On Sep 14, 2007, at 4:03 AM, Zuzana Kraemerova wrote:
It is surely interesting to think logically about such a problem, but, just as you say, we can never rely on it, and, as we all know, people didn't always act very logically and didn't choose the most comfortable garments they could. Think of all those corsets and hoop petticoats and cage crinolines - the latest being worn even by lower-class working women that would surely need a more practical dress than the bourgeoise and nobility.
While it's certainly true that some fashions are more inconvenient than others on a purely practical level, I think that saying that people acted illogically and chose uncomfortable garments is misleading. We tend to think that our current fashion is the most logical, comfortable, and lovely one, but people in the past thought the same thing. Susan Vincent's _Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England_ has some wonderful information on this. Every fashion has its own internal logic, supported by cultural assumptions about what is healthful, beautiful, appropriate, etc. Corsetry, for example, was for most women simply a support garment, like a bra is today. It also held the body in a desirable shape and protected the modesty of the woman inside--the same things a bra does today. Many women who don't actually need the support of a bra wear it to look more fashionable and/or to keep the world from knowing when they are cold. For these women, it's slightly more comfortable physically to go without, but in public the psychological discomfort outweighs that. Historically, yes, there were some extreme fashions that even people of the time found uncomfortable, but for the most part, the average person probably felt quite comfortable in their clothes.
It's also important to consider how the body is shaped by lifestyle. We are used to having something between our thighs to keep everything dry and to keep our thighs from rubbing together, so our inner thighs tend to be quite sensitive to moisture and friction. But there were and are many peoples in equatorial areas, in the hottest climates, who clearly did and do not wear any sort of underwear. People in these groups whose inner thighs rub together probably have less sensitive inner thighs. Anyone who has ever learned to play the violin or ride a horse can tell you how amazingly the body adapts to physical circumstances that are at first painful.
So I must agree with Heather that it's dangerous to use modern ideas of what is comfortable to evaluate historical clothing practices.
Melanie Schuessler _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
