museums with scholarly articles and educational games for children. If the site added more comprehensive scholarly discussion, and images of extent garments (most images are reproduction clothing worn by interpreters), it might succeed in being all things to all people. Papers presented at symposia by Colonial Williamsburg staff on clothing would certainly enhance the site, are already written, and are of interest to a certain segment of visitors. The site has six main sections: introduction, women’s clothing, men’s clothing, milliner shop, costume design, and children’s clothing. Since the site reflects what visitors would see at Colonial Williamsburg, there are sections which address African-American clothing and tradesmen’s clothing, as well as the more familiar descriptions of the fancy clothing of the gentry class found at other sites. Aside from some organizational quirks (children’s clothing might be better situated with women’s and men’s clothing rather than after the costume design center), navigational issues (the introduction puts the viewer in a linear structure with no idea how long it is, and no way to navigate it other than ‘previous’ and ‘next’), and minor typographical errors (found in the anatomy of a man’s suit), it is generally well thought-out and put together.

The most fun and delight comes from an eighteenth-century paper doll. Visitors step through a narration of how a young (gentry) girl would get dressed, and then can test their memory by playing with a virtual paper doll, dragging pieces across the screen and placing them on the doll. The pieces will only ‘stick’ to the doll if they are chosen in the proper order. This engaging game captures the attention of young and young-at-heart alike. It is an example of something that could not be accomplished effectively in a non-electronic method.

Screen shot of KCI web site. Click to enlarge.

The Kyoto Costume Institute has the most extensive online collection of the sites reviewed. They have a database of 200 items that can be viewed, images with descriptive text. They also have 10 items with expanded coverage. The example from the 1760s allows the viewer to zoom in on any detail in the image, without having to click out to another image by using the Viewpoint image viewer. This zoom capacity is something that would be very difficult to replicate in print form, as it would require too many color plates to make it practical. The longer description that accompanies the Viewpoint images places the garments into a greater historical context than the shorter descriptions that accompany other garments. The site indicates that they are working toward expanding the number of items with the extra detail, but that it is a matter of time and funding. The navigation bar along the side not only helps move around the database, but it also acts as a visual summary: the link for each period contains the year in numbers, as well as a reverse silhouette representative of fashion of that period.

Sally Queen & Associates’ web site is dedicated principally to the historic fashion calendar series created in collaboration with the Costume Society of America. Supplementing the calendar series, which is available for purchase online, and a few sample images are present to give an idea of what is within, are the articles online. Each of these articles give substantial treatment to a single garment featured in the calendars. They are excellent scholarship, and, aside from the few examples on the Colonial Williamsburg site, among the few found in this web site review process. Most of this type of scholarship seems to still be confined to print articles, symposia, and print books.

The Missing

Searching for historic fashion on the web, there were many surprises. Sites the researcher might consider a natural source of information were curiously silent. The Costume Society of America, a scholarly organization dedicated to the study of historic clothing, had no content on the subject, other than a static table of contents of articles published in their journal Dress. Their web site informs visitors about their symposium, membership, events, and grants, but does not even deliver a statement or other discussion about the study of historic clothing.

One museum that we might expect to have a particularly wonderful on-line exhibit of fashion, the Victoria & Albert Museum, has only 4 images of their collection on-line. Not only do they have a noticeable lack of historical clothing images, they also have requested that an independent web site, The Costumer’s Manifesto, remove photos of items in the collection taken by an individual on a research trip.

Two Approaches

The Victoria &Albert on the one hand and Colonial Williamsburg and the Kyoto Costume Institute on the other, represent very different reactions to the web medium. Colonial Williamsburg has drawn from its print publications to supply content, including images, for its web site, while the V&A has limited web access to its collections, preferring to maintain the traditional museum visit and books as methods of sharing information. The Costumer’s Manifesto has several pages where it had to remove photographs of items in the V&A collection — by request from the manager of the picture library.

Either the museum is still in the “bunker” mentality of fending off the threat of the Internet, or it has other concerns which prevent it from allowing non-official images of its collections to appear on the web, and very few official ones either. The V&A is most definitely on the far end of the continuum between control of intellectual property and open access to information on the web. Perhaps they feel that it would be a threat to their print publications, gorgeous books with lots of full color photographs, excellent commentary, and of course, the high price that marks a quality book. The photos likely would not have been clear enough to compete in any way with the V&A publications, nor with a visit to the museum (if the photos from other museums in the same photo essay are any indication of quality; they are simple snapshots of items on display). To be fair in contrasting V&A with Colonial Williamsburg, CW has used the text either from older publications or journal articles, and has not yet moved to put information up on their web site that directly competes with their latest print publication(s) on historic clothing. The Kyoto Costume Institute has a new book out on its collections, and also sees the use of maintaining an online database of 200 items from its collection. Not having seen the book, it is difficult to judge whether there is any overlap between the print and electronic efforts.

Audience

Another issue that we see evident from an examination of the digital clothing history currently available, is the issue of audience and mission. The audience interested in historic fashions is such a diverse group, that it would be difficult for any one institution to satisfy them all. Scholars want many different things from the same garments: commentary on social history, an understanding of aesthetic principles of the time, knowledge to reproduce the item for modern wear. Each of these demands different treatment and presentation of the clothing on the web. Target audience also has a great effect. Based on the design of the site, we see that Colonial Williamsburg defines their primary audience as one of non-specialists, of all ages, desiring general information to satisfy a curiosity, with a secondary audience of the scholar looking for other scholar’s analysis. The Metropolitan Museum of Art focuses the presentation of their collection with a traditional art museum style.

Funding

Funding is another crucial issue in presenting historic fashions. Some museums may have the collections, but not the money to fund the work necessary to put the information up in the best possible manner. The Costume Museum, Bath is an example of a site that has some wonderful content, but has not invested yet in the necessary image technology to make the clothing truly accessible to the viewer. The investment made by the Kyoto and the Metropolitan is still in its beginning phase, we can taste what it will be like, but we can’t view everything yet (perhaps a wise move in the seemingly eternal quest for funding that digital projects often require, interested potential donors may see the work and decide to fund it).

CONCLUSION

The web could be a wonderful tool for the study of historical fashion, but currently most of the information is either in traditional book or article form or tucked away in exhibits or storage. As issues in intellectual property and funding are resolved, there is promise that an impressive digital work may be created. Due to the nature of the study and its inherent high costs, initial attempts to create comprehensive digital resources may be restricted to either CD-ROM or subscription-based web sites.

—Allison Meyer