COSTUME, throughout the greater part of history, has followed two separate lines of development, resulting in two contrasting types of garment. The most obvious line of division in modern eyes is between
male & female dress : trousers and skirts. But it is no means true that men have always worn bifurcated clothes and women not. The sex division turned out to be no division at all.
The great ancient civilizations arose in the fertile valleys of the Euphrates, the Nile and the Indus: all tropical areas, where protection from the cold cannot have been the dominant motive for wearing clothes. Many such motives have been adduced, ranging from the naive idea, based on the story in Genesis, that clothes were worn for reasons of modesty, to the sophisticated notion that they were worn for reasons of display and protective magic. In the present study it is proposed largely to ignore these complications and to concentrate on the two questions of form & material.
The early civilizations of Egypt & Mesopotamia are far from being the whole story. The study of cave paintings and the succession of
Ice age suggest that though clothing may have been determined by social and psychological consideration, the main motive in covering the body was to keep the cold out; nature proves this theory in providing
homo sapiens with a natural coat of fur.
Primitive man soon realized that animals could not only be hunted for flesh but also for fur. In other words he started wearing
fur. But this presented him with two problems: it only wrapped the shoulders and also hampered his movement, he therefore desired to
shape it in some way.
The second problem is that animal skin as it dry become hard and intractable. Some method had to be found to make them soft & pliable. The simplest way of doing this is by the a laborious mastication. Another method consists of alternately wetting the hide and beating it with a mallet but neither process is satisfactory. Later came the discovery of oil or blubber which was rubbed into the skin to keep it pliable for a longer time till the oil dried out. The next step was the discovery of
Tanning, here the hides are immersed for considerable period in tannic acid solution and the hides emerge permanently pliable and waterproof after the process.
The next greatest technological advance was the invention the
eyed needle, which made it possible to sew pieces of hide together to make them fit the body.
Meanwhile, people living in somewhat temperate climates were discovering the use of
animal & vegetable fibers.
Felting was the first step; this process was developed in Central Asia by the ancestors of the Mongols. Wool or hair is combed out, wetted and placed in layers on a mat. The mat is then rolled up tightly and beaten with a stick. The strands of the hair or wool are thus matted together and the felt produced is warm, pliable & durable and can be cut and sewn to make garments, rugs etc.
Another primitive method was using vegetable fiber. Here the bark of certain trees like mulberry, fig are stripped and soaked in water. Three layers were then placed on a flat stone, the middle layer being at right angle to the other two. The layers are then beaten with Mallet until they clung together and the bark cloth resulting is oiled or painted to add to its durability.
This process is very similar to that used to convert papyrus into a writing material, might be regarded as half-way between matting and weaving. Bark cloth is not easily cut or sewn and garment made of it are usually draperies made from a single rectangle of material.
Bark fibres can be used for true weaving but it is not as satisfactory as vegetable fibers.
Weaving on extensive scale requires a fixed abode, since a
loom tends to be large and heavy and therefore difficult to transport from place to place. The ideal situation for development was a small, settled community surrounded by grazing land for sheep. The fleece was clipped closely and the resultant bunch of fiber was then spun off and the thread woven into cloth in the loom.
Once cloth manufacture, on however small a scale, had been established, the way was open for the development of costume as we know it.
Adapted from"costume & fashion by James Laver"
