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Outer Beauty
Judith Solomon
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Between the 1890's and 1930's, clothing was "the most literal expression of who we were as a nation," writes Jenna Weissman Joselit in "A Perfect Fit: Clothes, Character, and the Promise of America." It was a time when "fitting in" mattered more than "standing out." Roiled by Reconstruction, immigration and the Industrial Revolution, groping for an identity, Americans turned to clothing as a social and moral indicator. With thousands of African Americans emancipated and millions of Europeans arriving, the melting pot found a unifying cover in the new and democratizing ready-to-wear industry, with its standardized styles and sizes.
By the 1920s, factory-made clothing had pushed costly custom tailoring and complicated sewing machine patterns to the back burner. Now, instead of maybe one good suit or dress, the average person could afford several, in ever changing styles and � with advances in chemistry � colors. The "custodians of American values" � be they ministers, rabbis or Boston gentlewomen � churned out steady advice on this bubbling stew of changes. The nation's moral and physical health was at stake: While encouraging an "expanded sense of life's possibilities," this kaleidoscope of choice, the thinking went, also encouraged jealousy among women � the frivolous sex � who would vie for the latest ensembles, which themselves, women were warned, bred disease, as they were made in germ-infested factories.
In lucidly written chapters on frocks, suits, hats, shoes, furs and jewelry, the author does a fine job honing her thesis that clothing, being intricately bound to "civic virtue," was no private matter. "Style, cut, and color" ought to reflect a "national taste in dress," which, in turn, would help fuel "the kind of democracy [needed] in America," where,
"with the right outfit, one could even elude the restraints of class and region." As in her 1995 book, the engaging "The Wonders of America: Reinventing Jewish Culture, 1880-1950," Joselit, a visiting professor of American studies at Princeton, extensively researched primary sources, from self-help manuals, Yiddish dailies, fashion magazines and advice columns to advertisements. Black-and-white illustrations and photos are sprinkled throughout, though the captions could be more explanatory, as could the background of several personages mentioned, such as W.E.B. Dubois and Fannie Hurst. While their views on the clothing problem are made known, practically zero information is given as to the renowned African American scholar or the college-educated German-Jew, one of the country's highest paid novelists.
Society's marginalized members � embodied in the notorious "Ghetto Girl" from the Lower East Side, and African Americans � "imitate, sometimes in more showy and often in more trying colors, in cheap and flimsy materials, in poor shoes and flippant hats, the extreme fashions of the well-to-do," observed social reformer Jane Addams. Guidebooks, like "The Negro in Etiquette: A Novelty" (1899), instructed their readership in decorum and dress: Prince Albert coats, gloves and walking canes were the correct church-wear for men.
Yet both groups had their rebels: Some African American men "rejected the aesthetic of gentlemanliness" and "deliberately cut flashy figures in loud suspenders, sharp shoes� flashiness spoke of freedom while restraint spoke of repression." Their mothers and wives, forced to spend weekdays in maid and waitress uniforms, which "erase[d] the black body," embraced any opportunity to dress up; to feed their souls by putting "flame in their clothing," in the words of Dubois.
Similarly, the Jewish woman, fleeing from lands where a kerchief and shapeless sack-dress formed a wardrobe, where opportunities for assimilation were non-existent and
pogroms occurred, was entranced by "Cinderella clothes," which could instantly transform her � without any knowledge of her adopted home's "rhythms, language, and customs" � into an American: "Newcomer Sophie Abrams, for instance, recalled standing before a mirror, outfitted in a new shirtwaist, skirt, and hat ('such a hat I had never seen'), and saying to her new self, 'Boy, Sophie, look at you now� just like an American.'"
MUCH OF THE NATIONAL CONversation revolved around whether the Jewish woman could ever achieve the quiet manners and modest demeanor of her Christian sister, whether she could put into practice Puritan "austerity and restraint," so that she too could serve and reflect well upon the commonweal: "Fashion was not simply about looking good. It was about being good as well� It was the ultimate test of character� Pitting discipline and restraint against desire."
In 1918 the American Weekly Jewish News organized a round table on whether the Auntie Yettas of this world, with rings flashing from every finger, were constitutionally unable to cultivate the self-control required to be part of a civilized culture. Fannie Hurst opined that the "vivid, aggressive temperament and imagination of the Jew" made the task all but impossible, while Mme. Nazimova, an actress, countered that in time the Jewess will acquire good taste, and thus reflect America's belief in merit and perfectibility.
Italian and Irish immigrants are barely accorded a nod in these pages, yet it could have been interesting to compare their assimilability through clothing with that of their Jewish counterparts. And while Joselit makes clear in the introduction, this study is not the usual one � of "Fashion with a capital F" � her thesis is ably framed by a picture of America's sartorial history at the turn of the century and then some: By the 1890s,
progressive women no longer wanted to be thought sweet and precious, but rather aspired to "the beauty of a free personality."
Layers of petticoats and street-sweeping dresses, which caught and carried filthy debris, were the bane of reformers who opted for Turkish trousers in place of "the oppressive physical and cultural weight of female attire." But their real ire was reserved for whalebone and steel corsets, likening them to "ancient instrument[s] of torture." Women were "the very picture of contained verticality, of mobility held in check."
Flapper Jane appeared in the Roaring Twenties; she smoked, drank and played golf. Under her short dress lay clamped down breasts and hips, connoting youthful masculinity. Joselit weaves together some history and psychology behind Dame Fashion's changing styles, but, for some reason, fails to mention women winning the vote in 1920 (though she may have felt it an obvious fact), which to my mind is reflected in their androgynous yet highly sexual presentation � they now had some power, were emboldened, but, so as not to be too threatening, turned into boys not men.
Joselit, however, may not agree with that assessment. She doesn't go for the deep-seated Freudian analysis found in Alison Lurie's "The Language of Clothes," where discarding a worn purse is freighted with meaning: An old bag is a desexualized crone. More desirable is a spanking new purse with sturdy straps.
For each of their successes the reformers had to battle stalwarts who maintained the old way was the only way, and who enlisted experts to their cause: "Scantiness in modern women's dress is partly responsible for the tuberculosis problem," declared a prominent doctor, while textile manufacturers warned of an industry crisis due to the "Flapper Uniform," which required only seven yards of fabric, as compared with the customary 20.
Men's uniforms rarely instigated such hullabaloo. Since the 1800s, the suit has been what Anne Hollander, in her book "Sex and Suits," called "standard masculine civil costume," replacing satins, laces and ruffles, which were no longer considered consistent with "responsibility and probity," but foppish and effeminate.
"Well into the postwar era," both men and women, of all races and religions, wouldn't dream of "stepping out in public without some form of head covering." A web of civic rules existed for when to wear and when to doff one's hat: After September 15th a straw boater might mark a man a "Bolshevik." In deference to their new home, Reform Jews put aside their yarmulkes � "a bare head [being] far more respectful" in a house of worship.
Jewish women were encouraged to replace their sheitls "a traditional symbol of modesty," with thoroughly immodest creations: Measuring "three feet tall and two feet wide," ladies' hats, such as one worn by a Miss Higgin, were decorated with "pyramids of grapes and flowers, clusters of yellow wheat and curving shafts of aigrettes." Aigrettes � heron-like birds � provide Joselit with one of her most interesting anecdotes. Today, when we think of the Audubon Society, a bunch of gentle bird-watchers comes to mind. In the late 1800s, however, when its founder, Bostonian Harriet Hemenway, urged her friends to stop purchasing hats with aigrette feathers, ethnic enmity drove her animal-rights activism. Bird Lore, the house organ, featured an article entitled "Aliens": "The foreign-born," it read, "have an inconquerable desire to kill something, and no respect for the laws" and our nation's natural beauty.
"Foreign-born" were code words for money-loving Jews like J.H. Rosenstein, a feather retailer who hit back with a lawsuit asserting that he and his colleagues were greater patriots, providing thousands of jobs for their fellow Americans. While the Audubon Society won in the end, a thicket of legal questions, some quite humorous, was raised by the lawsuit: "What of those winged creatures who migrated annually from the Old World to the New? Were they, too, under the protection of� authorities?"
At the turn of the 21st century, anti-fur protesters still marry morality to fashion. But they are a rarefied group. As Joselit concludes in her last pages, "getting dressed [has become] a personal rather than a social form of expression, a way of heralding the individual rather than the community."
(October 22, 2001)
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