Don't get me wrong, up until the early 1990s, costuming was pretty hit or miss. I can count on one hand the number of serious costume researchers up to that point, and most of them came from the theatre. What we knew about historic dress was clouded by nineteenth century folk dress and modern fashions out of Hollywood. You can pretty much tell the era that a movie has been filmed by how the costumer interpreted historic dress through the lens of modern fashion. I really don't mind historical, historical costuming, it's fun to look at.
Nope, what gets my goat is when modern historic sites dress their interpreters so badly that you can't really tell what the historical 'look' was supposed to be. In Canada it has gotten pretty bad because there are no real curators of historic dress in any of the museum systems. There's one or two, here or there, but for the most part, once the person retires, their job is retired along with them. Historic dress falls under the purview of Art History PhDs, Archaeologists, and MLIS registrars.
The thing is, they've thrown the baby out with the bathwater. They don't think things through. They want their interpreters to be comfortable in their work clothes. Or, they really have no idea what they are doing and let the interpretation staff and volunteers dress themselves.
I have been watching opening day photos from sites over the past week and I am disappointed. Especially if it's a site that I built clothes for. Garments are large enough for multiple interps to wear all at once. Bedroom slippers being passed off as historical footwear. And hey, don't get me started on the continual use of wooden sabot being worn with suits of the gentry and artisan class.
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| Are these fashionable shoes to be worn with a business suit? |
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| These are the historical equivalent. |
Every year, dozens of eager costumers are graduating from programs across Canada, and yet, nobody is hiring any in the heritage sector.
Costuming is not important...we don't have any archaeological records.
But there is. There are pieces of historical dress in museum collections across Canada. The information is there. People have to want to look at it though, and interpret it for the modern body. They have to want to have those pieces reproduced, properly, and well fitted to the interpreters. This might take some actual money. Real salaries, full time positions, not many, but a few in every region.
Unfortunately, successive Conservative governments have stripped back heritage budgets, and when the Liberals come into power, those budgets haven't been reinstated.
So yes, I'm a bit hot under the collar today. It all boils down to me caring far too much about an esoterical aspect of our history that should be seen as important as the architecture, the dishware, the wooden boats, the motor vehicles...
but it's not. It's pretty bad that the Americans are better at interpreting Canadian historical dress than we are!
#unemployedinterpretationspecialist
Well said. I have seen people recreating "early 14th century"clothing, for example, and doing a similar mish-mash. To explain it, I point out that a flapper dress, a WW2 era suit, and a poodle skirt are all early 20th century clothing, yet you'd never see them all being worn by a group of people in the same room. (unless it's a costume party).
ReplyDeleteor even yet, all being worn by the same person at the same time!
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