Diana De Marly

I have wrestled with myself over how to rate this book. I was tempted to give it five stars simply because this is a topic that gets little coverage. I think that the book is not terribly clear on certain important points, and does not make good use of its resources. As an example, there are no references from the text to an illustration, even when they are separated by a number of pages. Further, terms were insufficiently defined. Sometimes de Marly was very careful, explaining for example that at one point, "frock" referred to two very different garments. Unfortunately, terms like dress, skirt and petticoat are ambiguous and have also changed over the centuries, and she is does not make it clear what means by the term. Dresses, for example, can be one or two piece; a skirt can be an independent garment or part of a dress. My dictionary lists 4 separate meanings for petticoat that apply during the time period covered by this book.

While I was reading this, I had in the back of my mind learning something about lower class dress in the sixteenth century. In this area, we have a Renaissance Faire set in the era of Henry VIII. The costumes that are usually recommended, i.e., the skirt with a contrasting, fitted bodice worn over a shift, don't seem to match the few pictures that I have seen. De Marly seems to be saying that while this was the basis of many of the later European peasant costumes, it was not popular in Europe. Having in mind the concrete intention of designing a new costume caused me to carefully attempt to visualize what she was describing, and I was often uncertain as to what the garments would actually be.

De Marly explains that there are three basic groups of lower-class dress: servants, whose costume would be in some measure determined by their employer; people who lived close to a large city, e.g., within a hundred miles of London, who wore used, formerly-fashionable clothing in preference to a distinctive lower class style; and people who fit into neither of these categories. All groups might have distinctive occupational clothing, but it was the third group who had styles more or less independent of upper class fashion. She stresses the importance of the used clothing trade.

Up to 1600, most working people of the third group wore "regular dress" protected by a aprons and frock smocks. Unfortunately, I am uncertain what the women's regular dress was. Was it basically a shift, covered by a long one-piece tunic, similar in general cut to men's tunics? That would be my guess, since even fashionable women for most of the period wore one piece dresses, and a separate fitted bodice would be more difficult to make. Some of the pictures that I have seen elsewhere of 16th century commoners do appear to be wearing a dress that could be two-piece, but of course I don't know the social status of those people. I think this remains a continuing problem with women's costume throughout much of the book. When de Marly tells us that a woman is shown in a bed-jacket and striped skirt, does she mean that the skirt is the visible part of a dress, or an independent garment? Why sometimes "skirt" and sometimes "petticoat". The history of trouser-wearing by women is much clearer. I also thought that the classes could have been better delineated. Obviously, even in the sticks, there had to be people who had new clothing made in the local style for the poorer people to have used clothes to buy.

Despite these frustrations, I did learn a lot from the book, and the descriptions from later times were clearer. I thought that the discussion of men's costume was more successful, i.e., I thought I had a better understanding of what they were wearing throughout the centuries. In the beginning, de Marly had almost no variations to describe and by the end she had more than could possibly be delineated. I would recommend it to anyone interested in lower class dress.

One point for non-British readers. The book of course uses British terms, so one must try to be aware that the terminology may be unexpected. The British vest is the American undershirt, for example.

The reader may wonder how this compares to Margot Lister's Costumes of Everyday Life and Elizabeth Ewing's Everyday Dress, 1650-1900. Both of those differ from this book in that they cover a wider class of people. They include upper class clothing that might be worn on a day-to-day basis, as opposed to high-fashion special occasion clothing. Ewing's book is like de Marly's in consisting of a lot of text paired with contemporary illustrations. It is unlike it in that it covers a shorter time period. Margot Lister's book, while it does have substantive text, consists chiefly of line drawings, and as such, illustrates, rather than describes more types of garments. It stops in 1910, whereas de Marly's book continues until the end of World War II.… (mere)

Diana de Marly is an art historian specializing in costume analysis and has been a theatrical costume designer herself. She begins her history in the Baroque period and continues up to World War II. She makes that point that costuming has always been influenced by fashion: even designers attempting to reconstruct historical fashions are influenced by the styles of their day.

In the Baroque era, when this book begins, appearances by the elite tended to be theatrical: weddings, processions, etc. Rome was idealized as the representative of the classical era, and conveniently for kings and princes, the empire was the model of power. Moreover, there simply wasn't a lot of information about historical costumes, so it consisted chiefly of contemporary fashion, which was symbolically more meaningful to the audience in any case, with Roman touches. Further, using fashion in all productions was a lot cheaper, since the same pieces could be used in many plays. As more information about the past became generally available, arguments ensued about historical accuracy and control over costuming. I wanted to leap in an join in the argument. There is a separate chapter on ballet costumes; the theoretical contests in the early 20th century could become quite bitter. Interestingly, de Marly likes the authors of plays to be detailed in their descriptions of the characters, whereas I would have thought that some designers and directors would want to be given a little more freedom. Of course, they can simply ignore the instructions if the like.

The book is lavishing illustrated with black-and-white photographs which are generally of good quality. The book is definitely a history, not a how-to book, but this issues should still be of interest in deciding how to stage a production.… (mere)