On Thu, 24 Aug 2006, Carolyn Kayta Barrows wrote: > I'd say humor and satire magazines, like Punch, would have more > coverage of Aesthetic-style clothing than regular fashion magazines. > The Aesthetics weren't high fashion, they were counter-culture, the > Beatniks, Hippies, and Punks of their day.
The Aesthetics themselves, yes -- they were not quite respectable, and some of them were considered scandalous. But just as fashion-conscious people in the 1960s and 70s adopted tie-dye and denims from the hippies, mainstream 19th century designers adopted a version of the Aesthetic look and tidied it up for fashionable wear. In 1884, a high-fashion London store, Liberty, opened a special department called the Artistic and Historic Costume Studio. This became the top shopping spot of the Aesthetic set, but it also got plenty of business selling clothes with "artistic" or "historical" elements to more conventional shoppers. Stella Mary Newton's book has some good information on this, including some pictures of fashion plates of artistic dress from Harper's and a picture of an extant artistic dress from Liberty. Punch did have good cartoons about the Aesthetes, though. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
