Linleywild

Can fashion increase personal and social responsibility? How an infrared sound healing class and a book about AI suggested a strategy to tackle a thorny problem.

Can fashion increase personal and social responsibility? Last week, I attended my first infrared sound healing class. I listen to podcasts to help me sleep, some with ASMR sounds, so I was curious what the class would involve and keen to acquire new relaxation techniques.  Several days have passed and I continue to debate if a second class is a good idea – which probably means it’s not. Sound…

Can Fashion harness evolutionary biology to create a better future? 

Can Fashion harness evolutionary biology to create a better future?  The story of human life on Earth, from its ‘Once Upon A Time’ to the determinant of whether we enjoy a ‘Happily After Ever’, is decisively shaped by people’s evolutionary-adapted desire to belong to a tribe, according to David R. Samson, associate professor of biological anthropology at the University of Toronto. In Our Tribal…

Masks, MTV, Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande

The following is an extended version of an article that was commissioned for The Conversation.

Before a bruise-coloured backdrop, Lady Gaga and Arianna Grande performed a medley of Chromatica II and Rain on Me at MTV’s recent VMAs. Gyrating in purple and black, the singers’ costumes were distinctive for including face masks. Gaga’s mouth covering, possibly inspired by the breathing apparatus…

Parallels, problems and the possibilities of mask-wearing in pandemics

An edited version of this post originally appeared on 24 July 2020 as an op-ed for Manchester Metropolitan University, here.

On 24 October 1918, San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors ordered the city’s inhabitants to wear a face mask in public. Violators of this instruction would be punished with fines of between $5 and…

A book review published originally in The Journal of Dress History, 4:2 (summer 2020), pp.218-220.

Monica L. Wright, Robin Netherton, and Gale R. Owen–Crocker, Editors, Medieval Clothing and Textiles 15, The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, 2019, Illustrations, Tables, Contributors, Preface, Recent Books of Interest, Contents of Previous Volumes, 4 Colour Illustrations, 34…

‘Unprecedented’ is a word much in use at the moment. As the realities and worries of the Coronavirus spread, people the world over are being encouraged, even forced, to make fundamental changes in the way that they live. For many of us, this means spending a lot more time within the four walls we call home.

Adversity is frequently the springboard of innovation and across the education sector,…

The Magnificence of Marginality

On 9 May, I spoke at Sherborne’s inaugural TEDx event on the subject of marginality. I focused on the life of mathematician Alan Turing, who attended Sherborne School and whose personal experiences have some connection to my own. The link to my talk, and the full transcript, is below. Please have listen!

I want to start…

Have a listen, and if you like, please leave a review or comment.

  Episode 1: Who’s Laughing Now? – Fancy Dress in Protest. 

In the first of a new series that looks at the social significance and psychology of dressing up, Lucy Clayton and cultural historian Dr Benjamin Wild discuss the global prevalence of fancy dress protests. From slogan covered T-shirts to city-wide marches, pussy hats to power aprons, an increasing number of people are getting creative with costume to give voice to opinions they feel are not being heard. Why are concerned, angry, passionate people from around the world taking to their sewing machines and their cities’ streets in ever larger numbers? How and why do protesters use fancy dress to articulate their views? Why is so much time invested to make garments that are worn for just a few hours, and possibly just once? Decide for yourself if costumed protests are more psychological salve or a potent means of preserving our democratic freedoms. Listen.

  Episode 2: Barbaric Splendour – The Devonshire House Ball, 1897. 

In the second episode of a new series that explores the prevalence, potency and politics of fancy dress costume, Lucy Clayton and cultural historian Dr Benjamin Wild discuss the Devonshire House Ball. Held on 2 July 1897 to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, and during an époque when dressing up was more than just an entertaining occasion, the night-long festivity was extravagant and spectacular. From goddesses to mythic monarchs, the social elite caroused in creative and costly costumes, several of which survive today. Were guests’ clothing choices based on a need for power and authority to demonstrate riches, or a desire to gain social acceptance? How impractical were these works of art, and how much would they cost to make today? Was the lavish display distasteful and vulgar, or exotic and luxurious? You can decide if the Devonshire Ball has earned its place as one of history’s fanciest balls and consider whether anything in the twenty first century comes close to rivalling it. Listen.

    Episode 3: Nazis, Pirates, Tarts – Fancy Dress in Bad Taste. 

Fancy dress costume is inherently unfashionable and frequently in questionable taste. Photographs of authority figures and supposed role models in dubious dress-up regularly appear in newspapers to be excoriated by pundits and public alike. A memorable scene in Bridget Jones’ Diary, which featured Renée Zellweger wearing a Playboy bunny suit to an otherwise dowdy family get-together, will forever identify the British as past masters at donning awkward, astonishing, and inexplicable costume. What is it about fancy dress that encourages people to push the boundaries of humour and tact? Why do people in authority seem to get caught in compromising costume so frequently? Does a fancy dress ‘fail’ in fact reveal a person’s authentic character? And are some subjects simply too sensitive to ever become fancy dress. Contribute to the debate, or simply learn what costumes are best avoided altogether. Listen.

  Episode 4: Warriors and Wigs – Fancy Dress in Wartime. 

People’s social, political and gendered roles are disrupted by war. Fancy dress costume, which offers escapism and self-reflection by enabling its wearer to become somebody or something else, can mediate these tensions. From women who dressed as men to fight in America’s Civil War, to allied sailors who survived a mid-Atlantic torpedo attack dressed as Nazi officials in WWII, Lucy and Ben consider the harrowing and heartening place of costume in conflicts throughout history. What makes fancy dress prevalent during times of military conflict? How are costumed warriors perceived by their contemporaries? And just what are the costumes warriors wear? Listen.

One of the more impertinent journalists asked about her nocturnal dress: “Do you still sleep in Channel no. 5?” An impossibly large grin stretched across Monroe’s face. “Considering I’m in England”, she began coquettishly, “let’s say I am sleeping in Yardley’s Lavender”. Monroe’s interrogators delighted in her wickedly smart retort and she looked justifiably jubilant.

The Savoy press conference is depicted in Simon Curtis’ film My Week with Marilyn (2011) and Yardley continue to clarify the connection between Monroe and one of their best-selling fragrances. Of course, whether Marilyn Monroe actually wore Yardley’s Lavender perfume was never really the point (and she may not have worn Channel, either: records from perfumer Floris show that an order for six bottles of ‘Rose Geranium’ were placed by Monroe’s personal assistant Dorothy Blass in December 1959). Her quick-witted response did much to demonstrate her guile, which contemporaries doubted. The comment also added to Monroe’s libidinous allure, which was, and remains, central to her critical and commercial appeal. The significance that Yardley beauty products assumed for Monroe during the 1950s was momentary, but it is possible – and certainly interesting to ponder – that her riposte, delivered at a time of heightened tension in the Cold War, provided inspiration for Soviet spies. Far from the public eye, hollowed tins of Yardley Aftershave Powder were being used by members of the Portland spy ring to send British nuclear secrets to Moscow.

The activities of the Portland spy ring were exposed on 7 January 1961 by Polish-born triple agent Michael Goleniewski (codenamed ‘Sniper’ by the CIA and ‘Lavinia’ by MI5), who had defected to the United States. Goleniewski alerted law enforcement agencies to a mole at the Royal Navy’s Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment on the Isle of Portland in Dorset. Apparently, details of Britain’s first nuclear submarine, HMS Dreadnought, had been leaked to the Soviets. Names were not disclosed, but suspicion quickly focused on former sailor, likely alcoholic and suspected security risk, Harry Houghton, who worked at the facility. Minimal surveillance soon revealed the other members of the spy ring: Houghton’s mistress, naval clerk Ethel Gee and Konon Trofimovich Molody, who masqueraded as Canadian Gordon Lonsdale, an apparently successful entrepreneur who sold jukeboxes and bubble-gum machines. Completing the sextet were quinquagenarian vintage bookseller Peter Kroger and his wife Helen, whom Molody frequently visited.

The Krogers appeared to live a frugal life at 45 Cranley Drive, an unassuming bungalow in Ruislip, Middlesex. The impression of banality was purposefully deceptive. The couple were actually Morris and Lona Cohen, KGB agents. They had met in America, where they were born. Lona’s parents were Polish; Morris had a Ukrainian father and a Lithuanian mother. A graduate of Columbia University, in the 1930s Morris had fought in a volunteer division during the Spanish Civil War against General Franco. Whilst in Spain, he met Amadeo Sabatini, a long-serving Soviet spy, and gained his entrée into the world of espionage. Morris Cohen appears to have stayed loyal to the Americans during the Second World War, but on his return to the States, and as the Cold War began, he resumed his work for the Russians. At some point before 1954, he and Lona relocated to London, and to Cranley Drive.

The Krogers’ bungalow was no ordinary suburban residence. Upon entering the property in 1961, Special Branch officers discovered the bathroom had been converted into a dark room. The attic space contained a 74-foot radio aerial and a transmitter capable of reaching Moscow. Bank notes totalling $6,000 were also seized. Most surprising of all was the array of unassuming household bric-a-brac the couple possessed: a cigarette lighter with a false bottom, a torch with hollowed batteries, drinking flasks with secret compartments and metal tins of Yardley Aftershave Powder that contained microfilm with radio contact times. Details of the haul were disclosed at the spies’ trials. Molody, as go-between and mastermind, was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison; the Krogers to twenty. In each case, the sentences were commuted and the spies were exchanged for British subjects who had been incarcerated by the Soviets. Harry Houghton and Ethel Gee served the full length of their fifteen-year sentences. In a sort-of happy ending, they married a year after their release, in 1971.

The exposure of the Portland spy ring came at a time of acute anxiety in the Cold War. In October 1957, the USSR had launched the Sputnik satellite into orbit around the Earth. The Americans were unable to match this feat until 1958. Understandably, they were deeply concerned at how quickly the Soviets had progressed in the Space Race; espionage was suspected. Three months after the Krogers’ home was raided, Fidel Castro declared his revolution in Cuba to be Socialist. This act humiliated America’s new president, John FitzGerald Kennedy, who received a drubbing from the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, when the pair first met in Vienna in June 1961. Recalling the incident at a later date, JFK admitted, ‘He beat the hell out of me’. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, as the threat of Nuclear Armageddon threatened, there was good reason to believe the Communists were gaining the upper hand in the Cold War.

Simultaneously stoking and sating people’s paranoia about Mutually Assured Destruction, a new genre of spy fiction provided fantastic stories about the enemies in people’s midst. The villains thwarted by Ian Fleming’s James Bond were invariably larger than life caricatures with melodramatic schemes for world domination. The foe that surfaced in John le Carré’s novels, the first of which, Call For The Dead, was published in 1961, seemed all the scarier for their apparent normality and ability to hide in plain sight.

Two weeks after the police raided Cranley Drive, Marilyn Monroe divorced Arthur Miller. She spent much of the next six months recovering from physical illness and depression. News of the Portland spy ring’s discovery may never have reached her. If it did, it’s anyone’s guess whether the spies’ use of Yardley products recalled to her mind the comment she had made in the Savoy five years’ earlier. It is tempting to think the Krogers and their spy masters were attentive in 1956 and that they had been influenced by Monroe’s remarks. How better – and cruelly ironic – to disguise confidential secrets heading into Communist Russia than in containers depicting a popular brand associated with one of the Capitalist West’s best loved Stars.

An edited version of this article first appeared in Article Magazine.

The perfect, poised and poisoning mask that proclaimed Elizabeth’s determination and physical capability to rule was enhanced by allegorical symbols that were embroidered on her costly garments or held in her hand, from snakes that symbolised wisdom to sieves that represented innocence. The recent discovery by Philip Mould of a three-quarter length portrait that appears to depict Elizabeth as physically awkward and psychologically hesitant monarch is therefore big news. Here, potentially, is an image of the Queen that did not conform to the now-familar archetype and yet managed to escape detection, and destruction, during her lifetime.

The newly discovered portrait of ?Elizabeth I, c.1559

The Awkward Elizabeth that confronts us in Mould’s portrait is said to date from 1559, when she was twenty-six years old, and in the first full year of her reign. The evidence that has been used to establish this date has not been shared widely, but my initial response is that this is almost certainly too late, chiefly because of the style of the Queen’s clothing. The Awkward Elizabeth may be arrayed in gold and fur, but her garments would have been unfashionable in the second half of the sixteenth century when she started to rule.

Awkward Elizabeth appears to be wearing a full-length gown of a gold cloth beneath a black fur mantle. The golden gown is decorated with floriate patterns contained within horizontal bands. These bands continue unbroken beneath the Queen’s left hand, which is positioned over her waist, and suggest there is no separate bodice and skirt. The glimpse of a slim black belt, hanging around the waist from left to right, enhances this impression. This is odd. By the middle of the sixteenth century the kirtle (or skirt) tended to be a separate garment; a bodice was worn above it, over the torso. Moreover, from the c.1540s the proportions of this skirt had increased, due to the farthingale worn underneath. These developments in women’s dress are shown in a portrait of a highly fashionable Princess Elizabeth of c.1546 that is attributed to William Scrots. Whilst there is some indication of Awkward Elizabeth’s hips, her skirt seems to have no form of stiffening or  shaping structure beneath it. This scenario would be highly unlikely for a lady of status and fashion in the sixteenth century, and not least for Queen Elizabeth whose accounts indicate she was wearing farthingales during the early sixteenth century.

Princess Elizabeth, c.1546, atr. William Scrots (Royal Collection)

If the length of the gown and the silhouette of the skirt raises questions about the date of this portrait, the neckline does, too. By the middle of the sixteenth century it was fashionable for women of status to emphasise their décolletage. The neck of Awkward Elizabeth is entirely hidden. The Queen’s neck that is not covered by the golden gown is hidden beneath a smock with black work. The ruff, which is secured by a chin strap, conceals more of the Queen’s face and neck. It is also dissimilar to fashionable styles at the commencement of Elizabeth’s reign. This all noted, there are some nods to contemporary vogues. The whitened skin and black work on the linen smock – a style of embroidery largely attributed to Henry VIII’s first wife Catherine of Aragon – does suggest the artist was cognisant of at least some sixteenth-century status-defining fashions.

What are the implications of all of this?

First, we have to acknowledge the limitations of our artist. We are presented with a two-dimensional figure – a Tudor cardboard cut-out – whose clothing, though clearly expensive and of high status, appears similarly flat and devoid of texture. The drape of fabric over the shoulders and elbows has clearly caused problems and looks particularly clumsy. The implication of this is that the artist was working several tiers below that of the artists typically commissioned to immortalise England’s royalty at this time. This would suggest the painter was operating under aristocratic patronage, rather than royal. This may account for the painting’s survival: Elizabeth simply did not know that it existed.

Second, the painter appears to have had limited knowledge of the clothes worn by Queen Elizabeth and her court. The extent of the painter’s isolation from court appears to have forced them to dress their monarch in styles of clothing that were passing out of fashion in the sixteenth century. It is possible the painter used the clothing of another (older) portrait for inspiration. This scenario would also go some way to explain the general lifelessness of the entire portrait.

Third, if our painter were physically distant from the royal court (London), it is reasonable to suppose that this was also true of their patron.

Fourth, and finally, if the painter’s patron was distant from London and only able to employ a painter with limited skills (compared with the artistic luminaries working within the Tudor court), it may be that he/she was in a weak/fragile position and commissioned Awkward Elizabeth to establish their loyalty to the new monarch in a bid to assert regional authority, especially if the work does date from the very beginning of her reign in 1559. This was a tumultuous period when the monarch was working to establish her Protestant-leaning religious settlement – and breaking with Rome afresh – after the Catholic revival and reunion with Rome that had occurred under her half-sister Mary.

Much of the immediate commentary on the catwalk collections for Autumn/Winter 2018 focused on the apparent conservatism of the designers’ creativity. A convenient explanation for the (relative) lack of exuberance and joie de vivre was the pervasive feeling of ennui that we all seem to feel, as reports on conservation, humanitarian, economic and political crisis recur throughout global news cycles. In some cases, designers acknowledged the malaise and angst as a creative spur for their sartorial outlook. In his last show for Burberry, Christopher Bailey focused on ‘Time’ and heterogeneity, endeavouring to celebrate ‘a patchwork of characters and identities’. Hussein Chalayan’s menswear collection was titled ‘Périphérique’, after the highway that surrounds Paris, and focused on ‘the tensions that ensue from unintegrated immigration’.[2]

Acknowledged or not, a sense of menace and unease seemed to darken the message of many of next season’s collections, and I think this goes a long way to explain models’ covered, or at least partly concealed, heads and faces.

The mask probably has as many meanings as it does permutations. In some cultures, masks can be transformative and change the essence of its wearer, temporarily rendering them divine. In other cultures, the mask provides its wearer with a ‘breathing space’ as they seek some form of privacy in a crowded urban environment. For many people, the mask is better known as a facilitator of fun and mischief, as it (partially) conceives its wearer and consequently permits them to break or bend accepted norms of behaviour.

The literature on the form and role of face masks and head coverings is necessarily extensive because most of the world’s cultures incorporate elements of facial concealment in their rituals and festivities, and have done from an early stage in their development. Red deer skulls, for example, carved into a human face mask, have been found in England and date from the Mesolithic period, between c.10000 and 5000 BCE (below, from Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology).[3] Today, the most visually striking examples of face masks (for a western audience, at least) probably come from West Africa, and here the scholarly literature is particularly rich.[4] But as Alison Kinney has shown in hood, the wearing of masks and appearance-altering headwear by groups as diverse as the Ku Klux Klan and teenagers, who conceal their identity beneath hoodies, is no less arresting in the west.[5]

The wearing of masks – however diverse the design and context – has (at least) one common element. Across cultures, chronology and geography, masks and head coverings are typically worn during a period of that anthropologist Victor Turner would call liminal, a ‘betwixt and between’ stage when conventional patterns of human behaviour and interaction are partially suspended and possibly inversed.[6] The donning of mask or head covering – whether worn as part of a public ceremony, or worn to scare people who are not welcome within a community, or worn to escape the pressures of one’s life for the duration of a party – commences a period of time that allows the wearer a physical and psychological space to (re)affirm or repudiate their place and role within the community.

The idea of social and political dislocation that came to be associated with the mask made it a problematic item of dress for governments and law enforcement agencies around the world. Not surprisingly, therefore, law codes from the Middle Ages to modernity frequently prohibit the wearing of ‘visors’ or ‘disguises’.[7] In researching my book, I learned that it is against the law to wear face masks in New Orleans beyond Mardi Gras today. Consequently, I am inclined to suggest that we have become socialised to associate the wearing of a mask with times of unease and uncertainty. This, I think, explains why it appeared, talisman-like, in a number of catwalk collections earlier this year.

The connection between societal angst and aberrant and innovative fashion is, of course, not straightforward. For example, the conventionally-held view that Christian Dior’s A-line skirt of 1947 did constitute a ‘New Look’ after the Second World War is now downplayed. The silhouette   of the couturier’s designs may have been more accomplished and strident than that of his peers, but he was nonetheless indebted to them for inspiration; in this sense, Dior was more ‘in step’ with contemporary designs than an outright trendsetter. Nevertheless, a number of scholars, including Francesca Granata, Adam Geczy and Viki Karaminas and Therèsa M. Winge, are increasingly inclined to view the conception, creation and consumption of (contemporary) clothing and dress accessories as a form of (critical) commentary on society and politics.[8] Cognisant of the period in which designers, buyers, makers and models are living, these authors are more inclined to acknowledge the likelihood that incongruent forms of dress and appearance reflect social traumas or crises; Whinge, for example, argues that the ‘grotesque imagery and bodies-out-of-bounds’ aesthetic that was evident in the fashions of the 1980s was ‘influenced by feminism’s desire to open up and question gender and bodily norms … It was also tied to the AIDS epidemic.’ She suggests that ‘Experimental fashion often mediated the fears of contagion and the obsessive moral policing of bodily borders that characterised the 1980s and part of the 1990s and cannot be read separately from the powerful discourses of contagion, bodies and health surrounding the AIDS crisis’.[9]

In a similar vein, I think the prevalence of facial masks and headwear in the Autumn/Winter 2018 catwalk collections is a response to an ill-defined but ever-present feeling of unease. The incorporation of elements of disguise in contemporary fashions is not new, so what we are witnessing is perhaps more a difference of degree than kind. I am also not inferring that all designers to feature head coverings are, or were, fully cognisant of the mask’s myriad meanings. As Anne Hollander, among others, has indicated before, this is most likely an example of the ‘zeitgeisty’ nature of fashion; its ability to convey and articulate ideas that a majority perceive, deeply but dimly. The face mask, because of it polyvalence, is perhaps an ideal fit for designers when society’s messages become muddled.

  [1] I wrote about this theme in relation to Vivienne Westwood’s A/W 2013 collection. See, Benjamin Wild, ‘Draped in the Past’, History Today, 63:9 (September 2013), 4-5.

[2] https://fashiontv.nz/2018/01/10/chalayan-lfw-men-aw-2018/.

[3] Dušan Borić et al., ‘The limits of the body’, The Body In History: Europe from the Palaeolithic to the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 37 (fig. 11).

[4] For example, I Am Not Myself: The Art of African Masquerade, ed. Herbert M. Cole (Los Angeles: Museum of Cultural History, University of California, 1985); John W. Nunley, Moving With The Face of The Devil (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Phyllis Galembo, Maske (New York: Aperture, 2016).

[5] Alison, Kinney, hood (London: Bloomsbury, 2016).

[6] For an introduction to Turner’s work, see The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New Brunswick and London: Aldine Transaction [1969], 2008); idem, The Anthropology of Performance (New York: PAJ Publications, 1987).

[7] For example, Ronald Hutton, The Stations of the Sun: A History of the Ritual Year in Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 11-12, 26

[8] Francesca Granata, Experimental Fashion: Performance Art, Carnival and the Grotesque Body (London: I.B. Tauris, 2017); Adam Geczy and Viki Karaminas, Critical Fashion Practice: From Westwood to Beirendonck (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); Therèsa M. Winge, Body Style (London: Berg, 2012).

[9] Whinge, Body Style, 2.

FLOTUS’ White House Christmas make-over has been much criticised. Photographs have certainly made it seem more frightful than festive. (Critics may have a point: I mean, who uplights a Christmas tree?) My vexation is not caused by the glitter, fake snow and willow arcade (relatively speaking), but by a Nativity scene snapped recently by a friend. 

Nativity scenes are typically tacky and…

Since the nineteenth century, British employers have convened, or sanctioned their employees to convene, dress-up events for workers and their families. These events continue to be held today; in some cases, they are advertised to attract prospective employees. UK human resources companies even offer advice on the ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ of fancy dress wardrobes at work.

Fancy dress events for workers are held in parts of Germany, I believe, but typically only during carnival. I would be interested to know whether similar events have happened, or currently happen, in Japan and other parts of Asia. For this, I hope that followers of the blog will get in touch via the about page and let me know. As an understudied topic by academic researchers, details about contemporary fancy dress costume are few. Depending on responses, I shall offer my thoughts on this topic in a later post (I hope, unlike last time, not too much later…).

The character of the dress of a person stands so near to the character of the person who is the wearer of it, it is difficult to touch on one without the other.[1]

Nearly one hundred years later, in 1959, American author Lawrence Langner was still pondering the issue:

The selection of the fancy dress costume is never an accident when there is full freedom of choice, but it is an expression of a conscious or unconscious desire of the wearer.[2]

The enquiry is no less pressing today, and in 2009 journalist Leah McLaren wrote a short piece for the Spectator entitled, ‘Why do we long to be Nazis and tarts?’. At its heart, McLaren’s playful essay raises an interesting question about the motivation for fancy dress costume among the social elite.

It is conventionally argued that the donning of fancy dress in public enables people to vent; this is clothing as psychological salve. By temporarily inverting established norms and criticising social traditions and civic leaders, people are able to appreciate their necessity. I’m simplifying things, but for a large number of examples where fancy dress costume is worn, this basic notion seems to hold. However, the explanation is less satisfactory for fancy dress entertainments involving social elites – and a large number of recorded fancy dress events have been hosted by this privileged group – who have tended to dress as controversial figures from history, including Emperor Nero (businessman Philip Green), a Nazi Stormtrooper (Britain’s Prince Harry) and Marie-Antoinette (Britain’s Princess Beatrice).

If it seems unremarkable that the wealthy would wish to find pleasurable outlets for their money in the form of lavish fancy dress entertainments, the subjects they have favoured for their costumes appear perplexing, even troubling.

One of the first royals to adopt what might be considered a controversial form of fancy dress was Queen Victoria. Victoria held three costumed balls during her reign. Her third, hosted in the claustrophobic throne room of Buckingham Palace on 13 June 1851, was a Stuart Ball. Now this was surely an odd choice. Just under a decade earlier, The Queen had hosted a fancy dress ball to recreate the court of England’s conquering King Edward III, who had triumphed over the French in the Hundred Years’ War. This subject may not have been ideal for Anglo-Franco relations, but you can imagine how the concept would have appealed to an English monarch, especially as the medieval virtues of chivalry had become newly popular thanks to the writings of Walter Scott.[3] The reason for hosting a costume ball in honour of the Stuart King Charles II, who belonged to one of Britain’s longest ruling and most controversial dynasties, is less clear.

The Queen was not alone in her sympathies for this family, however. Throughout the nineteenth century, many aristocrats and royals dressed as figures from Britain’s Stuart dynasty and court. France’s equally controversial Bourbon dynasty, which included the autocratic rulers Louis XIV and Louis XVI, were no less popular at this time. According to Emilia Müller, ‘at the Bradley Martin’s Ball [hosted in New York in 1897] there were more than fifty women clad as Marie-Antoinette, whereas for the Vanderbilt Ball [hosted in New York in 1883] no less than twenty men chose to personify “Louis XVI”’.[4] Across the Atlantic, American elites went so far as to decorate their costumes with jewels that had belonged to Marie-Antoinette and Catherine the Great of Russia. These socially insensitive garment choices are perhaps analogous to today’s ‘Colonial and Native’ and ‘Chav’ parties favoured by royals and entrepreneurs.

So what is going on? Two suggestions come to mind, although I’m not convinced they provide a full explanation: First, and as anthropologist Victor Turner notes, nothing underlines regularity so well as absurdity or paradox.[5] This is a rendition of the ‘fancy dress as psychological salve’ thesis, but the comedic reversal of order and social position through costume has long been used by rulers to reinforce their singular authority. A good example of this is provided by the eighteenth-century court of Peter the Great of Russia. Peter’s loathing of long sermons and stuffy court etiquette may have influenced the antics of the Assembly, but historian Lindsey Hughes argues that the Tsar’s comedic reversal of order reinforced his authority, even if it did help to let off steam in a manner akin to popular festivities held throughout the period.[6] Peter’s rule in this fantasy placed in sharp relief his rule in reality.

Second, by dressing as their ancestors, the political and social elite could remind people of their distinctive heritage. If the hosts and party-goers were newly minted and their genealogy were insufficiently grand, no problem: a fancy dress costume would enable them to create fictional linkages to figures of the past; whether the people they imitated had been loved or loathed was of little consequence, for this was fancy dress worn, subtly, but no less significantly, to challenge and to assert.[7]

Both explanations have merits, but both assume that the aristocrats concerned were fully conscious of the signification of their clothing. When Mrs Bradley sent agents from Tiffany & Co. in New York to a Parisian auction house to buy jewels formerly worn by Marie-Antoinette, it is reasonable to assume that she knew what she was doing.[8] It is difficult to suggest the same for Prince William, who once dressed as a ‘Chav’, and his brother, Prince Harry, who dressed as a Nazi Stormtrooper. The Princes’ fancy dress decisions could have been influenced by a subconscious socialised behaviour, but this point is easier to raise than refine. This is something I need to think on…

  [1] Anon., Gentleman’s Magazine, April 1880, vol. 246, 469.

[2] L. Langner, The Importance of Wearing Clothes (Los Angeles: Elysium Growth Press, 1991), 149.

[3] M. Girouard, The Return to Camelot: Chivalry and the English Gentleman (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1991).

[4] E. Müller, ‘Fashion & Fancy in New York: The American Monarchs’, 5.

[5] V. Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure (New Brunswick & London: Aldine Transaction, 2008), 176.

[6] L. Hughes, Russia in the Age of Peter the Great (New Haven and London: Yale University Press,1998), 249-266.

[7] Müller, ‘Fashion & Fancy in New York’, 4.

[8] Ibid., 5-6.

The patent problem of maintaining that the pre-Renaissance world was literally and figuratively ‘dark’ is that we side-line cultural and political developments that were made before the sixteenth century. More fundamentally, we reveal ourselves to be ignorant of the sixteenth-century term ‘renaissance’ when we suggest this epoch erupted immaculately across Europe. Renaissance means ‘rebirth’, so it behoves us to understand what came before if we are to truly grasp and appreciate what came after.

In a more tangential, thinking-out-of-the-box, sort of way the denigration of the Middle Ages is unhelpful considering the many parallels that exist between our present and this past.

It strikes me that the rise of social media is close to making the twenty-first century an overwhelmingly visual culture. I would suggest that not since the Middle Ages have images, or infographics, played such an important role in the conveyance of complex information to so many people. In the Middle Ages, images helped an illiterate majority to perceive, however slightly, the knowledge of a literate minority. And just as then, so too are we now beginning to see that so-called experts are being signalled out, both as soothsayers and scaremongers, on account of their perceived ability to assimilate and synthesise large amounts of disparate information. The singling out of experts, whether for the purposes devotion or demonisation, brings to mind another social division that readily characterises the Middle Ages and Modernity, the rift between the wealthy and the rest. As Silicon Valley billionaires buy up rural real estate in America and New Zealand as a precaution against an upcoming apocalypse, it is apparent that the world’s income gap is staggering large, and it continues to grow.[iii] The situation for today’s Kings of Commerce is analogous to that of medieval monarchs, certainly those who ruled in England, whose annual cash income was larger than the combined yearly revenues of their entire aristocracy: during the thirteenth century, leading English nobles had access to between £1,500 and £5,000 each year. Their king received between £25,000 and £30,000 each year. England’s notorious King John – he of Magna Carta infamy – managed to raise a treasure of over £100,000.[iv]

The social consequences of these past and present parallels are also similar. Before the UK voted to leave the European Union on 23 June 2016, and in the context of a televised discussion about immigration, Nigel Farage, then leader of the anti-EU party UKIP, was condemned for suggesting that violence would likely erupt if the people’s voice were ignored by those in government.[v] He was accused of scaremongering. And yet, in a way, his observation was not far wrong, although this should not suggest that I condone of his demagoguery. Incidents of hate crimes against ‘outsiders’ and ‘aliens’ do appear to have spiked in the past six months and street protests have become increasingly prevalent as people, demoralised by the political process, take to the streets in a physical and desperate gesture to have their views heard. In the medieval period, and prior to the establishment of representative institutions, protests and street demonstrates were one of the few means by which the mass could express their dislike towards the agenda of the mighty.[vi] And as I continue research for my book, I am struck by the use of fancy dress costume to highlight social concerns in the past and in the present at these popular gatherings. Shortly after the release of the Panama Papers, a carnival protest in London called for people to wear fancy dress. Those who opposed the outcome of the United Kingdom’s EU referendum protested in fancy dress, as, more recently, did millions of people around the world, who took to the streets following the inauguration of Donald Trump.

If Stephen Greenblatt has downplayed the importance of the Middle Ages, I am conscious that I could be accused of going too far the other way and making the Middle Ages the answer to everything. Clearly, centuries separate the Middle Ages and Modernity and patent differences do exist between these periods. I merely suggest this: it is interesting – important, even – to observe that across chronology and culture very broadly similar political and social circumstances appear to engender analogous cultural forms.

  [i] In the UK, the book’s published title was The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began.

[ii] L. Saetviet Miles ‘The Ethics of Inventing Modernity: Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve’, 30 May 2016. www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2016/05/the-ethics-of-inventing-modernity.html?m=1.

[iii] Evan Osnos, ‘Survival of the Richest’, The New Yorker, 30 January 2017, 36-45.

[iv] D.A. Carpenter, The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284 (Penguin, 2003), 271-277.

[v] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7aHFhn6Kq6g.

[vi] For example, E. Le Roy Ladurie, Carnival: A People’s Uprising at Romans 1579-1580, tr. M. Feeney (Scolar Press, 1979).

A seasonally-appropriate _New Post_, The History of the Christmas Jumper.

The following is a longer version of a piece that I was commissioned to write for George at ASDA. An abridged version appeared in the Sunday Express.  Few Christmas traditions generate as much amusement and attention as the Christmas jumper, with the possible exception of the Brussels sprout. And like the sprout, the jumper’s ability to provoke is at the heart of its growing appeal. Last year,…