Ruta Guzeviciute

Costumes are an eloquent example of the material culture of a period, closely surrounding the humans and expressing better than anything else the current condition of culture, economy, and world outlook of the given historical period. On the other hand, each costume is an individual attempt towards self-expression within the framework of the period, one's material resources, tastes and physiological peculiarities. The physique of a person sets objective limits to fashion's possibilities of deforming the plasticity of the figure according to the currently fashionable example. It is this specific feature of fashion which is altogether lost upon the exhibiting of costumes, since the lifeless mannequins, as a rule, cannot communicate the plasticity of human bodies. The static character, alien to clothing yet artificially forced on it upon exhibiting, deprives it of the lion's share of its charm and authenticity. To some extent, such "frozenness" can be evaded through "costume theatre", some scenic action, historical dances, groups of old music and dances which aim at a detailed reconstruction of historical costumes and their dynamic presentation, thus setting forth their full merit.

Each period in history expresses itself through a certain ideal which becomes manifest in various spheres of human activity - but most visibly, most obviously in the costumes.

It can be said that since the time of the Cro-Magnon man, that is, during the last fifteen thousand years, the human race has not changed physically or physiologically. The world around him, however, has undergone basic change, and so has the attitude towards man, the demands made to his soul and body. The caleidoscopic variety of European fashions alone, from the Middle Ages to the present day, demonstrates that there is no absolute ideal of beauty. There are hundreds of ideas of what is beautiful, and they are all in permanent alteration, according to the criteria of evaluation of the corresponding period. Each period gives its ideal a different shape, continually re-evaluating the previous ones.

The word "costume", even if it refers to the costumes of different historical periods or peoples, is a static concept, a given once and for all. It is fashion which renders this notion dynamic, even like a verb standing next to a noun it implies action, a comprehension of the period, changeability in time, always casting light on the contemporary understanding of perfection. Fashion usually becomes manifest not only in the clothing itself, its proportions, colours, the texture of the fabric, the shape of details, the style or pattern, but also, to no lesser extent, in the bearing of the body, the plasticity of movements.

The effect of the costume, the exposition of its characteristic features depend first and foremost on whether the body is held in a corset or left free of artificial constructions. Besides, these constructions themselves are modified over each stylistic period and occasionally undergo complete remodelling several times over just one hundred years, as it happened in the 16^th-17^th centuries, and in the 20^th century even more often.

However, the specific plasticity of a period is the least demonstrable feature of historical costumes on exhibition. Yet the plasticity of the Middle Ages is essentially different from that of the Renaissance, developing side by side with the costumes themselves. Heavy materials; the habit of wearing several items of clothing on top of one another, thus weighing the body down to earth; long trains falling from the shoulders; high headgear requiring the litheness of an acrobat to keep it on top of the head; constantly changing footwear: now flat with prolonged toes, now blunt-nosed, now sporting a heel so high it had to be balanced on - in these features we have the "salt" of historical costume, without which it appears insipid like diet food.

Dealing with remote historical periods we see how adequately costume reflects the attitudes of the corresponding social rank, becomes an emblem of a certain social unity, is part of a certain code of conduct, way of life, which are given to a person beforehand, independently of his personal characteristics. Historically, these social groups and their traditions are rather resistant and do not make for a hasty out-dating and alteration of costume. In a strictly hierarchic society the status symbols "wear down" only slowly, since "stability in time" is seen as the basic value. In such a system, the costume-symbol expresses to a great extent the aesthetic ideal of the period and of the given social rank, whereas the personal characteristics of the individual remain a matter of secondary importance. Here it is important to regard costume as a sign of acquiescence in the pyramid of hierarchic dependence. Individual and original modifications of costume are acceptable only in case they are introduced by someone occupying the highest rung of the social ladder - it is not the quality of originality which is evaluated, but originality as a quality of the highest social authority. Again, it is fashion which sets down the formula of taste for the society.

For instance in the decorative and sumptuous Renaissance period extremely rich in materials, the fabric ruled and each detail feasted the eye as an outstanding wonder of handicraft. In the Renaissance costumes, the richness of form and colour, the aspirations towards grandeur lead up to the idea of the richness of the world and the interconnectedness of all things: "each object related to the image of man is literally striving for perfection. It bears the stamp of beauty - or at least of the search for it. Even the contrastive lining of clothes appears to be struggling upwards, to come alive, first glaring out through bold slashes - "the devil's eyes", then apparently by its sheer force slitting the upper fabric into ribbons in order to occupy the ruling position. Again, the collars turn from unobtrusive strips of cloth into magnificent textile wheels, circular nimbuses or even resemblances of the back of a throne, towering up from the shoulders" (Chernova 1987: 42).

The garment was to be worthy of its owner, and the royalty stood out as first among those "robed in beauty", "in infinite splendour". Breathtaking robes, the fruits of hundreds of craftsmen's monthlong toil, were worn just one or two times. Luxurious ornaments, opulent clothes expressed the general spirit of the period - the desire to enjoy the beauty of the material world, its grandeur and glory. Gold and precious stones signified undying beauty, stood out almost as symbols of immortality. Beauty of form and fabric constituted a source of pleasure for its owner and a means of astounding others. Bulkiness was associated with grandeur, luxury with mightiness, splendour with fame. The fashionable costumes of the aristocracy became examples to be imitated down the length of the hierarchic ladder. Fashion spread in circular ripples, as if a stone had been thrown into water, immersing the masses in a whole set of new artistic ideas. Fashionable outfits lost their freshness, causing a feverish search for something novel and extraordinary. Yet the fashion of the time never wavered from the position of the absolute equivalent of the perfection of the image of man.

The hero living in harmony with the world and himself was to be fashionable and well-dressed. But times changed, and the heroes changed along with them. Turbulent upheavals of the whole way of life were bound to pass at the beginning of the modern period, in order to refute the fundamental principle of aristocracy - using dress as a means of placing each man according to his proper position.

Capitalism levelled out the hierarchic division of society. Social standing is no longer anything innate, given once and for all; accordingly, it cannot be the absolute criterion of a person. Consequently, clothing also acquires a new set of meanings. Beauty is now understood as the expression of a beautiful personality; therefore, the taste of the period and its prescriptions gradually lose their omnipotence, giving ground to a more immediate interest in a man's personality. A man's ability to express himself through his appearance; the elegance of his attire, the refinement of his manners, his sophistication are now the features which give rise to the sincere admiration of his contemporaries:

"It can be said with certainty that he dressed better than anyone else. That is not to say that his garments were expensive: on the contrary, he was never known to wear any jewelry, any of the trinkets it is customary to call "bijou". I have seen very many people who wore incomparably richer garments, but never, neither before nor after him, have I seen anyone dressed with greater refinement, anyone capable of rendering his attire so meaningful through the grace and nobility of his character. In that peculiarity of his there was something that can indeed be called elusive. Everything he wore was flawlessly fashionable, yet it was impossible not only to associate any garment of his with a fashionable picture, but even to begin to think of any such likeness" (Zhiharev 1989: 56).

Thus, the clothes covering the body of a person uncovered his soul, expressed his tastes, moods, ideas and, jointly with other arts, helped to create the style of the period. For what else is attire, if not a manifestation of the social relationships between people.

On the other hand, the breaking down of the centuries-old barriers between estates had created a situation where it became possible to juxtapose oneself as an individual, to the rest of the society. And this is again best accomplished through clothing, with the help of which one works out one's manners and way of conduct. Violation of the traditional and the customary, search for the novel and unheard-of, sets up new idols such as the king of the English dandies, George Brian Brummell:

"the contemporary and rival of Napoleon - the autocrat of the great world of fashion and cravats - the mighty genius before whom aristocracy had been humbled and ton abashed - at whose nod the haughtiest noblesse of Europe had quailed - who had introduced, by a single example, starch into neckcloths, and had fed the pampered appetite of his boot-tops on champagne - whose coat and whose friend were cut with an equal grace - and whose name was connected with every triumph that the world's great virtue of audacity could achieve" (Bulwer-Lytton 1842: 127).

The very alteration of the norms of suitability itself became a norm of suitability, a form of existence within the society, a mask the society person developed on the basis of certain of his characteristic features under the influence of the society. One was no longer born into a given set of norms, the norms were acquired, they were studied like a foreign language. One of these norms was fashion - the norm of changing clothes as an expression of the propriety of a person, a yet another way of determining the image of man through his various costumes, the pattern of dress, its silhouette, material, etc.: "your coat may sit perfectly on you, your hat may be a miracle of legerity and your shirt dazzlingly white, your boots may glisten like blackwood, but if your trousers are ill fit, sagging at the knees or at the back - you are a lost person. Regardless of all you will look like a provincial swain, fit only to be parcelled off in a mail-coach" (Zaharzhevskaya 1974: 63).

The system of clothing considered proper for a society person was determined by a set of rules determining the interrelationships of different elements. Neckcloths were to be changed three times a day. Since inventiveness in the field of neckties, cravats and waistcoats constituted the only opportunity for manifesting individual tastes, it acquired amazing proportions. In the year 1828, 32 different ways of tying a neckcloth were counted. The skill of tying a necktie in a different way each time gave rise to well-deserved envy and was regarded as the highest degree of perfection.

In the stead of jewelry, embroideries and tresses, perfection in costume was sought through the perfection of pattern. Opulence and costliness no longer constituted the highest refinement of attire; instead, an infinite variety of forms of dress was developed proper for different times of day, seasons, and occasions. Visiting, promenading, summer, city and evening dress made their appearance. The basic differences here lay in the proportions of the pattern, the system of pleats, the art of ironing, and other technical matters. A code of proper dressing was worked out on the basis of the rules determining the interrelation of different elements of clothing: "when necessity compelled him to hand up his shirt for washing, he had to go for several days in a frock coat buttoned tightly up to his very throat, so that even a microscope could not have detected the slightest trace of lingerie" (Pecherin 1989: 215).

Within the framework of the passable, costume became relatively more individual, practical, and comfortable. But its owner was still obliged to adjust to his surroundings, conform with the requirements of different occasions, and so forth. The moral and ethical standards were slower to change. Only after the Second World War did they undergo really fundamental change. The sharp change in the outward image drew attention to the young generation and highlighted a new moral attitude within society: total liberation.

But the freedom of dress declared by the young generation remains purely formal: it soon turns into the most autocratic of fashions. Striving for a complete break-off from a society heading towards alienation, the young clamour for a re-evaluation of attitudes in the field of culture, a change of spiritual privileges. The new type of clothing tolerates nothing that squeezes, constricts, suffocates; in it, one can run in the forest and sleep on the ground, but also have a good time in the city.

Regardless of the incredible variety of goods provided by mechanized mass production and prepared to satisfy any whim, a tendency appears towards the loss of the individual touch. "It is out of no intellectual short-sightedness characteristic of so many of my contemporaries that these young people look all alike to me. Nowadays, the twenty-year-olds resemble one another as closely as though they were relatives. And the fashion, too, merges them into a sexless mass. It isn't that they all dress alike. On the contrary, each dresses according to his own tastes. But in the midst of such abundance, the flights of fantasy and even the most original ideas fade. The fantasies are too numerous and thus, in the end, they become indiscernible: freedom in dress all but becomes uniformity in dress. The same goes for behaviour, manners, speech. The aim of difference is always identical, and that's where the uniformity begins. The reason lies not in coincidence, but rather in unanimity. Life itself requires such levelling down" (Gascar 1975: 229).

Thus, history has drawn to the close of a peculiar circle. As by the shortages of natural economy, so by the abundance and unprecedented variety of goods, that is by the opportunity to satisfy any whims whatsoever, there arises uniformity, a levelling down, a standard of the time. The freedom of individual choice, both when it is practically nonexistent and when it is prolific, leads up to the limiting off of a certain general example. The ideal of beauty, different on each occasion, nevertheless constitutes a canon, an example to be followed, a convenient way of identifying oneself with a relevant group of others. "It is an individual's independent statement of his own dependece" (Kantor 1973: 197).

The fashionable form develops side by side with the ideas of the period. Therefore, costume as a system is in permanent change. Structural modifications of the form take place gradually and call forth a remodelling of all its component parts. The mechanism of their association is expressed by the mutual aspiration towards one another of all the elements and by their balancing each other by mass, geometrical form, etc. Footwear and headgear add the final touch to the form of the costume; decorations are subordinated to its general effect. The principles of connecting the elements of the costume into one system may differ, but they all follow the general laws of the integrity of form and the principles of the harmonious connection of elements.

"Being a system with certain fixed relationships, costume must always manifest some elementary structure leading up to a change in the state of the system, yet each state of the system is itself a kind of structure. Accordingly, any state of the system of costume constitutes a kind of alteration and shift of structures. This state is characterized by a process of interaction between the elements of the costume, its different forms during their creation and evolution, between the shape of the costume and the moving figure of its wearer, between the costume and the environment" (Osnovy 1988: 109).

Since costume is a system dynamic not only in a prolonged historical sense but also in its immediate plasticity, the latter must not be overlooked in discussing it. The movements of the human body are just as significant as the costume itself. Different historical periods have favoured different bearings of the figure in its surrounding space - that is, different poses. All the divers poses of a human body in historical costume are formed as a result of the "vacillating" of the torso around four axes: the breast, the waist, the pelvis, and the knees. All these poses are formed relatively to the attitude of the spinal chord. Each forward or backward movement of the spinal chord brings about a change in the position of the pelvis, the neck, and the legs as well as in the peculiarities of the silhouette of a fashionable costume. In order to characterize a fashionable bearing, qualitative descriptions of certain peculiar features are often used: "a slender column", "a bent bough", "a rounded-out back", "an S-shaped silhouette". Fashionable bearing was achieved with the help of various aids, the most important of which is the corset - a forceful means of deformation "correcting" the figure according to the fashionable example. Each type of fashionable bearing, however, corrected the whole system of cutting out and constructing clothes. If the centre of gravity shifts, i.e. the bearing changes, the whole garment fits differently.

Fashion also dictates specific behaviour, poses of the body in its surrounding space, which enable to meet the demands of a fashionable silhouette. At different times this has been determined in special prescriptions and strictly reglemented by etiquette. The bearing of the figure provides a visible axis in the space for the would-be shape. The plastic movements of the body are tightly connected with certain shapes of the costume over a prolonged period, whereas the movements of hands and legs stress the general tendencies of development and highlight their basic principles.

The costume is an empty shell which, in the course of centuries or decades, as a rule falls into the hands of museum workers without the greater majority of its component elements, since habitually the lower "storeys" of clothing (underwear, petticoats, corset, stockings and so forth) or the upper parts (e.g. a dress is rarely worn without accessories forming an ensemble) are not taken into account when speaking about a garment. But what's most important - that shell does not take into account the person himself, his soul and body.

Reconstructing historical costumes, one must indeed reconstruct the past, collecting and combining methodically the facts and forms characteristic of each historical period. The more diligently this job is done, the better will be solved the problems of shape and appearance, since "where could we find a better example of a material shell concealing the inner nature of a person; what could symbolize more eloquently the fickleness of fate, the futile hopes and thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, the richly painted veil of mortal life, if not costume?!" (Sychev & Sychev 1975: 81).

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