Costume

The study of the amelioration of costume throughout the early ages presents many difficulties. Until a fairly up-to-date period fashion books were unknown, and the only records were those found in the writings of the times, in wall carvings and paintings, in sculptures on monuments and tombs, on seals and various gems, and a exiguous later in engravings of various fetes, royal processions, marriages, etc.

Garment Costume

All these were not made with the pupil of costume history in mind, but commonly to commemorate some event or to perpetuate the memory of various reigning monarchs, and in consequence they were not all the time correct representations of the period they illustrate. Discount must be made for the vagaries of the artists, the materials in which they worked, and also for the fact that in many cases these monuments were not made until some centuries later than the events they commemorated, when exiguous correct facts existed regarding the costume of the earlier periods. To obviate this difficulty, the costume of the period at which the work was indeed executed commonly appears.

By the comparison of various records, however, a fairly satisfactory and continuous figure of costume history has been worked out-an figure which in normal is sufficiently suggestive to meet the demands of the modern dress designer.

Every fashion and every information of fashion of the gift day may be traced to that of some former period. It is only straight through taste with the representations of these fashions that the creative ability so necessary in designing is awakened; it is only straight through a knowledge of them that what is called "originality" is possible. In this connection originality means the power to adopt and adapt suitably the fashions of the past to the demands of the present.

It is because the French have this knowledge, because in their libraries, churches, and museums there are these records free to all, because for centuries they have appreciated their value and have straight through constant institution acquired skill in their use, that all the fashion world looks to them for inspiration and guidance in build in costume.

To be of the many use an figure history of costume should include a seek of the costumes of the aged Egyptians, the Grecians, and the Romans, as showing the normal type of garment used in early civilizations. These differ very greatly from the garments worn by the Gauls at the time of their conquest by the Romans, or from those of the Franks who later appeared and gently took proprietary of Gaul, renamed it France, and established there the French nation. French costume, as such, may be thought about as starting at this time, about the sixth century.

From this period no attempt is made here to chronicle even briefly the costume of any other nation than the French. They began at an early period not only to create their own fashions but to make anything fashions they borrowed distinctively theirs by their manner of adoption. Because of exiguous space the costumes of men are omitted from this outline; in Egypt, Greece, and Rome they did not differ in their main characteristics from those of the women, and in French costume the same names and many of the same characteristics persisted until the Renaissance, from which time there is exact divergence in the middle of the garments of the men and women.

Dressmaking Costume History