#16 - Men's Fashion from 1700 - 1795

I have taken a long time to write this next lecture because the menswear of the entire eighteenth century can be summed up with the phrase "Their pants got tighter."

Sure, there are surface details like fabrics, embroidery, and subtilty of cut, but the static nature of the styles seems almost impossible considering the staggering amount of change that happened in this century.  How is it possible that men's clothing didn't reflect this?

Well, I saw this video:

https://vimeo.com/25380454

And it proposed that progress is sometimes the inevitable result of existing technologies and ideas.  Perhaps revolutionary ideas about freedom and representational government and science and God and the rights of man can only grow strong in petri dishes of social stability.   Or maybe culture was a pressure cooker of stagnation.  Perhaps the pants tightened up and the cuts became more refined until change HAS to come in a large and dramatic way, an unloosing of current strictures and standards.

Either that or they just longed for the invention of Spandex.  Maybe the entire history of scientific exploration might have simply been a search for the perfect pair of stretchy pants.

Spandex - the moon landing of fashion

Well, as fun as groundless speculation is, how about we look at the fussy details of menswear in the 1700's.

Coats and Waistcoats

The popular coat at the beginning of the 1700's was this one

Justacorps

The justacorps was very full in the skirt area and might have been favored because men could get the full-hipped sillouette without actually having to wear petticoat breeches.  This shape was so important that the justacorps had wire sewn into the hem so it would stick out.

HOWEVER, when the volume of women's dresses began to balloon outward

the importance of the big-bottomed look for men quickly waned, probably because there wasn't enough below-the-waist room for everyone to walk around.  As much fun as it is to look like a giant bell there was no way to even begin to compete with the women so that style was over.

So, men's jackets quickly became less full. That didn't keep them from being fancy.

This is some insanely amazing embroidery, FYI

 The coat and waistcoat you see here are long (as long as his breeches).  You can see how this coat evolved from a justacorps.  The lines aren't all that different and his breeches aren't really a separate element but just hidden beneath the long coat and waistcoat.

Here's another look:

Around the 1770's, the coats became tighter and they cut away from the front.  The waistcoats shortened to around the waist and now the breeches are very much visible.

So that's cool and it leads us to talk about

Breeches

Breeches were knee length and the major development in them during this century was the drop-front fastening.

On the left you see the button-fly style of breeches.  On the right is the drop-front style.  The drop front became VERY popular and continues well into the 1800's.

Here are some more images in case you are confused.

 Button-fly

 Drop-front.

 And, by the end of the century, there was the exciting development of machine-knitted silk drop-front breeches.

SO CLOSE to Spandex but not quite....

I would also like to point out here that breeches ride a lot higher on the waist than trousers do these days.  The natural waist, again, is at the narrowest part of the torso so men wore their breeches up to that point.

HIGH-waisted breeches.  Never low-rise.

Wigs

Wigs exhaust me because there are so many many variations.   At the beginning of the 1700's they were long and parted in the middle and fluffy.

They were made from yak hair, horsehair, or human hair.  Obviously human hair was the most expensive.  In fact, wigs were outlandishly expensive, and the cost of an entire fancy court outfit would still be less than the cost of one wig, especially since the wig had to be groomed and maintained by a barber/wigmaker.

In 1715, the popular color of wigs was white, or light.  Since bleaching destroyed the hair, powder made from starch (yay potatoes!) was used to lighten the hair.  Powder eventually would be scented with lavender or orange or orris root and tinted blue or purple or pink or yellow.  But, white was mostly preferred.

Because tradesmen and anyone not super rich had trouble affording these huge wigs with their curls and power, the bob wig became used and by the 1720s became the most popular.

This is the style you are probably most familiar with

but there were variations.

 Also, what job you had determined what style of wig you favored.  Here is an interesting article about this:   http://boston1775.blogspot.com/2007/01/what-wigs-said-about-professions.html

I also found out that soldiers didn't wear wigs because it would be very impractical and too expensive for their salaries to cover. Instead they just pulled their hair back into a que (ponytail) and powdered the whole thing like crazy.  Powdered hair was actually written into the uniform requirements at the time.

Wigs with the two curls above the ears and a que in back were common but like anything, there were other styles:

One interesting variation was worn by a set of young men known as "Macaronis".

These guys were English gentlemen who had taken the "Grand Tour" of Europe and brought home the extreme fashions of Italy.   They were mocked a lot and are the reason the word macaroni shows up in the lyrics of "Yankee Doodle."   The joke is, Yankees are so backward they think to be a super fancy dandy you just have to put a feather on your hat.  Macaronis were such dedicated followers of their own type of fashion that this idea is ridiculous.  Today's equavalent would be to brush your teeth and then say "Look at me! I'm metrosexual!"

But, in the spirit of Macaronis, I will share with you this video.  Then we will talk about textiles.

Fabric and Color Choices

As you have seen, men in this century wern't afraid to wear silk, satin, prints, embroidery, lace, or pastels.

"What? Pink is my favorite.."

The decadence and brilliance of color and ornamentation was necessary to compete in royal courts.  In England the preference for hunting and riding and generally being outdoors influenced them to wear less fancy clothing, stuff one could wander the moors in. In the States, decadent fabrics and colors were seen as part of the oppessive systems of aristocracy and so rugged tougher fabrics were prefered.

"Hey"

It didn't mean that American men eschewed powdered wigs, though.  Our first five presidents, from Washington to Monroe wore powdered wigs.  But, it did herald the beginning of a sea change in fashion, a change which looked like this:

So, this is what fashion was in the 1700's and through the American Revolution.   Styles didn't really change till the French Revolution in the late 1790s.  

Today, menswear is much the same as it was in the 1920's, which is one hundred years ago now.  A LOT of things have happened and been developed in the past one hundred years and pants are getting tighter and tighter.  I look at what is happening in Turkey right now and I hope it isn't a coincidence.  The world and how we communicate is changing.  I can't wait to see what it looks like.  

Though hopefully not like this....

Here's your test:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1k3NVLZS9-Etds2QLXdhAxipZOwGZdbmtCLfM1aJ1YU0/viewform