When I saw these photographs of Victorian women in their voluminous skirts and dresses, I wondered what I could say that hasn’t already been said by the usual suspects in historical books or feminists texts about patriarchy and fashion, etcetera, etcetera. I really don’t want to go down that path, but if you do there are plenty of sites out there that will supply the goods.

Honestly, my first thought when I saw these pictures was: “How the hell did these women go about their daily lives dressed like this?” It couldn’t have been easy. It couldn’t have been very practical or even remotely comfortable. But then, most fashion isn’t meant to comfortable—it’s about performance, it’s about dressing up to present a show. Victorian fashion was all about presentation—like the whalebone corsets worn to keep the female figure constrained, narrow-waisted, and artificially slim. Seems perverse to us today, but so might breast implants appear one day to our progeny’s progeny.

Fashion changed rapidly during the 19th-century with radical developments in industrialization, mass production, new techniques in printing patterns and colors, and the rise of the department store. At the start of the century, dresses were straight up-and-down maxi-lengthened Jane Austen-type garments made of linen and silk. By the 1820s, there was a flaring out of the hem and a widening of the hips to give women a more voluptuous and feminine shape.

This style of dress developed quite dramatically in the 1830s when such dresses ballooned out from the waist like a bell or a parachute, while the upper half of the body remained slim and pinched at the waist. Their bell-like shape was solely dependent on the hidden supporting structure of a bustle or crinoline cage suspended from the wearer’s waist. These “cages” were originally made of whalebone but were soon superseded by lighter more sturdy yet flexible “steel-hooped cage crinoline” in 1856.

Such hoop dresses or skirts were worn by all class of women. But it should be noted, these garments were often very hazardous as many working-class women lost their lives after their skirts were caught in machinery while many middle-class women perished after their dresses caught fire.

Rich women would have had a whole closet filled with various beautifully designed outfits. Lower class women usually had just the one outfit, which they kept fashionable by changing collars and cuffs or adding ribbons or a new layer of material.

Ultimately, the whole ensemble presented the image each of these women either wanted to or felt obliged to present.
 

 

 
More Victorian women in big-ass skirts, after the jump…

GG Allin in a dress as the Best Man/Maid of Honor at his brother Merle Allin’s wedding in May of 1989

Never one to be upstaged by anyone, GG Allin wore a dress to his brother Merle’s wedding held at the Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts (a place I once found myself locked in, don’t ask) on May 8th, 1989. If you’re aware of who GG Allin was, none of this should strike you as strange. What is noteworthy is that said dress is currently up for auction. 
 

 

GG’s dress

GG was both the best man and maid of honor at Merle’s wedding and in addition to sporting the purple and gold dress (under a black leather jacket of course), Allin also shaved off half of his beard and wore red lipstick and makeup. According to Merle, the dress was also worn by guitarist Chris Brokaw during the only live show (which you can see here) of GG Allin & The AIDs Brigade that threw down at legendary Boston club the The Middle East Cafe in Cambridge on August 27th, 1989.

If you are interested in becoming the new owner of this bizarre piece of scummy punk history, which Executive VP at RR Auction Robert Livingston referred to as an “unusually touching piece of history from the notorious punk rocker,” the opening bid is $200. Here’s the item description:

GG Allin’s personally-owned and -worn purple and gold dress. Approximately 40.5″ in length, the dress is sewn with an elaborate tinsel floral-pattern, and features four button loops on the left shoulder and a zipper running down the left waist. In fine condition, with a few trivial stains to collar area of liner and one of the shoulder buttons missing

Well, that’s got to be the first time anything touched by GG Allin ended up with trivial stains. If you’re concerned about the items legitimacy, as I’m sure any discriminating GG Allin fan would be, there are several photos of GG bringing the scumfuck glamour to the cemetery wedding that should quell any lingering doubts about the item’s authenticity. The auction which started yesterday, is being held by the Music and Entertainment Icons Auction (for RR Auction) and will run through November 19th. For a change, the photos of GG at the wedding that follow are pretty much safe for work. Life is weird that way sometimes.
 

 
GG Allin (holding the bouquet of roses on the left)
 

 

 

GG Allin and what remained of the dress after the wedding in 1989

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Crappy tattoos, bleeding wounds and poop stains: It’s the GG Allin Doll!

 
The menstrual hut—a tradition found in many cultures throughout history—is a fascinating phenomenon. During menses, a woman is sequestered in a structure away from the rest of the village; reasons for the practice range from religious ritual to hygiene superstition to merely an attempt to keep track of a woman’s cycle. Regardless of “progressive” attitudes towards fertility and periods, I’ve met many a feminist lady who sees the appeal. One, there’s something refreshing about public acknowledgment of menstruation, so often considered a shamefully private affair. Two, while no one I know would want to be forced into a hut whilst on the rag, sometimes a quiet space away from men is exactly what you want for a couple days out of the month! But is there a modern, liberatory alternative to the menstrual hut?

Enter the Fertility Dress!

 
Artist Elizabeth Tolson is working on a futuristic fashion line called Vessel, the pieces of which monitor the female body with indiscreet technology. The Fertility Dress is an LED-rigged frock that turns blue during ovulation, red during menstruation (duh), and white or yellow “to indicate hygiene,” and the Chastity Dress has an alarm the goes off when you’re groped. Tolson envisions her work as a fascist kind of Atwoodian sartorial control over women’s bodies (check out the awesome dystopian “commercial” for Vessel below), but frankly I’m most intrigued by the positive potential of wearing a dress that screams, “Hey, I’m on my fucking period right now.” Could it be hacked to combine the alarm with the yellow and red lights to deter men? Or would that just attract guys with “filthy and menstruating” fetishes? There are details to be worked out of course, but I think this project has promise!

Also, a very cute Judy Jetson thing going on! It’s like an adorable mobile menstrual hut! What’s not to love?
 

 
Via Design Faves

 
Demi Barnes, a 15-year-old student from Crawley in England, has made the perfect dress for every celebrity wedding: a bridal gown made from 1500 divorce papers!

Since Barnes is only 15, she couldn’t actually get her hands on a real divorce paper, so she filled out a divorce form from the Internet and printed it 1500 times.

Apparently the dress only took 10 hours to make. Which is actually longer than many celebrity marriages…

 
Via Neatorama

 
I have no idea of the provenance of this image. Is it old? Is it new? Is it ‘shopped? In any case, it’s damned cool and I thought I’d share it.

Via Twisted Vintage