Woman as Decoration Part 8

The ill.u.s.trations of the Egyptian funeral papyrus, The Book of the Dead, show woman in the role of wife and companion. It is the story of a high-born Egyptian woman, Tutu, wife of Ani, Royal Scribe and Scribe of the Sacred Revenue of all the G.o.ds of Thebes. Tutu, the long-eyed Egyptian woman, young and straight, with raven hair and active form, a Kemait of Amon, which means she belonged to the religious chapter or congregation of the great G.o.d of Thebes. She was what might be described as lady-in-waiting or honorary priestess, to the G.o.d Amon. She, too, wears the typical Egyptian head-dress and straight, long white gown, hanging in close folds to her feet. One vignette shows Tutu with arm about her husband's leg. This seems to have been a nave Egyptian way of expressing that eternal womanliness, that tender care for those beloved, that quality inseparable from woman if worthy the name, and by reason of which with man, her mate, she has run the gamut of human experience, meeting the demands of her time. There is no dodging the issue, woman's story recorded in art, shows that she has always responded to Fate's call; followed, led, ruled, been ruled, amused, instructed, sent her men into battle as Spartan mothers did to return with honour or on their s.h.i.+elds, and when Fate so decreed, led them to battle, like Joan of Arc.

II. EGYPT AND a.s.sYRIA

In Egypt and a.s.syria the lines of the torso were kept straight, with no contracting of body at waist line. Woman was clad in a straight sheet-like garment, extending from waist to feet with only metal ornaments above; necklace, bracelets and armlets; or a straight dress from neck to meet the heavy anklets. Sandals were worn on the feet. The head was encased in an abnormally curled wig, with pendent ringlets, and the whole clasped by a ma.s.sive head-dress, following the contour of head and having as part of it, a curtain or veil, reaching down behind, across shoulders and approaching waist line. The Sphinx wears a characteristic Egyptian head-dress.

PLATE XIX

Mrs. Conde Nast, artist and patron of the arts, noted for her understanding of her own type and the successful costuming of it.

Mrs. Nast was Miss Clarisse Coudert. Her French blood accounts, in part, for her innate feeling for line and colour. It is largely due to the keen interest and active services of Mrs. Nast that _Vogue_ and _Vanity Fair_ have become the popular mirrors and prophetic crystal b.a.l.l.s of fas.h.i.+on for the American woman.

Mrs. Nast is here shown in street costume. The photograph is by Baron de Meyer, who has made a distinguished art of photography.

We are here shown the value of a carefully considered outline which is sharply registered on the background by posing figure against the light, a method for suppressing all details not effecting the outline.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Baron de Meyer_ _Mrs. Conde Nast in Street Dress_]

III. EGYPT, BYZANTIUM, GREECE AND ROME

During the periods antedating Christ, when the Roman empire was all-powerful, the women of Egypt, Byzantium, Greece and Rome, wore gilded wigs (see Plate I, Frontispiece), arranged in Psyche knots, and banded; sandals on their feet, and a one-piece garment, confined at the waist by a girdle, which fell in close folds to the feet, a style to develop later into the cla.s.sic Greek.

The Greek garment consisted of a great square of white linen, draped in the deft manner of the East, to adapt it to the human form, at once concealing and disclosing the body to a degree of perfection never since attained. There were undraped Greek garments left to hang in close, clinging folds, even in the cla.s.sic period. It is this undraped and finely-pleated robe (see Plate XXI) hanging close to the figure, and the two-piece garment (see Plate IV) with its short tunic of the same material, extending just below the waist line in front, and drooping in a cascade of ripples at the sides, as low as the knees, that Fortuny (Paris) has reproduced in his tea gowns.

An Englishwoman told us recently that her great-great-grandmother used to describe how she and others of her time (Empire Period) wet their clothes to make them cling to their forms, a la Grecque!

The cla.s.sic Greek costume was often a sleeveless garment, falling in folds, and when confined at waist line with cord the upper part bloused over it; the material was draped so as to leave the arms free, the folds being held in place by ornamental clasps upon the shoulders. The fitting was practically unaided by cutting; squares or straight lengths of linen being adjusted to the human form by clever manipulation. The adjusting of these folds, as we have said, developed into an art.

The use of large squares or shawls of brilliantly dyed linen, wool and later silk, is conspicuous in all the examples showing woman as decoration.

The long Gothic cape succeeds it, that enveloping circular garment, with and without the hood, and clasped at the throat, in which the Mother of G.o.d is invariably depicted. Her cape is the celestial royal blue.

The stained silk gauzes, popular with Greek dancers, were made into garments following the same cla.s.sic lines, and so were the gymnasium costumes of the young girls of Greece. Isadora Duncan reproduces the latter in many of her dances.

In the chapter ent.i.tled "The Story of Textiles" in _The Art of Interior Decoration_, we have given a resume of this branch of our subject.

The type of costume worn by woman throughout the entire Roman Empire during its most glorious period, was cla.s.sic Greek, not only in general outline, but in detail. Note that the collarless neck was cut round and a trifle low; the lines of gown were long and followed each other; the tr.i.m.m.i.n.g followed the hem of neck and sleeves and skirt; the hair, while artificially curled and sometimes intertwined with pearls and other gems, after being gilded, was so arranged as to show the contour of the head, then gathered into a Psyche knot. Gold bands, plain or jewelled, clasped and held the hair in place.

In the Gold Room of the Metropolitan Museum; in noted collections in Europe; in portraits and costume plates, one sees that the earrings worn at that period were great heavy discs, or half discs, of gold; large gold flowers, in the Etruscan style; large rings with groups of pendants,--usually three on each ring, and the drop earrings so much in vogue to-day.

Necklaces were broad, like collars, round and made of hand-wrought links and beads, with pendants. These filled in the neck of the dress and were evidently regarded as a necessary part of the costume.

The simple cord which confined the Greek woman's draperies at the waist, in Egypt and Byzantium, became a sash; a broad strip of material which was pa.s.sed across the front of body at the waist, crossed behind and then brought tight over the hips to tie in front, low down, the ends hanging square to knees or below.

In Egypt a shoulder cape, with kerchief effect in front, broadened behind to a square, and reached to the waist line.

We would call attention to the fact that when the cla.s.sic type of furniture and costume were revived by Napoleon I and the Empress Josephine, it was the Egyptian version, as well as the Greek. One sees Egyptian and Etruscan styles in the straight, narrow garment of the First Empire reaching to ankles, with parallel rows of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g at the bottom of skirt.

The Empire style of parted hair, with cascade of curls each side, riotous curling locks outlining face, with one or two ringlets brought in front of ears, and the Psyche knot (which later in Victorian days lent itself to caricature, in a feather-duster effect at crown of head), were inspired by those curled and gilded creations such as Thas wore.

Hats, as we use the term to-day, were worn by the ancients. Some will remember the Greek hat Sibyl Sanderson wore with her cla.s.sic robes when she sang Ma.s.senet's "Phedre," in Paris. It was Chinese in type. One sees this type of hat on Tanagra Statuettes in our museums.

Apropos of hats, designers to-day are constantly resurrecting models found in museums, and some of us recognise the lines and details of ancient head-dresses in hats turned out by our most up-to-date milliners.

Parasols and umbrellas were also used by a.s.syrians and Greeks. Sandals which only covered the soles of the feet were the usual footwear, but Greeks and Etruscans are shown in art as wearing also moccasin-like boots and shoes laced up the front.

Of course, the strapped slippers of the Empire were a version of cla.s.sic sandals.

As we have said, the Greek gown and toga are found wherever the Roman Empire reached. The women of what are now France and England clothed themselves at that time in the same manner as the cultured cla.s.s of Rome. Naturally the Germanic branch which broke from the parent stem, and drifted northward to strike root in unbroken forests, bordering on untried seas, wore skins and crudely woven garments, few and strongly made, but often picturesque.

Though but slightly reminiscent of the traditional costume, we know that the women of the third and fourth centuries wore a short, one-piece garment, with large earrings, heavy metal armlets above the elbow and at wrists. The chain about the waist, from which hung a knife, for protection and domestic purposes, is descendent from the savage's cord and ancestor to that lovely bauble, the chatelaine of later days, with its attached fan, snuff-box and jewelled watch.

PLATE XX

Mrs. Conde Nast in an evening gown. Here again is a costume the beauty of which evades the dictum of fas.h.i.+on in the narrow sense of the term.

This picture has the distinction of a well-posed and finely executed old master and because possessing beauty of a traditional sort will continue to give pleasure long after the costume has perished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Mrs. Conde Nast in Evening Dress_]

CHAPTER XVI

DEVELOPMENT OF GOTHIC COSTUME

To the Romans, all who were not of Rome and her Empire, were foreigners,--outsiders, people with a strange viewpoint, so they were given a name to indicate this; they were called "barbarians."

Conspicuous among those tribes of barbarians, moved by human l.u.s.t for gain to descend upon the Roman Empire and eventually bring about its fall, was the tribe of Goths, and in the course of centuries "Gothic"

has become a generic term, implying that which is not Roman. We speak of Gothic architecture, Gothic art, Gothic costumes, when we mean, strictly speaking, the characteristic architecture, art and costuming of the late Middle Ages (twelfth to fifteenth centuries).

But we find the so-called Gothic outline in costume as early as the fourth century. Over the undraped, one-piece robe of cla.s.sic type, a second garment is now worn, cut with straight lines. It usually fastens behind, and the uncorseted figure is outlined. The neck is still collarless and cut round, the s.p.a.ce filled in with a necklace. The sleeves of the tunic appear to be the logical evolution of the folds of the toga, which fall over the arms when bent. They cling to the outline of the shoulder, broadening at the hand into what is called "angel"

sleeves; in art, the traditional angel wears them.

Roman-Christian women wore their hair parted, no Psyche knot, and interesting, large earrings. The gowns were not draped, but were in one piece and with no fulness. A tunic, following lines of the form, reached below the knees and was _belted_. This garment was trimmed with bands from shoulders to hem of tunic and kept the same width throughout, if narrow; but if wide, the bands broadened to the hem. The neck continued to be cut round, and filled in with a necklace.

The cape, fastening on shoulders or chest, remnant of the Greek toga, was worn, and veils of various materials were the usual head coverings.

Between the fifth and tenth centuries there are examples of the overgarment or tunic having a broad stomacher of some contrasting material, held in place with a cord, which is tied behind, brought around to the front, knotted and allowed to hang to bottom of skirt.

Byzantine art between 800 and 1000 A. D. still shows women wearing tunics, but hanging straight from neck to hem of skirt, fastened on shoulders and opened at sides to show gown beneath; close sleeves with tr.i.m.m.i.n.g at the wrists, often large, roughly cut jewels forming a border on tunic, and the hair worn in long braids on each side of the face; the coil of hair, which was wrapped with pearls or other beads, was parted and used to frame the face.

This fas.h.i.+on was carried to excess by the Franks. We see some of their women between 400 and 600 A. D. wearing these heavy, rope-like braids to the hem of the skirt in front.