14.3.3. Men’ s fashion
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Men´s fashion in the baroque was quite different from the clothes men wear today. At that time men wore more rigid hats, leggings and wigs, which mostly had very remarkable colors, for example gold-blond or red. Additionally some wore colored socks, also socks made of silk. After the year 1690 men preferred tying a scarf around their necks This was the birth of the today's tie. Beyond that further sections of men´s clothes were developed, three of them are still used today: the jacket, the waistcoat and the pants. The clothes, that came into contact with the skin, were changed only once a month - if at all! Even jewelery was worn by men at that time. Altogether the fashion for men was very similar to that of the women. The only male feature this fashion had was the small moustache.
The average shoe worn was a slipper with high-heels. Later the Spanish style dominated where the clothes for men were tight and body-fixed. The fashion gained a widening character again. The stuffed short leg dress, which hardly covered half of the thigh, was dropped. The leg dress covered the knee, and was tied together. The tapes, which were used for tightening the leg dress, resembled narrow spikes which were hung-down low. The material, which used to be cut in stripes, was not cut anymore, but in order to show the underwear the external seams were left open. If they didn´t want to show the underwear, the leg dress was tied at the knee with a strip.
Women’s fashion
Women wore narrower collars these days, as the décolleté
was broadened to the shoulders. Women‘s skirts hadn’t changed much. They
mostly wore bell-shaped skirts and a corset with a very low neckline. The
sleeves are never longer than the elbows. At home, however, women always
wore a housecoat. In France and England they protected their faces with
a mask, and only much later with a veil. Italy and Germany did not follow
this custom. Women liked wearing a fur collar around their necks which
was called a flea--fur, because one believed it tended to attract troublesome
insects. In contrast to the Italians, women from Spain, Germany, France
and England never showed their own hair.
The general slenderness of woman’s fashion was emphasized by the narrow
corset, which was stabilized by steel bones which reached up to 50 centimetres.
At the end of the seventeenth century the first flies appeared in the faces
of women-the so-called famous mouches.
Differences between baroque’s and today’s fashion
It can clearly be seen that in the baroque fashion was worn to show
power and glamour. The high society of the baroque time had to wear their
bell-shaped skirts and pearl-necklaces, as for the men their leg-dresses
and wigs to show their rank among the aristocracy. Today fashion is more
a style from which people can chose, to express their beings and not their
power. Well most people at least. Today´s fashion is also marked
by its big variety. There are hardly any clothes that speak for our time,
maybe the baggies or the techno-outfit. But all in all it is like we pick
out our clothes from a big sea of all fashion. There seem to be no limits.
Designers will create more and more and the big sea will be filled, and
then we will have all the opportunities and nothing will restrict us to
express what we want to express with the clothes that we wear.
Today' s fashion : a completely different cup of tea: simplicity instead of representation
Judith Schacht/Sandra Dobmeier/Nadja Strobel
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