Our clothing makes a statement about us, whether or not we want it to. It tells the world about our lives, who we are, and what image we want to present. (Pretending that it doesn’t does not make it so…) Clothing can be used to convey more specific messages, though. These sometimes get lost in history, as different images and garments mean different things at different points in time. This 1690s petticoat at the Fashion Museum in Bath is the perfect example of hidden messages in clothing, and how it can be interpreted.
The Petticoat- What IS It?
I will get into the specifics of the garment below, but I was confused when I first saw an embroidered petticoat. I know a petticoat as something worn under skirts, so why would you have such elaborate embroidery on an undergarment? That led me to research petticoats, where I learned that in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, petticoats were considered exterior garments. They would be seen as part of your outfit, thus the embroidery makes a lot of sense. (Visible petticoats continue to come in and out of fashion after that, including a Christian DIor revival in the 1950s and 1960s.)
1690s Petticoat, Fashion Museum Bath
This particular petticoat dates back to the 1690s, and is made of cotton with wool embroidery. The embroidery is called crewelwork, and is done with wool in a loose twist. According to the exhibition “Woollen threads were thicker than silk and so more difficult to use for embroidery. For that reason, crewelwork embroidery often featured large bold motifs: it was frequently used for bed-hangings in the late 1600s.” Given that the garment is over 300 years old, it is an amazing condition.
The embroidery is beautiful, of course, but it also contains a message. “The embroidered ship motif on this crewelwork petticoat symbolises the flow of goods, ideas, and people via the great trading companies of the 1600s.” (Exhibition info) Although I have no doubt that the English would have seen this as a good thing- exotic goods were readily available in Britain when they would have previously been rare and eye-wateringly expensive- it alludes to a much darker past. The Atlantic slave trade was growing at a rapid pace in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and the trading companies played a massive role in this.
Have you noticed any coded or hidden messages in clothing?
Cheers,
The Historian
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No personal experience but did you see the article in today’s New York Times about a 1888 bustle dress which had a sewn-in message in code which had baffled would-be decoders.
Also in the movie Phantom Thread, the high-fashion designer/dressmaker played by Daniel Day-Lewis is in the habit of sewing bits of text into dresses. The original screenplay is by the film’s director, Paul Thomas Anderson and I’m wondering what sparked this notion for his lead character.