How often have you heard a version of these lines: “Oh gosh, that dress is so gorgeous. I wish I lived back then so I could wear that everyday!” or, “You don’t see things like that these day’s, something has gone wrong and we have to go back to the way things were!” or, “Men and women back then were so elegant, I wish I could live in that time!”
I get it, the way I and other people portray aspects of history have a certain appeal. I love the past, otherwise I wouldn’t do this job. I get so excited about clothes that are hundreds of years old, and I want to spend all my time indulged in all things that have to do with the past.
But still, I do not wish I was born in any different era!
But it’s a compliment!?
I know. I get that these comments are very sweet, and the people who say this don’t mean any harm by them. Quite the contrary: people say this because they are so excited by the historical clothes they see. And I get it, I truly do. But I think it is still important to take a pause and think about what it would mean “to be born in a different time.”
The more you know…
I work with historical fashion full time, but I don’t only look at the dresses. To truly understand historical fashion, I think you have to look at it from a broader point of view. So when I am working with historical fashions, I also spend quite a bit of time just learning about history in general.
And the more you study history, the more you realize, it is not all that pretty.
It is easy to forget that when you are looking at a gorgeous silk gown with gold embroidery and velvet trim, but for the majority of people, that was not the case.
For many people, living in that time meant owning two or three simple woolen or linen dresses in total. It meant having to spend a year’s wages on a new dress if one of those wore out. It meant having to work hard long hours. It meant having not much choice in what you ate. And that was only if you were lucky. If you were on the lower end of society, your life was even less pleasant.
But even if you were among those who were well off, we are still talking about a time when we had slavery, sexism, and classism. It was a time where you had to behave exactly as was expected of you based on how you were born. It was a time where medical knowledge was far less prevalent than it is now. Getting the simplest infection could mean a death sentence, and going to a doctor could mean surgery without anesthesia.
Taking the bad with the good
Off course, I don’t wish to paint the past as horrible. A lot of things we can see as gruesome today, were actually done in order to help people. Like the surgery example: performing surgery without an anesthetic today would be barbaric. In a time before anesthetics were invented, it could be the only option to save a life.
What I am trying to say is that we should have a complete view of history. Not only seeing the pretty dresses, but seeing history for what it was. It was messy. It had wonderful parts and it had dark pages. And while it is easy to forget those things, that is not the most constructive way to look at history.
When we forget about the dark parts of history, we set ourselves up for disaster. Pushing the worst parts of history under the rug makes it more likely that we will make those same mistakes again. We can learn from the mistakes people made hundreds of years ago, if we only remember them.
Enjoying and working with historic costumes does not mean we favor that time over our own. It means appreciating the past for exactly what it was.
Our Time Machines
It is not a coincidence that my catchphrase is: “Like you just stepped out of a time machine”. Because that is truly the way I approach historical costuming, and history in general. We don’t have to reverse time, or be born in a different time.
Our needle and thread are our time machines, or our books, or museums. We can figuratively “go back” in history, just for a little while, when we are working with history. But, like a time machine, we can also get back to the present.
The beauty of choice
The fundamental factor in this all is our ability to choose. I am a firm believer in choosing tradition when it serves us, and accepting change when it doesn’t. If we look back on the whole of history, I think that the majority of people today are more free and better off than they were ever before. And while it can sometimes present some challenges of its own, overall I think that is a wonderful thing.
We can choose to wear a gorgeous historic dress, and then wear casual modern clothes the next day. We can choose to wear a corset when we want to flatter our shapes, but there is no one shunning us or calling us immoral when we don’t. We can choose to wear a dress one day and pants the next, and there is no one telling us that we have to wear either one or the other for the rest of our lives because we are a certain gender.
When we choose to immerse ourselves in history, it is not to say the present is worse. We can just enjoy the good things time has left us, as well as enjoying everything we have in the present.
