When faced with so much variety of style, it's understandable that the wide range of costume history terms that exist are often confusing to those seeking to describe vintage garments or make articles for a theatrical production.
Regular visitors know this site deals only with female costume history, and in this section I'm going to look at simplifying ways of helping site visitors understand the differences between the wide range of terms used for female cover ups as either cloaks, coats or jackets and found especially in the 19th century in the Brutish Isles until 1970.
Many of you will be familiar with more modern terms like poncho or gilet, but may not be able to find a single other person who knows what a mantelet with lappets is or the difference between a Chesterfield and an Ulster coat. Once terms like these go out of general use, it takes a designer using past costume as inspiration to revive them and put them back into general vocabulary.
Quite similar terminology is often applied to them all, even though they may look quite different. However you only have to think that we might call a pair of trousers a variety of names from jeans, denims, levis, flares, bootlegs, pants, Oxford bags, joggers, cords, pedal pushers to leggings and you realise why it is so confusing to come across such unfamiliar terms as pelerine or mantelet today.
No comments:
Post a Comment