All of Everything: Todd Oldham at the RISD Museum of Art
Some days were made for a bit of hooky. This week, it was Tuesday– though how much can you consider a museum visit hooky when it’s the business you’re in? We took an outing down the street to the RISD Museum, long one of my favorite places in Rhode Island. The Costume and Textiles curatorial staff mount some amazing exhibits, from Artist Rebel Dandy to this latest, All of Everything: Todd Oldham Fashion.
Every time I go to the RISD Museum’s exhibits, I have serious wants, whether mochaware coffee pots or the Chinchilla Outfit– which my grandmother would also have coveted. There was a tinge of nostalgia in the visit, since most of us had lived through the 1990s, and recognized the styles that eventually leached into ready-to-wear from couture. Cropped sweaters. Shrunken jackets. Embellishments. Pattern mixing. Hey– I still dress that way!
Chinchilla Outfit (left) and Librarian Outfit (right)
Another outfit my grandmother would have loved.
Journal des Dames et des Modes, ca. 1810 RISD Museum INV2004.506
And legit it is, this pattern mixing. Funny how we stick to the same shapes and forms once we find what we like; so much of what I make and wear are variations on similar themes, no matter the century.
For some, dressing in the past is the only time they’re dressing up; their daily style is almost aggressively (or passive-aggressively) anti-style. But when the top hat comes out, look out: they’re dressed to the nines.
The more you look, the harder things get. That’s usually cause for celebration, but I’m starting to feel the pressure of more ideas and commitments than time. Here’s a question: in these undated Sandby watercolors, are the women wearing the bonnet colloquially called lampshade? What does lampshade look like from the side? My guess is that it looks a great deal like the headwear of the woman sitting on the wall. (Click the images to go to the Royal Collection site where you can enlarge them.)
So much good stuff in this image: the woman sitting on the wall, swinging her foot (take that, decorum); the black silk mantles; sleeve ruffles; gloves; pointy shoes; big skirts.
About those pointy shoes and big skirts….much as I would love for this image to be really relevant to my quest, we are looking at the 1750s. At least lampshade comes in to greater focus, both in date and in construction. Ooh, look! More lampshade.
The eldest of these young ladies was born in 1760 and the youngest in 1762, so we’re really close to 1770 here. They’re not only incredibly adorable (I know a quite darling and very young lady for whom I want to make one of these pretty much immediately), but they’re in the right time period. Most of the bonnet images in the Royal Collection seemed to be of young women or girls, until I happened upon this image, from 1768.
This is by no means an exhaustive search, but thanks to a Facebook commenter, I’ve rediscovered the Royal Collection, and found later images of the peculiarly lamp-shade like headwear, and one image with a firm date of 1768.
In Book of Ages, Jill Lepore quotes a February 27, 1766 letter from Jane Franklin Mecom in Boston to Deborah Read Franklin in Philadelphia, regarding the clothing her brother Benjamin had shipped to her. “For ‘Each of us a Printed coten Gownd a quilted coat a bonnet.’ She continues about her bonnet, “is very suteable for me to were now being black and a Purple coten.” (Lepore, Book of Ages, p. 144)
What do you suppose that 1766 bonnet looks like? Do you think it looks more like lampshade, or these transitional forms? Probably lampshade, but the materials are intriguing: Purple cotton. Is that the brim lining? Jane Mecom is in mourning, so I’d expect the main body (brim and caul) of the bonnet to be black, and most likely taffeta, which turns up as a descriptor in the runaway ads.
Wide-brimmed, black taffeta bonnet, possibly lined in cotton, 1766-1768. But how long did bonnets last?* What went into them– Buckram? Pasteboard? Coated pasteboard? Baleen? A combination of pasteboard and baleen?
I’ve got some ideas, and if the next winter storm doesn’t delay the mail too long, I might have experiments to conduct this weekend.
*Or any clothing? But that’s a post for another day.
Drypoint by John Theodore Heins, Jr. British Museum 1858,0417.362
Bonnets. Who doesn’t like them? They’re the cupcake of costuming, just enough sugar to be delicious, not enough trouble to count. I know I have far too many, they fall from the hall shelf nearly every time I get my coat.
But I started asking myself questions about bonnets when a friend asked me questions about bonnets: shape, color, and how they’re worn (rakish angle? pulled down low?).
We’re planning on going to an event in March, and I’ve been thinking about head wear, especially bonnets. Now that the question’s been asked, I don’t want to randomly cram black silk taffeta on my head and call it a day: I’m back to “don’t know mind.” Time to start looking. So far, I’ve searched the Tate, the British Museum, the National Portrait Gallery UK, the Lewis Walpole Library, the Yale Center for British Art, the Met, the V&A, and the BBC’s Your Paintings site.
I started at the British Museum. Here are the results for a collections search using the term bonnet and the production dates 1765-1772. Hmm. No classic black bonnet. Dammit, actually, because I really like mine.
James Caldwall, A Ladies Maid Purchasing a Leek, 1772, YCBA, B1977.14.11105
Man, this is a pain, right? Where are the bonnets? 1772 is actually too late for my purposes in this instance.
The Lewis Walpole Library Digital Collections lack a feature for limiting or sorting by date, but they tag bonnets in their prints. Still: no big black bonnets in early prints.
Anne (née Day), Lady Fenoulhet by Richard Purcell (Charles or Philip Corbutt), after Sir Joshua Reynolds, mezzotint, (1760) National Portrait Gallery UK D1939
Nelly O’Brien by Samuel Okey, after Sir Joshua Reynolds, mezzotint, circa 1765-1780 (circa 1762-1764) National Portrait Gallery UK D19911
Lady Fenoulhet is wearing a lampshade. Nelly O’Brien is wearing an interesting, more hat-like device. Her imprint is ca. 1765-1780, but other impressions are dated ca. 1760. The 1762-1764 seems plausible. But that’s still early for my purposes. The lampshade really is, too; Mrs Mary Smith of Portsmouth may be wearing one, but considering that the artist who drew this plate died in 1766, I think we can place this form in the 1750s to early 1760s. Lampshade is too early. The”Lady’s Maid buying a Leek” is too late.
I’m of an age (none of your beeswax, thanks for asking) where most of the clothes in the shops are simply not for me. Not only am I picky about labor standards, fabric and construction quality, the styles aren’t for me. I’m too old. I create enough havoc walking (falling) down the street as it is that I do not need to look like the mid-life crisis I’m having involves a desperate search to recapture my youth through H & M or Hot Topic or whatever-the-kids-are-wearing clothing. I’ve achieved “a certain age,” and as with my everyday closet, my living history wardrobe has to reflect my age as well. Pity, really.
Following the Fashion. Hand colored etching by James Gillray, published by Hannah Humphrey, 1794. British Museum 1851,0901.706
But more’s the pity here: I don’t have a clear idea, really, how age was perceived in the various decades I interpret. I have a clearer idea of how different body shapes and class levels were perceived and taunted, though sometimes body shape is an analogue for age.
Is this my daughter Ann? Pen and ink print study by Samuel Hieronymus Grimm, 1774. British Museum 2011,7084.56
There’s a classic image that juxtaposes age and youth. Here’s how the British Museum describes this image:
‘Is this my Daughter Ann?’; satire on fashion. A street where, before a house [on the right], over the door of which the name ‘Love Joy’ is written, a sedan chair has been brought, in order to carry away a young lady, who, in a towering toupée, and other articles of fashionable attire of this period, is leaving the house in company with a young soldier, who caresses her as they go; she looks fondly at him. An old woman, in what was then an ‘old-fashioned’ costume is interposing to prevent the departure of the damsel. 1774
Okay… “An old woman, in what was then an ‘old-fashioned’ costume.” You will note that the old woman is wearing what we typically wear here in New England to represent everyday clothing for middling and lower sort American colonists for most of the 1770s. I don’t want to put too much stock in the cataloger’s description, because I’m not sure that print curators or curatorial assistants always know as much about material culture as they think they do. And we know that six weeks is not six years when it comes to transmitting fashion changes and updates across an ocean. I think “old fashioned” might not be exactly or entirely right as a descriptive phrase.
What does the old woman’s clothing really signify? That she’s rural and not urban? That’s she’s poor? That she’s old? How ‘old fashioned’ is that costume by 1774… in a context other than London courtesan couture? And how do we translate the clues we have trouble deciphering into a dress code for living history?
Is this my Daughter Ann, mezzotint by James Watson after S. H. Grimm, published by Sarah Sledge, 1774. British Museum J,5.104
Well, happily, there’s a verse under the image in this print.
Is this my Daughter Ann
The Matron thus Surprised exclaims,
And the deluded Fair One Blames
But had the Mother been as Charming
She had Thought the Mutual sport no harm.
This Moral’s an undoubted Truth
Age envies Still the Joys of Youth
So this print is not about fashion. It’s about sex. (Well, duh. You were wondering when I’d bring that up.) It’s also, in a way, about hypocrisy, isn’t it? But the verse gives us the clue that the mother’s clothes are meant to be matronly. “Conservative because of her age” might be a better descriptive phrase than “old fashioned” in that catalog record.
But does that mean that those of us who have achieved “a certain age” might also consider whether we, too, should be dressing in a more “conservative because of her age” style? I don’t really know.
But look here: Zoffany, ca. 1762.
David Garrick and Mary Bradshaw in David Garrick’s “The Farmer’s Return”. Johann Zoffany, ca.1762. YCBA B1981.25.731
Here we’re looking at a rural woman ten to twelve years before “My daughter Ann.” The costumes are very similar; maybe the mother in Ann really is just old fashioned.
Here’s another version of “My daughter Ann,” this time more clearly fashion focused, without the sexual overtones.
Print made by Francis E. Adams, active ca.1760–1775, British, Heyday! Is This My Daughter Anne!, 1773, Mezzotint and etching on medium, moderately textured, cream laid paper, YCBA, B1970.3.820
Yale helpfully provides a transcription of the verse at the bottom:
HEYDAY! Is this my DAUGHTER ANNE! | Heyday! the country Matron in surprize, | Is this my Daughter thus bedizell’d? cries. | To Town she lately went a Damsel plain: | But scarcely now is to be known again. | That City to its Vanities has brought her, | And banish’d the good Housewifery I taught her. | Why, Child you’ll frighten here our honest People: | They’ll say you’ve on your Head a London Steeple.
My best guess is that this print is skewering both Anne and her mother: Anne, for being so outlandishly fashion-forward, and her mother, for being so far behind. But again, that’s only a guess.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
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