Boa (scarf)

Fur boa; Dancer Therese Elßler (1808–1878)

A boa is a long, scarf-like piece of clothing named after the giant snake genus Boa . From the time of the Congress of Vienna (1814 to 1815) until the 1870s, fur and feather boas were particularly in demand. The temporary end of the fur boa fashion began in the 1840s, along with the disappearance of decollete clothing.

The boa is usually worked in a round shape so that the fur leather or the quills are covered by hair or feathers. The fur boa is one of many variations of classic fur necklaces , fur-trimmed collars and fur stoles . However, as early as the ancient tribes Siberian peoples and their successors, the Tschukten, Evens , Tungus and Yakuts long strips were of reindeer skin folded lengthwise and around sewn together. Others wound pieces of squirrel fur and rabbit tails around strips of leather and sewed them to a length that they could not only be placed around the neck several times, but also covered the whole face.

In the Baroque era, so-called flea furs were still in use, furs that were placed over the shoulder and were intended to keep fleas away from the wearer. Fur boas and stoles made of silver fox fur became considerably cheaper with the advent of fur farming before the Second World War , while fur boas made from this previously almost unaffordable type of fur temporarily became the trademark of street girls . Around the 1990s, boas made of fur tails, mostly foxes , but also raccoons, for example, were in fashion, often with an elaborate head of the same type of fur.

The feather boa is still in use today as a complementary decorative element, mainly on special occasions, such as carnival. In the show industry, in vaudeville , in travesty shows and in New Burlesque , the feather boa was and is style-determining. At the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, but especially in the 1920s, the boa was an erotic tool for show dancers and prostitutes in many variety shows and nightclubs.

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  Blue fabric boa

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  Cartoon with boa snake, 1829

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  Picture by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Woman with a Black Feather Boa, 1892

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  Cut for a boa from two raccoon skins , 1895

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  Ostrich feather boa

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  Boa from Tibet lamb in a shop window

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  Blue fox tail boa with head

literature

• Ingrid Loschek : Accessories. Symbolism and history. Bruckmann, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-7654-2629-6 , p. 9

Web links

Commons : Feather Boas  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Commons : Fur Boas  - Collection of images, videos, and audio files

Wiktionary: Boa  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

supporting documents

1. ↑ Alexander Tuma: Pelz-Lexikon. Fur and rough goods. XVII. Tape. Verlag Alexander Tuma, Vienna 1949. Keyword "Boa"
2. ↑ Did you know? In: Rund um den Pelz No. 10, October 1951, Fulde-Verlag Cologne, p. 64.
3. ^ Francis Weiss : From Adam to Madam . From the original manuscript part 2 (of 2), in the manuscript p. 178 (engl.)