costume

costume distinctive forms of clothing, including official or ceremonial attire such as ecclesiastical vestments , coronation robes, academic gowns, armor , and theatrical dress. The use of ornament preceded the use of protective garments; its purpose was to emphasize social position by a great display of trophies, charms, and other valuables and to enhance attractiveness. Superstition, caste distinction, and climatic necessity all have been influential in the evolution of dress.

The term costume also includes accessories, such as the shoe , hat , glove , corset , handkerchief , fan , umbrella , cane , and jewelry ; styles of wearing the hair (see hairdressing ) and beard ; and primitive methods of body-marking and attaching ornaments to the body.

Ancient Costume

The ancient Egyptian costume for men was first a wrapped loincloth and later a kilt or skirt of pleated and starched white linen. Egyptian women first wore the kalasiris, a one-piece, narrow sheath of transparent linen, which was later adopted by men as the tunic. The Egyptian costume evolved into a highly decorative mode of dress characterized by the use of fluted linen, of jewelry (especially the beaded yoke collar), and of cosmetics and perfume ; the wig was also worn. The basic Greek garment, noted for its simplicity and graceful draping, consisted of the chiton and girdle. Roman dress, influenced by that of the Greeks, was simple and dignified; the toga, which was worn over the tunic, was the distinctive garment of the Roman citizen.

Medieval Costume

The change from ancient to medieval costume began (c.400) with the disintegration of the Roman Empire. Roman attire, which had previously assimilated the elaborate features of Byzantine dress, was gradually affected by the austere costume of the barbaric invader. Both men and women wore a double tunic; the under tunic, or chemise, had long tight sleeves (a feature that remained until the 17th cent.) and a high neck; the girded wool overtunic, or robe, often had loose sleeves. A mantle, or indoor cloak, was also worn.

After 1200 a great variety of fine fabrics from the East were available as a result of the Crusades, and the elegant dress of feudal Europe was evolved. With the introduction of various ways of cutting the basic garment, fashion , or style, began. A long, girded tunic, then called the cote or cotte, continued to be worn over the chemise by both men and women; a surcote (sleeveless and with wide armholes) was often worn over it. At this time family crests, or coats of arms (see blazonry ; heraldry ; crest ), became popular, and particolored garments came into vogue.

Proper fit was increasingly emphasized, and by 1300 tailoring had become important and buttons had become useful as well as ornamental. The belted cote-hardie, with a close-fitting body and short skirt, was worn over a tighter, long-sleeved doublet and a chemise. And, as men's legs were now exposed, hose were emphasized. The introduction (c.1350) of the houppelande, or overcoat, marked the first real appearance of the collar. Over a chemise and corset women wore a gown with a V neck and a long, flowing train; the front of the skirt was often tucked into the high-waisted belt. In its extreme, the style of the period was typified by profuse dagging (scalloped edges), exaggerated, hanging sleeves, pointed slippers, and fantastic headdresses (see headdress and veil ).

Renaissance Costume

After 1450 there was a reversal in fashion from the pointed Gothic look to the square look of the Renaissance. The style in its exaggerated form is best represented in Holbein's paintings of the English court of Henry VIII. Men's costume had wide, square shoulders with puffed sleeves, padded doublets, bombasted upperstocks, or trunk hose, short gowns (cloaks), and square-toed shoes. The doublet, now sleeveless, was worn over the shirt (formerly the chemise) and under the jerkin.

Women wore a square-necked gown with the bodice laced up the front and attached to the gathered skirt at the hips; the front of the skirt was often open, to reveal decorative petticoats. These, together with a preference for rich, heavy materials, especially velvet, and a fad for profuse slashing and puffing of the under material seen through the slash, created a massive and bulky appearance.

In Elizabethan England (c.1550) the costume was stiffened, and the appearance was less bulky. Both men and women wore the characteristic "shoulder wings," pointed stomacher, and starched ruff and cuffs made of lace . Materials were heavy and lustrous and considerable ornamentation was used. Men wore a short cape, and their trunk hose were unpadded, longer, and generally made in sections, or paned. Women wore exaggerated farthingales, or hoops.

Seventeenth-Century Costume

The early 17th-century English costume was less formal, with a softer line created by satin and silk materials. The period of the Cavalier and Puritan is captured in the court paintings of Van Dyck and in the early work of Rembrandt. Men characteristically wore pantaloon breeches (full trunk hose), high boots, a broad, falling lace or linen collar and cuffs, and a full cloak. In women's costume, the arms began to be displayed and necklines were lower. The bodice was finished with a wide, round collar, or bertha, at the neck, and a flared, pleated, or ruffled skirtlike section, or peplum, was added at the waist. The apron was often a permanent part of the skirt.

In England after 1660 the dress of the Restoration period became extravagantly decorative, using ribbons, flounces, and feathers. The dandies of the period wore petticoat breeches, full-sleeved cambric shirts, and bolerolike doublets. Sir Peter Lely's court paintings show excellent examples of such costume.

Eighteenth-Century Costume

In the 18th cent. France, under the rule of Louis XIV, became the costume center of the world, with Mme Pompadour, Mme du Barry, and Marie Antoinette successively dictating the fashions of the day. It was the age of the wig, of rococo settings, of delicate pastels and flower-patterned silks, and of embroidery . Early in the century Rousseau's ideas affected style of dress. Women's costume became graceful and pastoral; the pointed bodice, tightly laced, was finished with a triangular scarf, or fichu, at the neck, and sleeves were ruffled at the elbow. The bell-shaped hoop appeared c.1710, and c.1735 side hoops, or panniers, were popular. Women's costume, which at this period became extremely formal, was gradually softened into a romantic look (as in portraits by Gainsborough) that anticipated the Empire style .

The 18th-century man first wore a knee-length cassock that buttoned all the way down over an equally long waistcoat, and buckled knee breeches. As the century progressed, the waistcoat became shorter, the skirt of the coat began to form tails, the collar became higher, and the sleeves and breeches became tighter.

Nineteenth-Century Costume

The Empire style, associated in early 19th-century France with Josephine, was an attempt to recapture classic simplicity. Women wore a thin muslin dress with a high waist, a low round neck, and puffed short sleeves. Men wore a short-waisted cutaway coat with tails, a high collar, and large lapels and military boots; plain-colored wools became predominant. The whole male appearance was strikingly military. After 1815 women, emphasizing their fragility, achieved an hourglass shape with an extremely tight corset. Their dresses had wide collars, sloping shoulders, leg-of-mutton sleeves, and full skirts. Men wore the frock coat, which was fitted and had a skirt that reached the knees, and trousers were introduced and generally adopted.

After 1840 Victorian women wore layers of decorative crinoline and after 1855 the hoop; sleeves were bell-shaped, and waist and necklines were pointed. Though men still wore the tailcoat and frock coat, the sack coat, sometimes worn without the vest, was becoming popular for everyday wear. In general, men's clothes were becoming looser and more tubular and were predominantly of somber broadcloth.

After 1865 the bustle became fashionable for women; at this time, too, women first wore a tailored jacket with collar and lapels—the forerunner of the suit. The growing emphasis on sports, especially tennis and golf, was beginning to affect costume. Knee breeches, called knickerbockers or knickers, came into fashion for men, and sweaters became popular. After 1890 women most often wore the suit or the shirtwaist with balloon sleeves and wasp waist: the dress of the Gibson girl. Men's suits had square shoulders and straight waists and were usually of serge or tweed; the tuxedo was used for formal wear.

Twentieth-Century Costume

After 1910, as women's feet and legs began to be exposed, shoes were colored to match the outfit. The nightgown, for women, gave way for a time to pajamas. The popularity of sportswear for men increased; the open-necked shirt was worn and trousers were cuffed and creased. Women's dress after 1914 was characterized by straight lines, e.g., the floor-length hobble skirt and the flapper's boyish, short-skirted costume and matching accessories were popular in the 1920s.

The following decades produced radical changes in women's wear, from the flowing skirts of the 1930s and the box-jacketed suits of the 40s to the sack dress of the early 60s. Since then the fluctuating hemline has been a predominant concern of fashion. The abbreviated miniskirt has vied for popularity with the full-length maxi and the calf-length midi in coats, skirts, and dresses. Women's clothing has become less restrictive and more casual than in previous eras. During the 1960s men's clothing underwent revolutionary changes in color and fabric, becoming flamboyant for the first time in the 20th cent. The flaring of trouser cuffs in the 1970s was a major modification in shape.

National Dress

The traditional national dress of Western European countries has generally given way to standardized modes, although traditional costume is still associated with national celebrations and pageantry. The typical costume—a gathered peasant skirt, a full blouse with puffed sleeves, and a laced bodice—is colorful and picturesque, often elaborately fashioned and embroidered, and augmented by kerchief, headdress, and apron.

Costume in East Asia has until recently remained unchanged for centuries. In the Arab countries both men and women have for centuries wrapped themselves in voluminous flowing robes that indicate the tribe and status of the wearer by means of style, color, and richness. The people of Malaysia wrap themselves in a loose skirt, or sarong. Chinese dress was traditionally distinguished by the use of magnificent textiles and embroidery and of pearls and jade—all symbolic of rank and wealth. However, from the years shortly after the Communist regime began (1949) until the 1990s men and women of China wore dark-colored trouser suits; in recent years the Chinese attitude toward dress has changed somewhat, particularly in urban areas, allowing for more varied clothing styles. On Taiwan a sheath dress with mandarin collar and side slits in the skirt was traditionally characteristic of women's clothing.

Japanese men and women have widely adopted Western modes of dress, but many women retain the characteristic kimono and tabi (socks) or geta (wooden clogs). India, too, has traditional costumes dictated by religion or caste. Women in general wear the long draped fabric, or sari, sandals, and profuse jewelry. Exquisite muslins and "painted" cottons have from antiquity been notable features of Indian garments.

Bibliography

See J. Laver, The Concise History of Costume and Fashion (1969); G. Squire, Dress and Society (1974); V. Steele, Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion (2005).

costume †manners and customs proper to a time and place XVIII; mode of personal attire; set of outer garments, etc. XIX. — F. — It. costume custom, fashion, habit :- L. consuetūdō, -din- CUSTOM.
So costumier maker of costumes. XIX.

Costume. From earliest times costuming has been an essential part of the theatre. In Greek tragedy the actors wore masks and long robes with sleeves, quite unlike the dress of the day. In the Old Comedy of Aristophanes the chorus wore symbolic details like horses' heads and tails, or feathered wings, while the chief characters wore loose tunics, grotesquely padded, and a large red leather phallus. This was later abandoned, and in the New Comedy of Menander actors wore the ordinary clothes of the time. When the Romans took over Greek tragedy and comedy they adopted the existing costumes, with the addition of the toga and stola and also, for tragedy, the high boot (cothurnus) and the exaggeratedly high peak (onkos) over the forehead. By the time of the Caesars, stage costumes, except for the popular pantomimes, which were played almost in the nude, and the patchwork rags of the Atellan farce (see FABULA I: ATELLANA), had become very elaborate and colourful.

When the theatre, which had disappeared with the collapse of the civilized world, was reborn in liturgical drama, the priests and choirboys wore their usual robes, with some simple additions, such as veils for the women characters, crowns for the Three Kings, or a rough cloak for a shepherd. But once the plays were moved from the church to the market-place and acted by laymen, costuming again became important, and sometimes the mystery play of the later Middle Ages was expensively dressed, with golden robes for God and his angels, and fantastic leather garments for the Devil and his attendant imps. In the morality play the allegorical figures representing the virtues and vices wore richly fantasticated versions of contemporary dress, except for the Devil, who kept the costume he had worn in the miracle play. His attendant, the Old Vice, was usually dressed as a fool or jester, with a long-eared cap decorated with bells, a cockscomb, and a parti-coloured close-fitting tunic and leggings, reminiscent of the costumes of the Roman farce-players. Much the same type of costume was worn by the masked actors of the commedia dell'arte, though except for the lovers, who wore contemporary dress, each character was recognizably from a different part of Italy: Pulcinella from Naples, Arlecchino from Bergamo, Pantalone from Venice, while the Capitano was a Spaniard, or sometimes a Greek. The gaudy rags of Arlecchino soon became stylized into the diamonds of brightly contrasted silk worn by Harlequin today, the white belted and bloused suit of Pulcinella was stereotyped by Watteau into the familiar garb of Pierrot, but otherwise the characters retained their individuality.

The main line of development was through the academic theatre of Renaissance Italy and the Court play. The Italian intermezzi, triumphs, and pageants, the French ballets de cour, the English masques, gave immense scope for fantastic mythological costumes, often, for the men, based on the ‘Roman’ pattern, with a plumed head-dress, a breastplate moulded to the body, and some variation of the Roman kilt; this fashion was adopted on the public stage and continued to be used for tragic heroes for over 200 years. Women's costumes, as always, followed contemporary fashions. Many of the designs for costumes worn during the extravagant entertainments devised on the Continent, particularly in France to enhance the prestige of Louis XIV, still survive. Some of the earliest were by the great Italian stage designer Torelli, but French designers soon took over, the most influential being Jean Bérain, whose work, not only for the theatre but over the whole field of decorative art, synthesizes all the tendencies of the time. After the death of Louis XIV the elegant balance of le style Bérain declined into the fantasies of rococo, which achieved its finest development on stage in the designs of Louis-René Boquet (fl. 1760–82), who worked both for the Paris Opéra and for the Court. Like Bérain, he was content to work mainly in a contemporary style, suggesting character or period by some small decorative detail. His costumes, both male and female, are characterized by his use of wide paniers, forming a kind of ballet skirt covered with rococo detail. This panier-skirt reached as far as England, where Quin wore it in Thomson's Coriolanus (1749). Among the reforms of Garrick was the abolition of such garments in favour of contemporary styles, Macbeth, for instance, being acted in the scarlet of the King's livery. Garrick's leading actresses in tragedy also wore contemporary costume, including the high head-dresses of the 1770s with a crown or flowing veil, or, for Eastern potentates, a turban with a waving plume. Twenty years earlier Voltaire, helped by the actor Lekain, had begun a campaign for correct costuming, at least in classical plays. In his Orphelin de la Chine (1755) Lekain as the hero wore an embroidered robe in place of the usual panier-skirt, and the heroine, played by Mlle Clairon, a simple sleeveless dress which was less incongruous than the exaggerated skirt of the time, held out by hip-pads. A great advance towards accuracy was made by the actor Talma when in 1789 he appeared as Brutus, in Voltaire's play of that name, with bare legs and arms. The reaction of the public was unfavourable, but by the end of the century the Revolutionary passion for anything remotely connected with antiquity had made classical costumes acceptable on the stage.

During the early 19th century the popularity of Scott's novels, many of which were dramatized, led to a growth of interest in ‘historical’ costumes, which meant in practice the addition of Elizabethan, Stuart, and other details to contemporary dress. The resulting mixture is not without charm, but bears very little relation to historical accuracy. The first step towards ‘antiquarian’ detail in dress was made by Planché with his costume designs for Charles Kemble's production of King John at Covent Garden in 1823. Charles Kean strove for accuracy in his productions of Shakespeare at the Princess's in the 1850s, though as Hermione in The Winter's Tale Mrs Kean wore a perfectly correct Grecian costume over a crinoline. Mrs Bancroft, playing Peg Woffington in what she fondly imagined was 18th-century dress, now looks, in the photographs that survive, purely contemporary. Towards the end of the 19th century the triumph of realism in the theatre meant on the one hand an almost pedantic accuracy in dress which was sometimes very untheatrical, and on the other an increase in the number of modern plays in which the actors wore the dress of the day, often their own clothes. Consequently the designer, excluded from the legitimate stage, let his fancy run riot in lighter musical productions and in opera.

From about this time costume, scenery, and lighting began to be seen as interlocking components of the overall design plan. Diaghilev's Russian Ballet, which startled Europe and America in 1911–16, introduced a brilliant non-naturalism in both settings and costumes which influenced all departments of theatre design. In contrast, Appia and Craig had been arguing for simplicity, grouping figures statuesquely against austere three-dimensional settings or neutral screens. Abstraction and symbolism swept through the avant-garde theatres of France, Germany, and, especially, Soviet Russia, where the Constructivists of the post-Revolutionary years favoured an impersonal approach with the actor treated almost as an icon. The more extreme examples of modernist costume design were self-defeating, the shape and movements of the human body conflicting with the elements of ‘pure’ design. Max Reinhardt instituted a form of stylized realism that was strikingly successful in his large-scale productions, but the main line of development ran from Piscator through the anti-illusionist work of Brecht.

As in scenic design the boom in new materials since the 1960s, especially plastics and adhesives, has greatly increased the costume designer's range. For a contemporary piece the designer will often choose ready-made clothes; a play set in the past is rarely dressed exactly in the fashions of the time, but in versions modified to highlight character and mood. Plays by Shakespeare have been subjected to costuming in the style of almost every period and culture, from ancient Greek to futuristic and from Japan to the Wild West.

The production designer will often be responsible for both scenery and costumes, or each may have a separate designer. In either case, close collaboration with the lighting designer as well as with the director is a vital part of the design plan.