Writer Note: this is fascinating research information not restricted to just the Victorian era under discussion. Though itâs stating the obvious, the obvious often needs to be stated: when seemingly-awkward garments like crinolines and hoop-skirts (or ruffs, or houppelandes, or etc.) were everyday wear, the wearers knew how to move in them because of practice.
For instance, how not to clear a table with a gesture while wearing sleeves like theseâŚ
Fashionable footwear has been weird for centuries. Think of chopines, pattens, poulaines, non-fetishy-y high heels, or platform boots worn with bell-bottom jeans so long and wide that without the platforms they trailed along the ground. The 1970s is called âthe decade that style forgotâ for good reason.
Elton Johnâs stage platforms arenât as exaggerated as you thinkâŚ
And then there are the doeskin breeches claimed in some fiction as fitting so tightly the inside had to be soaped to get them on, going commando was compulsory, and the wearer couldnât sit down.
Youâd certainly believe it from portraits like this one, âHunter in a Landscape with his Dogsâ, said to be General Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, father of Alexandre Dumas the novelist, with legs apparently clad in just a thick coat of paint. (X-skin breeches would seem more suitable for hunting, but these may represent cotton âinexpressiblesâ which really did fit like that.)
Like the supposed problems with crinolines etc., not true. Research and reconstruction has shown that doe / buck / sheepskin breeches have natural stretch and recovery; a common comparison is to old, well-worn jeans. Of course the artist also wanted to show that his subject âhad a good legâ (look up âartificial calvesâ and be amused) and wasnât letting realism get in the way of doing so.
This is a bit more like it.
Nowadays âdeportmentâ seems to have an aura of outdated snobbishness - upper-class debutantes learning to curtsey, or walk with books balanced on their heads - but âporteâ in French means âcarryâ and the old meaning of deportment was âhow to carry yourselfâ; how to move properly, without inconveniencing yourself or others.
Various historical-costume books point out that âmoving properlyâ in some periods - memory suggests the court of Louis XIV at Versailles was one - meant a sequence of artificial, prescribed gestures, partly enforced by the clothing and partly by court protocol. IIRC one description was of âmovements as precisely delineated as the steps of a formal danceâ, and getting them wrong resulted in social mockery.
Elizabethan men were taught, as part of their deportment, how to move while wearing the long rapiers of the period; that hand-on-hilt stance in portraits isnât drama, itâs control.
Once familiar with the length of the sword, they know exactly what shifting the hilt one way or another will do to the rest of it - and the people, furniture and crockery behind them - without needing to look. IIRC the technique is still taught to actors today.
Crinolines, bustles, bloomers, breeches, inexpressibles and all the rest were clothing; after reading about peculiar but oh-so-stylish ways of standing and moving like the âGrecian bendâ and âAlexandra limpâ, the Kinkâs satirical 1960s hit âDedicated Follower of Fashionâ isnât just a song any moreâŚ
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