Chapter 8

Clothing: A Social History

 Sumptuary Laws and Social Hierarchy

 1294-1789: The people of France were expected to strictly follow the ‘sumptuary laws.’
 According to these laws, people who were considered socially inferior were prevented
from wearing certain clothes, consuming certain food and beverages and hunting game in
certain areas.
 The French Revolution ended the distinction of people on the basis of the clothes they
wear.
 People started wearing loose and comfortable clothes.
 Clothing and Notions of Beauty
 Differences in earning defined what the rich and poor could wear.
 Different classes developed their own culture of dress.
 In Victorian England girls were tightly laced up and dressed in ‘stays’. This type of clothing
created an image of frail and submissive Victorian women.
 Women’s Reaction
 Many women believed in the ideals of womanhood and accepted the torture and pain
inflicted on their body as normal.
 By 1830s, many women began campaigning for dress reform.
 Magazines informed about how tight dresses and corsets can cause physical deformities.
 In America, women were supposed to wear long skirts.
 1870: The National Woman Suffrage Association dominated by Lucy Stone campaigned for
rational dress reform.
 New Materials
 After 1600, Europe’s trade with India brought cheap, beautiful and easy-to-maintain
Indian chintzes.
 In the 19th century, Britain manufactured and exported cotton to many parts of the world.
 In the late 1870s, heavy, restrictive underclothes were discarded for lighter, shorter and
simpler ones.
 The War
 Bright colours faded from sight and only sober colours were worn.
 Women working in ammunition factories wore blouse and trousers.
 Skirts became shorter and women also cut their hair short for fitting themselves in the
work environment.
  New schools for children emphasized the importance of plain dressing, and discouraged
ornamentation.
 Women playing sports had to wear clothes that did not hamper their movement.
 Transformations in Colonial India
 Caste conflict and dress change
 The caste system was responsible for deciding what the dominant or the subordinate
caste should wear, eat, etc.
 Changes brought into the dressing styles often created violent conflicts over dress
codes.
 Shanars (Nadars) were a ‘subordinate caste’ and were not allowed to carry umbrellas
or wear shoes and gold ornaments.
 Shanar Christian women’s new dressing style of wearing tailored cloths and blouses
like the upper caste women was completely opposed by the upper caste (Nairs). They
attacked and tore apart the upper cloths of these Shanar women in public.
 After the riots in October 1859 where the Shanar women were stripped and
humiliated in public for their clothing, the government finally permitted them to cover
their bodies but was asked not to dress like the upper castes.
 British Rule and Dress Codes
 During the British rule, Indians were expected to take off their turbans as a sign of respect
for the colonial officials. Indians preferred to wear them for religious and national identity.
 In early 19th century, it was mandatory for the British to take off their footwear in the
courts of kings or chiefs.
 In mid-nineteenth century, the ‘shoe respect’ movement became stricter and Indians
were restricted from wearing shoes while entering in government institutions.
 The Swadeshi Movement
 British mill-made cloth was boycotted and wearing khadi was made a patriotic
responsibility.
 Khadi was used as a symbolic weapon by Mahatma Gandhi against the British.
 Mahatma Gandhi’s Experiment with Clothing
 Usage of coarse cloth and khadi made from homespun yarn became powerful symbols.
 As a boy from a bania family, he wore shirt with dhoti or pyjama.
 In London, he wore western cloths to save himself from being laughed at. On returning to
India, he carried on with western cloths, but wore a turban.
 In Durban, 1913, Gandhi appeared in lungi, kurta and a shaved head for protesting against
the death of the Indian coal miners.
 In 1921, he started wearing the short dhoti, which he wore until death.
 Mahatma Gandhi wished to clothe the whole country in khadi, as he felt it would be the
means of removing religious and class indifferences in the nation.