Dressing Up: A History of Fancy Dress in Britain

352 Pages·2022·20.926 MB·English

by  Verity Wilson

DRESSING UP

DRESSING UP
A History of Fancy Dress in Britain
VERITY WILSON
Reaktion Books
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32, Waterside
44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2022
Copyright © Verity Wilson 2022
Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior
permission of the publishers
Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78914 529 8
CONTENTS
Introduction FANCY DRESS DEFINED 7
One BALLS AND PARTIES 39
Two POSES AND TABLEAUX 79
Three GUY FAWKES AND UP HELLY AA 115
Four CARNIVALS AND RAGS 143
Five CORONATIONS AND CELEBRATIONS 177
Six THE BUSINESS OF FANCY DRESS:
THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 207
Seven THE BUSINESS OF FANCY DRESS:
THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 241
Eight THE CHARACTERS OF FANCY DRESS:
THREE CASE STUDIES 275
EPILOGUE 313
REFERENCES 319
BIBLIOGRAPHY 334
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 340
PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 341
INDEX 343

Introduction
FANCY DRESS DEFINED
This is a book about fancy dress. It has taken a long time to write
because in the process I have done more laughing than writing.
The joy it has engendered is itself one of the precepts of the fancy-dress
experience, and any definition of the practice has to include its innate
propensity to delight. Though most countries across the globe take
great pleasure in dressing up, it is the fancy-dress endeavours of British
people that are the focus of this book: the characters they represented,
the manner and prevailing contexts in which they were chosen and
worn, their acquisition and making. The book takes as its approximate
time frame the years between 1850 and 1950, but it occasionally spills
out over both the beginning and end points because events either side
of these hundred years are often important to our understanding of
the phenomenon. This is a sweeping period but hopefully the infor-
mation presented does justice to the complexities of the subject and is
not overly simplistic or reductive.
While this book does not follow a strict chronological pattern, two
queens stand at the far reaches of our period. Queen Victoria came to
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DRESSING UP
1 A small boy dressed as Pierrot, with his Indian ayah, 1920s.
the throne in 1837 and her penchant for fancy dress, of a different cast
from that of the previous era, offers up a key element in defining the
parameters of this book. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth ii in 1953
acted as an impetus for many queenly impersonations in red, white and
blue. Despite this, the first years of her monarchy presaged a waning,
though not the disappearance, of fancy dress, which, until its more
recent upsurge in the 1990s, was primarily associated with children in
the aftermath of the Second World War. People of all ages, however,
embraced fancy dress in the period covered by this book, a time when
many in Britain were living more prosperous lives than previously.
Fancy dress continued to reflect the vaunting appetites of the elite but
also the inventive and improvisatory tactics of other social classes who
were increasingly vocal in their wish to share the good life.
The profound repercussions of two world wars severely taxed the
everyday habits of the British population, and the upheavals modulated
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FAncy Dress DeFIneD
fancy dress, shading its meanings and appearance. The costumes
described and elucidated here were seen in big metropolitan centres
and in innumerable small villages and towns across the country. But
the British people who wore them were not always within the British
Isles (illus. 1). A photograph of Singaporean Chinese children, still
British subjects in the year Queen Elizabeth ii was crowned, speaks to
the dogged persistence of colonial dressing up, as patriotically inflected
as any in the mother country (illus. 2).
The facts of fancy dress might seem unproblematic but, even
before we enter the psychological domain of identity, expression, per-
formance and portrayal, a lucid definition is not so very obvious. It
follows, then, that one of the first questions this book asks is: ‘What
is fancy dress?’ Competing explanations enrich our conception of it.
Trying to capture a finite definition of fancy dress is a tricky under-
taking, though we think we know it when we see it. An intelligent
2 Pupils from the Bukit Panjang Government school in singapore
celebrating the coronation of Queen elizabeth ii, 1953.
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