Fashion Timeline 9 (Native American Cultures)

What do you think of when you imagine Native American fashion? Headdresses? Buckskin leggings and war paint? Hipsters inappropriately appropriating “native chic”?

The first think Katie thinks about is old. 12,000 years old, to be exact. The first fashions she thinks of are perhaps some of the very first to have existed in North America – beads of bird bones, hematite, and red ochre that were made during the last Ice Age. Fibers and skins don’t preserve, but those beads did. Those beads, that may have been sewn onto clothing (because these cultures were carving needles), strung around a neck, tied into hair, they’re beautiful.

The first thing Chelsie thinks of when she think of Native Americans are colourful beads and moccasins. And, we think it’s safe to say, that’s a common image that resides in many people’s minds. But it’s also a very narrow one. While every culture made a style or styles of leather footwear (go here for a map of the different cultural styles and some amazing photographs), the stereotypical images of a beaded moccasin is a Plains culture one (as are our images of tipis, headdresses, and pretty much everything else Buffalo Bill and Hollywood deemed sensational enough). Also, while amazing intricate beadwork existed long before the arrival of Europeans, the brightly colored beads seen on clothing artifacts are a result of the contact and reservation-eras of American Indian history, where beads were used in trade and later available to tribes that had been forced onto reservations.

While it’s impossible to adequately cover the entire stylistic history of every American Indian culture (and we would be foolish to even try), here’s a little bit of historical background and a lot of fantastic references.

First western contact is dated by archaeologists at around 900CE, while more detailed records date back to the early 1500 and 1600s. Native Americans lived in different climates, and thus logically dressed differently, for the elements.

Natives in American Southwest were among the first group to develop a loom to weave cloth in 1200CE. They grew cotton which they wove into cloth, and also wove yucca, wool, feathers, and hair into cloth. I don’t think they get much credit for this.

"Ojibwa style wool strap dress with detachable sleeves and red wool beaded leggings." Reproduction by Zender-Dale Arts

Before European contact plant fibers were woven into clothing, especially tree bark, which was stripped from tries, dried and shredded, to weave comfortable clothing, including skirts, aprons, shirts, belts, hats, capes, and even raincoats. Today we wear bamboo clothing, hemp clothing, and even fleece (sometimes a derivative of recycled plastic).

"Front of a hemp and wool twined and netted bag." Reproduction by Zender-Dale Arts

Native Americans wore snug or loose fitting leggings underneath their clothes. Leggings were often two tubes of animal hide, (usually dear, but also including beaver, buffalo, skunk, and even salmon skin), covering each leg individually. In the winter, leggings were fur lined, or fur side facing in, and had attached feet. (Is anyone else thinking of fleece lined tights? If you know where to get these illusive treasures, do share!) Natives in the Arctic did not wear leggings, but instead wore full length pants to protect themselves from the elements. Leggings were tied with string, belted, sashed at the waist, gartered, or tied at the knee.

"Brain tanned deer skin side seamed leggings with porcupine quilled garters. Quilled mocassins with ribbon work flaps. Knee breeches and linen hunting shirt." Reproduction by Zender-Dale Arts

It also needs to be noted that, as the clothing of existing and continuing culural groups, the timeline for American Indian fashion isn’t over. A reference that Katie loves on the current and dynamic world of American Indian designers is Jessica R. Metcalfe’s blog Beyond Buckskin. Be sure to read her review of Fashion Week and the presence of native and/or primitivist aesthetics.

And while there have already been several fantastic discussions on the recent appropriation of psuedo-American Indian, we invite you to revisit those conversations.

• The Strange Case of the Hipster Headdress
• But Why Can’t I Wear a Hipster Headdress?
• The Critical Fashion Lover’s (Basic) Guide to Cultural Appropriation
• On Hipsters/Hippies and Native Culture
• The Feather in Your “Native” Cap
• My Culture is not a Trend

Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 2: Early Cultures Across the Globe. Detroit: UXL, 2004. 385. Gale Virtual Reference Library.

Interrobangs Retrospective: Our Favorite Posts of the Past Year

Or, in which the Interrobangs kill two birds with one post.

One year anniversaries call for cake!

A year has come and gone, and it hasn’t just been a calendar year, but also the first year of Interrobangs Anonymous. Technically, our first post was on December 21, 2009, but with the hullabaloo of Christmas, Solstice, New Years, and Tuesdays, we postponed our celebrating until now. So here are our favorite posts of 2010/our first year blogging together.

This is how we really act

Style and Self-Image

• Going Grey in Your 20′s
• Thoughts on Having Short Hair
• The Leg Hair Question
• Fashion while Traveling
• Style Advice from Slime Mold
• No Makeup Podcast
• Gender Roles in Fashion Blogging
• Attractiveness in Academia
• Exploitation in Fashion
• Will I be Pretty/You Don’t Have to be Pretty
• The Prices of Things Part I, Part II
• Negative x Negative = Positive

Tutorials

• Shredded Jersey Scarf
• Mosaic T-Shirt
• Ruffled Collar
• Reverse Tie-Dyeing
• Cutlery Pendants
• Patent Leather Patch-Up
• Wearing Pins without Ruining Your Clothing

Resources

• Sticky insoles
• Natural Beauty Products
• Stores for the Long of Leg
• Stores for the Narrow of Foot
• Where Katie Doesn’t Shop
• Where Millie Does Shop
• Ditching the Shampoo

Series

• Fashion Timeline
• Sustainability

Pure Awesomeness

• Milliesaurus
• Is that a Tapeworm in Your Pocket?
• Clown Noses Make Everything More Fun
• Ada Lovelace
• Bison!
• What to Wear when Dissecting Squid

The past year has been so much fun. Thank you for reading, commenting, and being such an amazing community of fun, inspiration, and friends.

Daily Think Podcast – In which the Interrobangs discuss makeup

Prompted by No Makeup Week, the Interrobangs had a very important international business meeting, via Skype, to discuss makeup. The result lies in this podcast. Enjoy!

The direct link is here. Right-click and you can save it to an audio device. The podcast is just over 26 minutes, in mp3 format.

 

 

Roundtable: Fashion Timeline 4 (Ancient Roman Empire)

Ancient Roman Empire – Approx. 10 BCE – 5 CE

Ancient Rome – Gladiators – Armor – Gladiator Sandals… so last year?!

How does our style today draw from and reflect elements of Ancient Rome? We reinterpret fashion and retrofit it for our current period.

Robes – Mumus – Folds – Gathers

Again we have the Chiton:

And now we also have the Peplos:

Is it crazy that I almost want to try to make a Peplos now?

When I do a search for Ancient Rome on Etsy, I get a lot of results for things that use the Colosseum, and jewelery inspired/derived from by old coins and classical figures. People are inspired to create jewelery and artwork drawing from this period, as with any historical period, romanticizing of the past.

Check out these cufflinks!

And these earrings!

Doesn't this brooch look a bit like a Roman Shield?

Roundtable: Fashion Timeline 3 (Ancient Greece)

• Ancient Greece – 8th to 6th centuries BCE to 146 BCE (no agreed fixed dates)

Chelsie: As soon as I think of Ancient Greece I think of stereotypical clothing, togas and those Caesar-like crowns of olive leaves (I did find these instructions on how to make a crown). It is interesting how we take some things from these cultures and these these are how we portray this culture. Interestingly I just learned togas these were called Chitons.

A Chitons (or toga). "The primary garment of Ancient Greek clothing was the Chiton, an all-over body garment made from a large rectangle of cloth wrapped once around the body from right side to right side. This garment was then pinned at the shoulders and tied at the waist or hips, and draped in hanging folds about the body."

Katie: Well, what do you know? I’m familiar with the word “chiton” meaning marine molluscs from the Polyplacophora class, who have shells composed of eight separate plates. A little searching on Wikipedia revealed that these molluscs are named after the Greek “chiton,” in reference to the appearance of folds on the animal. The Greek “chiton” is also the basis for the word “chitin,” which is the main component of arthropod cell walls. Side note: There’s a Polyplacophora known as the “Katy Chiton.” It’s my favorite.

Chelsie: So now (thanks to Katie!) we are all that much more knowledgeable, and we should have our chiton parties by the seaside to thank our outfit’s namesake. At toga parties we just use sheets to represent a toga, and there is no elaborate adornment given to these outfits, as the Ancient Greeks had.

Like Egyptian dress, Greek clothing was centered in an aesthetic that idealized the human body, rather than attempting to conceal it’s natural shape. The Greeks made many clothing decisions based on this aesthetic that were less than practical choices: Pinning garments closed instead of stitching, rarely wearing sandals or shoes despite a rocky landscape, draping garments around the body for warmth during cold instead of making garments with sleeves or trousers as their near neighbors the Phrygians (see at right) did. The Greeks definitely knew how to make sleeves, for their theatrical costumes had them, but for normal wear sleeves were judged less aesthetic than bare arms and so were not worn. Greek jewelry was also an object of much technical concentration, so much so that Western jewelry technique has only caught up to it since the Industrial Revolution. (from here)

(Please forgive my poor citation style today, but I’ve had a busy week.)

It is interesting to see that the concept of idealizing the human body was used to such an extend that the Greeks draped cloth over themselves be because it ‘looked’ better than the more logical alternative of sleeves and trousers, that they knew how to create. I wonder how much of this is derived from the art pieces that survive, and how much of our portrayals are realistic. It is also interesting to see how slowly fashions might have changed while today trends are seasonal. We show different parts of our body during some years, and not during others. During times of economic depression we cover up, and during times of success fashion tends to expose the body more freely. Remember mid-drift bearing shirts and the Spice Girls?!

Roundtable: Fashion Timeline 2 (Ancient Egyptian Clothing)

This week we will be exploring the clothing and fashion of Ancient Egypt.

• 4,000 BCE to 356-323 BCE – Ancient Egyptians

The Ancient Egyptians had an identifiable style of clothing, with the Pharaohs and nobles putting great emphasis on their appearances through clothing, jewelery, wigs and makeup. They had an emphasis on religion, in daily life, and reflected through the mummification process to preserve the body. Farming was good in the fertile silt rich soil near the Nile, demonstrating a stable civilization.

“The Egyptians idolized the human body, and the clothes they wore complimented the lines of the slender bodies that were most appreciated in Egyptian society. Egypt’s climate was very warm… and both men and women tended to dress very lightly [with a preference for linen]. For nearly 1,500 years it was very rare for men to wear anything on their torso, or upper body. For the upper class and the pharaohs, the main form of dress was the schenti, a simple kilt that tied around the waist and hung about to the knees. Working men wore first a loincloth, a very small garment that covered just the private parts, and later the loin skirt, which was somewhat more modest and covered from the waist to the mid thigh. In about 1500 B.C.E. Egyptian men began to wear simple tunics on their upper bodies. They adopted the custom from the neighboring region of Syria, which Egypt had recently conquered.

Women also dressed lightly, and they too often bared much of their upper body. The basic form of female clothing was a simple dress called a kalasiris. It was a tube of cloth, sewn along one side, with one or two shoulder straps. In many cases the straps extended to mid torso, leaving the breasts exposed.” (“Egyptian Clothing.” Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 1: The Ancient World. Detroit: UXL, 2004. 21-24.)

“In Egyptian paintings, men and women are often shown wearing ‘perfume cones’ on their wigs, but nobody has ever found one. Artists may have drawn the shape to show that the wig was scented.” (Platt, Richard. “They Wore What?!: the weird history of fashion and beauty,” Oxford University Press: 2007, 6)

Roundtable: Fashion Timeline 1 (Prehistoric* Clothing)

So, in addition to the weekly link posts, we’re starting a round-table series too, since we’re a group blog. We’re starting off with a series looking at clothing through history, and seeing how we can relate history to the present, and putting the present in context. We’ll probably have off-series round-tables too, about subjects that may or may not be related to the main thread, but we’ll see how that goes.

First up, we start waaaay back with Neanderthals.

• 100,000 BCE – Neanderthals – Wore animal skins

Early humans cut the hides into shapes they liked, making holes for the head and perhaps the arms, and draped the furs over their bodies. They may have used thin strips of hide to tie the furs about themselves, perhaps in the way that belts are used today. (“Prehistoric Clothing.” Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages. Ed. Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast. Vol. 1: The Ancient World. Detroit: UXL, 2004. 5-8. Gale Virtual Reference Library.)

• 38,000 BCE – Cro-Magnon wore loincloths made of animal skins

Sharp awls, or pointed tools, were used to punch small holes in animal skins, which were laced together. With a needle (made out of slivers of animal bone), Cro-Magnon man could sew carefully cut pieces of fur into better fitting garments. Evidence suggests that Cro-Magnon people developed close-fitting pants and shirts that would protect them from the cold, as well as shawls, hoods, and long boots. (“Prehistoric Life,” 2004, 1-8)

• 7,000 BCE – Mesopotamians learned to spin wool to make clothing

Mesopotamians, (dwellers of present-day Iraq near the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers), developed the ability to create pottery from clay, learned to gather and spin wool from the sheep and goats that they herded. It was in Mesopotamia and the other great early civilization, Egypt, where clothing other than animal skins first began to be made and worn. (“Prehistoric Life,” 2004, 1-4)

Chelsie: Clothing was initially a practical attire, to keep people warm during those cold Ice Ages. Today, our clothing is still designed to keep us warm – in the cool months anyway. Though there are other theories for why people started clothing themselves, namely lice.