Costume research: 18th Century

Referred to as "stays" until the late nineteenth century, the corset was the basic garment of every woman's wardrobe. It was never worn next to the skin, but over a knee-length T-shaped garment known as a shift. The stays were most often laced up the back but could also have a laced opening down the center front, in which case there was usually a boned stomacher piece that slotted in behind the lacing. The bone running down the center front of the stays was known as a busk.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the stays, which had come into fashion thirty years earlier, were worn long and pointed at the front, sitting over the front of the skirt, with the back of the stays cut much higher. The waistline often featured small tabs at the side and back, which splayed out over the hips and helped to keep the skirt in place.

While early examples of stays were covered in elaborate silks and often featured as a visible part of the dress, they gradually retreated to being mainly an underwear garment, with the outer layers comprised of plain silks or linen. By mid-century, stays featured less boning, and by the 1770s a new emphasis on the bust meant that several horizontal lines of boning, often metal, were introduced to give a more rounded form. The diarist Horace Walpole recorded the dangers of such garments in 1777: "There has been a young gentlewoman overturned and terribly bruised by her Vulcanian stays. They now wear a steel busk down their middle, and a rail of the same metal across their breasts." By the end of the century, stays had fallen out of favor. Fashion now looked to the ideal of the classical Greek figure and natural lines inspired by the vogue for the classical world. Rigid boned bodices were abandoned entirely or replaced by light canvas stays with cording for support.

The production of stays was a male industry due to the heavy-duty work involved. They were made from several layers of linen or canvas treated with a paste to stiffen them and then hand-stitched with vertical and diagonal channels into which strips of whalebone were inserted. The whalebone, also called baleen, was not actually bone but came from the roof of the whale's mouth; this would also have to be cut into strips by the staymaker. In France, trade restrictions meant that until 1776, only tailors were permitted to make stays; however, after this date couturieres (female dressmakers) were also allowed to produce these garments.

For less wealthy women, stays were still an essential item of clothing. In rural areas, stays were often made from scored leather and worn as an outer garment, offering support to those involved in manual labor. In urban areas, large secondhand markets offered a wide variety of garments for those who could not afford to have their stays specially made. (from The Timeline of Art History, Metropolitan Museum of Art)



Costume historians have seen the lavish plenitude of handwoven silks consumed in the design of such gowns to be an explicit pronouncement of wealth and status. In addition, the nature of the gown’s construction, its tightly fitted and corseted bodice, and the wide expanse of its skirt dictated the privileged woman’s movements and imposed a number of challenges. The management of an eighteenth-century gown in as simple an act as sitting down “could highlight a person’s physical grace,” according to the historian Mimi Hellman, but it could also “expose the imperfections of the ungainly body.” From this perspective, the gown was not only a pronouncement of elite membership; it was also an instrument that tested a woman’s worthiness for society through the graceful choreography and negotiation of her dressed body. (from blog.mode: addressing fashion, Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Interesting to think about the stilettos of today compared to the stays and panniers of yesterday-- in what ways do they display status? Change the way a woman moves? How can we play with these ideas as actors? Is one character more restricted in her movement, or altering her body shape to a greater degree than another? I'm already thinking about corsets and platform shoes...

--Erika

Dressing for Success

Working on the Upper East Side is like being trapped in a high-end shopping mall. There's nowhere affordable to eat lunch, and I often feel like I'm not dressed for the occasion.

Growing up in Laramie, Wyoming, I had a kind of reverse snobbery about expensive clothes. We made fun of the one girl in high school with nice clothes and a fancy car. "Oh, Abby," we said. "She's the one who leaves all the price tags on so we'll know how much she spent." My grandparents are cattle ranchers from western South Dakota, and while I was a "town kid" (my parents taught at the University) I had a kind of rural pride about sewing my own clothes when I wanted something, buying cheap underwear from the JC Penney and tank tops from the local Kmart, having fun with clothing but not really feeling the need to impress anyone with the way I dressed.

But now... I sometimes find myself struggling with a kind of materialism that up until a few years ago was more or less foreign to me. Part of it is walking up Madison Avenue and knowing better than to even look at the price tags, even in the most deceptively casual stores. ("Wow, $55 for a cotton tank top. Really?") Part of it is the fact that most of my college friends are making big bucks (or at least medium bucks) and I'm still deferring my student loan payments. Part of it is that most of my college friends are married with two kids and a house and a dog, and I'm still alternately amused and angered by online dating websites and struggling to keep my one houseplant alive.

Sometimes I find myself admiring expensive logo bags or overtly expensive clothing worn by other women, and then end up silently chastising myself for wanting such trivial things, even for a moment. In my heart I know that I will not necessarily find true love even if I have the perfect first-date outfit. In my heart I know that the people who care about labels on clothes are not ultimately the people that I want to care about me. In my heart I know that part of the reason I don't have a high-powered job is that I have chosen to devote my energy elsewhere, and that most of the time, I am happy about that. But still I find myself wanting these things, not wanting to want them, but still wanting them, in spite of myself. Perhaps it's because owning and wearing these status objects seem to guarantee their wearers a membership badge in some kind of secret club. They command any room they walk into. They feel entitled, and because they act entitled, they more often then not get what they want-- at least in the venues in which I see them.

I think New York may be unusually taxing psychologically-- would I feel quite so dumpy if I lived in a different city and wasn't constantly comparing myself to the socialites and model-wannabes getting out of taxis on Park Avenue South? Maybe. Maybe not. I see these women, often on dates with older men, teetering in their stilettos... and part of me, in a kind of perverse homage to my Suzuki teacher Ellen Lauren, wants to sneak up behind them and just give them a little push on the shoulder to see if they can keep their balance. I feel a bizarre and powerful combination of envy, and hatred, and pity, and then I walk past them with my groceries and make my way back home.

--Erika Iverson

Tablework

On Sunday January 27 we met for the first time as a company to talk about the play. The themes of Pride, Status, Fame, Reputation, Restriction, Wealth and Love were brought up as we discussed examples from our own lives when asked about what intrigued us about the play. Gregor then asked two important questions: What actually happens in the play? and What is this play about? Two hours later, we got most of the way through the play and were nearing a conclusion that perhaps the play is about True Love. Or, maybe not. Tune in next week to find out more!

Sunday's discussion

I was really glad to have some time to sit and talk about our ideas about the play in an informal way. I didn't take notes so I'm just going to try to recall as much as I can about the ideas that were tossed around during our 3 hour discussion.

Several of us had read Frances Burney's "Farewell" letter that I posted earlier today. We found it very touching and some even wondered if we could work it somehow into the production. Some people suggested a framing device, where Frances Burney or the text itself would appear on stage-- we imagined the pages of the text being locked away in a box, waiting for someone to set the characters free. We even speculated about a piece of stagecraft where the characters might somehow climb out of a chest on stage, a la Pandora's Box (didn't Bill Irwin do a trick like this in Fool Moon, where people kept coming out of a trunk that was brought on empty to the center of the stage?). We all agreed that whether we use a literal frame or not, it is a powerful idea that Frances Burney's voice will finally be heard onstage after 229 years. Did you know that the original text of The Witlings is part of a rare books collection that is housed here at the New York Public Library? How amazing that these handwritten pages that live right here in New York City will be brought to life about 40 blocks north in May.

We actually called Betty Rizzo, a Professor Emeritus and Burney scholar who has expressed her interest in our project. She cleared up a question about Lady Smatter (it's her opinion that she's based on Elizabeth Montagu, although other scholars have suggested that she is partly based on Frances Burney's stepmother, which might explain why Mr. Burney found the play objectionable. Some have even suggested that perhaps Mr. Dabbler is a jab at Mr. Burney himself). We sat for a while discussing questions of status, i.e., why does Censor seem to have so much power over Lady Smatter? Ultimately it seems that he doesn't care what people think of him, and knows that Lady Smatter does care, which is ultimately her downfall. Live by the sword, die by the sword-- her investment in being "famous," well known, and admired by her peers is what causes her to unravel.

Britney Spears was brought up, as the subject of a discussion about fame and infamy. All those gossip rags love to report on stars when good things happen to them, but they love it even more when they fall apart. One of the Burney scholars (Doody?) points out that all of Dabbler's poems seem to be about disaster befalling beautiful young women-- perhaps Burney making a little fun of herself?-- just as this play depends upon our enjoyment at watching a young woman suffer financial ruin and loss of home, love, esteem of her peers, and sense of her own self-worth, even if only temporarily. Interestingly, Mr. Crisp in his letter to Frances about the play (before he more or less shut it down completely) wondered if it would be better if Censor didn't give Cecilia the money at the end of the play, saying that perhaps she should get herself out of trouble. Should Cecilia shave her head mid-play? Hard to pull off, especially more than once, but it's worth thinking about these kinds of pop culture references that we can appropriate or adapt for our own purposes.

Several of us brought up images we had concerning the characters-- we were saying it might be funny if Lady Smatter was extremely tall and thin, perhaps with a very tall wig or hat, and perhaps Mrs. Sapient is very short and wide. There's an exhibit in the Costume Institute at the Met right now called blog.mode: there are some modern avant-garde outfits which might be inspiring, but there are also a few period men's and women's garments that are worth looking at. I was thinking about the idea of restriction-- that whether the garments we use are ultimately period or modern, the upper-class characters are probably wearing things that are restricting in some way. Period men's suits are very tight silk breeches and heavily embroidered jackets with lace collars, and in some cases both men and women wore corsets. One of the garments at the Met is one of those dresses with the panniers that make the woman look as if she is wearing a small shelf under her dress-- a costume like that certainly has possibilities for comic movement on stage-- Sapient taking out Jack with an ill-timed turn?

One image I had about Cecilia is that she is somehow stripped during the course of the play-- if she's covered in ruffles and furbelows and jewelry at the beginning of the play, perhaps these things are given away or taken away from her? This could either be very literal, i.e., Cecilia gives Mrs. Voluble a ring to let her stay in the room, or could be a more expressionistic scene where ruffles, sleeves, shoes, petticoats are stripped off of her (perhaps by the milliners shop ladies?). Again, whether or not it's actually done on stage, I like the idea of Cecilia somehow being stripped down and forced to stand on her own two feet. In the end, when Beaufort says, "All I have now to offer you is my heart," and she says "it's all I ever wanted," she has to mean it. It's more interesting I think if she starts out taking certain things for granted and has a genuine awakening both that she's had it pretty easy for a long time and that in the end, all she really wants is Beaufort, rich or poor.

I also talked about a theatre "philosophy" for lack of a better word, which has been heavily influenced by my college mentor, Arden Fingerhut. I'll try to formulate my ideas and discuss them further at a later date, but the shorthand version is that you don't put "The Moral of the Play" directly on the stage-- hopefully you create an environment where these ideas are evoked in the mind of the audience.

More than enough for now. Please feel free to comment on this entry or start a new one with additional subjects that we discussed yesterday. I'm really excited about the possibilities and opportunities that this play presents...

-Erika