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Much has been written here about Victorian women’s fashion, and the difficulties of wearing it, especially the notorious crinoline. The male counterparts, pictured in the previous post How to Look Like a Victorian Gentleman, need a closer inspection to show that their fashionable life was no less complicated.
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We’ll start with the underpants. Poor men did not need to wear them at all. Men’s shirts used to be longer than our modern ones, and one simply tucked the shirt’s ends between the legs like a diaper. This also kept the garment from riding up. For the moneyed, there were natural fiber underpants, usually linen or cotton. The ones on the Metropolitan Museum photo (above) are made of silk. Four pieces of men’s vintage underwear, seen below, were recently sold at an auction.
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How do we know that this man is an American? Jersey bodysuits were common in the United States while Europeans stuck to their two pieces.
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Let’s turn our attention to the fashionable silhouette:
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While civilians did not always wear them, corsets were indispensable for army officers. The tight uniforms of that era could not be worn without one:
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It starts to get complicated, doesn’t it? Next comes the shirt, and things will turn scientific. The term white-collar was probably invented in appreciation of the effort needed in donning a shirt with all the accessories that came with it.
This needs an explanation. Collars and cuffs were the most visible parts of shirts and the most likely to get dirty. Today, we throw a dirty garment into the washing machine without a thought. In old times, dirty linen meant wife’s hard labor or, for single men, money spent on a laundress. Working men solved the problem by wearing a collarless shirt. Collars appeared on rare occasions such as weddings or funerals. However, middle- and upper-class men were obliged to look their best every day, and they felt incomplete without a stiffly-starched collar and cuffs.
The detachable collar appeared around 1830 and this practical solution turned into a tool of torture. Detached from the shirt, collars and cuffs could be starched stiff and shaped to suit the fashion’s demand. Men had no choice. They had to keep their heads up.
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Starching and ironing collars became a science. This chaffing accessory also required a set of tools. A Victorian gentleman’s drawers contained a collection of collars, cuffs, and studs:
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Ties needed to be firmly secured as well. This drawing explains the procedure:
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Even the cuffs deserved patented inventions:
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Celluloid collars and cuffs needed only a wipe with a wet sponge. Cuffs often served as writing pads for a quick memo. The phrase “off the cuff” comes from there.
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We are still not done with the shirt. There was also the detachable bib, stiff as a plank:
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Are you getting tired just reading this? Alas, this is not the end of all the attaching and pinning. The Victorian man’s socks, too, needed a complicated approach. They were suspended from patented garters:
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A pair of Victorian playboy’s garters with inspiring art:
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On this note, we’ll end today’s exploration of Victorian gentleman’s private wardrobe. All considered, wearing a crinoline was not all that hard.
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I learnt some things I hadn’t previously known from this post. Interesting, as always.
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