Costume studies

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Ball gown of the 1820s ( LACMA , Los Angeles)

The costume studies (also costume history or costume research ) examines clothing , hairstyles , make-up , jewelry and other accessories in their cultural and historical context.

The kostümkundliche age classification generally follows that of the history of art in each of the examined culture. In the history of costume in the western world , with the acceleration of fashions at the beginning of the early modern period , the subdivision became more detailed than in art history and broke away from the usual epochal divisions from the mid- 19th century .

Research history

Lithography by Albert Kretschmer from Die Trachten der Völker

Costume studies as a scientific subject has existed since the end of the 18th century, but only from the middle of the 19th century in the sense of a comprehensive scientific discipline. Pioneers of costume research were:

  • Hermann Weiß , his costume customer. Handbook of the history of the costume, of the building and from the earliest times to the present from 1860,
  • Albert Kretschmer and Karl Rohrbach with the costumes of the peoples from the beginning of history to the 19th century and
  • Jacob von Falke .

The latter had become a curator at the newly founded Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg from 1855, where he was also responsible for the historical costume material. From this activity out several essays originated the history of costumes, in 1856 by Falke's brother Johann Falke published Journal of German cultural history appeared, and finally, from 1858, the two-volume German costume and fashion world . In 1880 his costume story of the civilized peoples followed . Another pioneer of costume studies was the painter August von Heyden , who from 1874 published the sheets for costume studies , one of the first costume studies magazines. His costume of the civilized peoples of Europe appeared posthumously in 1898.

Another costume-related magazine followed in 1897 by the historical weapons and costume shop published by the Association for Historical Arms . In 1920 the association renamed itself (after being dissolved in 1949 and re-established in 1951), which still exists today, Society for Historical Arms and Costume Studies. V. The magazine published by the association has been published since 1959 under the title Waffen- und Costumekunde .

Outside Germany, important periodicals on costumes should be mentioned

  • the magazine Costume published by the British Costume Society founded in 1965 (annually since 1967, biannual since 2011, Victoria and Albert Museum , London) and
  • the Journal Dress published by the Costume Society of America , founded in 1973 .

Scope of the subject

There are two dimensions to consider for costume studies: the geographical and the historical. So she deals with

  • the costume of a certain region at a certain time (e.g. Northern Germany around 1630)
  • the costume of a particular region and its change in time or (e.g. Japan from the Heian period to the Meiji period )
  • the costume of different regions at a certain time (e.g. all of the world around 1880)

Thus, costume studies are a special form of cultural and social history . There are also connections to economic history ( textile industry as an economic branch), to sociology , to psychology and especially to social psychology (clothing as an expression of self-awareness) and to folklore .

The sociology of fashion, on the other hand, deals not only with the change in costumes, but with all phenomena underlying fashion and also pursues a different ( sociological ) interest in knowledge .

On the one hand, costume studies is an auxiliary science for other sciences (e.g. for art history and theater studies ), on the other hand, it requires the preparatory work of other sciences (e.g. archeology , Egyptology , medieval studies , economic history ) for access to the source material.

Costume sources

As sources Textile fragments preserved, garments and accessories, contemporary illustrations and contemporary texts, including works of serve Fiction , historical Kostumbücher , fashion magazines as well as domestic inventories and Aussteuer- and inheritance lists.

Preserved textiles

Men's suit from the 1790s in the German Historical Museum , Berlin

Obviously preserved textiles are the best source, since, in contrast to texts and images, they are not filtered through the perception and intention of an author, so they appear to us unadulterated - apparently. Because textile artefacts suffer particularly from harmful environmental influences, shape and color change over time, and the fabric becomes brittle and rots. Depending on where a textile has spent centuries or millennia and how it was dyed, today's color impression can be completely falsified and important parts are missing.

Younger textiles (from the 16th / 17th centuries) are often better preserved because they were intentionally kept from the beginning. In this case it must be taken into account that they were usually kept for a special reason (e.g. because they were particularly precious), while other, everyday items of clothing went the way of everything earthly. In addition, there are items of clothing that were reworked at a later date in order to correspond to the changed fashion taste or - this is quite common - to be used as historical theater or carnival costumes.

Finally, the problem of dating and interpretation arises: Without additional material, it is difficult to date a textile precisely and to draw conclusions about the social status of the wearer or the use of the garment (everyday, holiday or ceremonial garment?). In the case of archaeological finds, such information can be derived at least approximately from accompanying finds (e.g. jewelry); text and image sources are used for more recent artifacts.

Illustrations

Pictorial representations are filtered in four ways:

  • Different people perceive the same object in different ways; H. the artist perceived the item of clothing in a special, unique way.

  • Queen Victoria with crown, lace veil, jeweled collar, black taffeta jacket with trumpet sleeves, ribbon, medal, fan; Painting by Winterhalter, around 1880

  • Queen Victoria with crown, lace veil, jewel collar, black taffeta jacket with trumpet sleeves, ribbon, medal, fan; Photograph, around 1880

  • Marble bust of Queen Victoria with crown, lace veil, jeweled collar, ribbon, medal, 1888

  • The artist only reproduced what 1. seemed important to him and 2. could be represented with the technology used. Some things can be represented better with oil paint than with pastel chalk and vice versa.
  • The artist had a certain intention, mostly unknown to us, and made use of certain artistic freedoms to pursue it.
  • The choice of motifs and presentation is z. Partly for economic reasons (the customer to be portrayed pays, and whoever pays, creates), through currents of art (e.g. mannerism ) or is based on individual factors that are mostly unknown to us.

The culturally shaped part of these filters can be counteracted through knowledge of the current zeitgeist , the individually shaped part only through knowledge of the artist's vita. Therefore, the more information there is about the zeitgeist and the artist, and the more images there are from the hand of different artists, the more useful image sources are, and that is only the case with the end of the Middle Ages.

Despite all these caveats, image sources have the advantage over preserved textiles that they depict the entire clothing, including jewelry and hairstyle, and usually (in that the artist and / or the person depicted is known) offer a social frame of reference. Compared to texts, they work directly and without linguistic misunderstandings: " A picture is worth a thousand words ."

Texts

Advertisement for a beauty salon (Bucharest, 1911)

In the case of texts, what has been said about images essentially applies. Then there is the problem of understanding the text: a text can be translated (then the translator acts as an additional filter) or it can be in an old version of the reader's native language, in which certain words have different meanings than they did today or whose meaning has been lost back then May not be known to the reader and thus lead to misinterpretation. If the case is good, the meaning of some words can be determined with the help of other text sources.

Source criticism

The general principles of historical source criticism also apply to the sources and evidence relevant to costume history. This applies both to sources that come from the examined epoch and especially to the costume history works created from the middle of the 19th century , which, like all representations of historiography, are viewed and evaluated from their respective historical context and the historical knowledge of the time of origin have to.

Costume history libraries and museums

Libraries

The most important library of costume history is the “Freiherrlich Lipperheid Collection for Costume Science”, which goes back to the collection of Franz von Lipperheide , whose Berlin publishing house also published Heyden's Sheets for Costume Studies. Today it is part of the State Art Library as the Lipperheid Costume Library Museums in Berlin . It is currently the world's largest specialist collection on the cultural history of clothing and fashion.

Another very important collection of costume-related sources is the Von Parish Costume Library in Munich, which was set up by Hermine von Parish and is now an external collection and research institution of the Munich City Museum . The Munich art historian and writer Rudolf Marggraff , the great-grandfather of Hermine von Parish, laid the foundation of the collection with a collection of costume designs.

Museums

Reconstruction of a hoop skirt in the Musée Galliera

Other institutions dealing with costume studies are fashion museums and costume collections in general museums. Important special collections of this type are

There are also important collections of costume history

literature

  • Jane Ashelford et al .: A visual history of costume. Batsford, London 1983ff.
    • Vol. 1: Jane Ashelford: The sixteenth century. 1983
    • Vol. 2: Valerie Cumming: The seventeenth century. 1984
    • Vol. 3: Aileen Ribeiro: The eighteenth century. 1983
    • Vol. 4: Vanda Foster: The nineteenth century. 1984
    • Vol. 5: Penelope Byrde: The twentieth century. 1986
    • Vol. 6: Margaret Scott: The fourteenth & fifteenth centuries. 1986
  • Max von Boehn : The fashion. A cultural history from the Middle Ages to Art Nouveau. Modifications made by Ingrid Loschek. 2 vols. Bruckmann, Munich 2005.
  • Annemarie Bönsch: History of forms of European clothing . Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2011, ISBN 978-3-205-78610-8 .
  • François Boucher: Histoire du costume en occident de l'antiquité à nous jours. Paris 1969.
  • Wolfgang Bruhn , Max Tilke : Costume history in pictures. An overview of the costumes of all times and peoples from ancient times to modern times including the national costumes of Europe and the costumes of the non-European countries. Wasmuth, Tübingen 1955. Reprint Orbis, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-572-01231-7 .
  • Valerie Cumming: Understanding Fashion History. London 2004.
  • Millia Davenport: The Book of Costume. 8th ed. Crown, New York 1968.
  • Jacob von Falke : Costümgeschichte der Culturvölker. Stuttgart 1880, digitized
  • Wiebke Koch-Mertens: Man and his clothes. Part 1: The cultural history of fashion up to 1900. Part 2: The cultural history of fashion in the 20th century. Winkler, Munich 2000.
  • Carl Köhler : Practical costume studies . Arranged by Emma von Sichart. 2 volumes. Bruckmann, Munich 1926.
  • Gisela Krause, Gertrud Lenning: Little costume studies . 13th edition Schiele & Schön, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-7949-0701-9 .
  • Ingrid Loschek : Reclam's fashion and costume lexicon. 5th edition Reclam, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-15-010577-3 .
  • Alice Mackrell: An illustrated history of fashion. 500 years of fashion illustration. Batsford, London 1997, ISBN 0-7134-6776-2 .
  • Hans Mützel : From loincloth to fashion costume. From the history of the costume. Widder-Verl., Berlin 1925.
  • Elli Rolf: History of the development of the costume. Böhlau, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-205-07133-6
  • Lynn Edelman Schnurnberger: Let there be clothes. 40,000 years of fashion. Workman, New York 1991, ISBN 0-89480-833-8
  • Hermann Weiß : Costume customer. Handbook of the history of the costume, construction and equipment of the peoples . Stuttgart 1860-1872.
Magazines

Web links

Commons : Costume History  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
Wikisource: Clothing  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Forerunner of the Archive for Cultural History, which has been published since 1903 .
  2. ^ Association history of the Society for Historical Arms and Costume Studies e. V.
  3. ^ Costume: the journal of the Costume Society . ZDB ID 330290-8
  4. ^ Dress: the annual journal of the Costume Society of America . ZDB ID 330364-0
  5. ↑ Adelheid Rasche (ed.): The culture of clothes. For the 100th anniversary of the Lipperheide Costume Library. SMPK - Art Library, Berlin 1999, ISBN 3-88609-372-7