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DRESSING UP DRESSING UP A History of Fancy Dress in Britain VERITY WILSON Reaktion Books Published by Reaktion Books Ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published 2022 Copyright © Verity Wilson 2022 Supported by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in India by Replika Press Pvt. Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78914 529 8 CONTENTS Introduction FANCY DRESS DEFINED 7 One BALLS AND PARTIES 39 Two POSES AND TABLEAUX 79 Three GUY FAWKES AND UP HELLY AA 115 Four CARNIVALS AND RAGS 143 Five CORONATIONS AND CELEBRATIONS 177 Six THE BUSINESS OF FANCY DRESS: THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 207 Seven THE BUSINESS OF FANCY DRESS: THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 241 Eight THE CHARACTERS OF FANCY DRESS: THREE CASE STUDIES 275 EPILOGUE 313 REFERENCES 319 BIBLIOGRAPHY 334 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 340 PHOTO ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 341 INDEX 343 Introduction FANCY DRESS DEFINED This is a book about fancy dress. It has taken a long time to write because in the process I have done more laughing than writing. The joy it has engendered is itself one of the precepts of the fancy-dress experience, and any definition of the practice has to include its innate propensity to delight. Though most countries across the globe take great pleasure in dressing up, it is the fancy-dress endeavours of British people that are the focus of this book: the characters they represented, the manner and prevailing contexts in which they were chosen and worn, their acquisition and making. The book takes as its approximate time frame the years between 1850 and 1950, but it occasionally spills out over both the beginning and end points because events either side of these hundred years are often important to our understanding of the phenomenon. This is a sweeping period but hopefully the infor- mation presented does justice to the complexities of the subject and is not overly simplistic or reductive. While this book does not follow a strict chronological pattern, two queens stand at the far reaches of our period. Queen Victoria came to 7 DRESSING UP 1 A small boy dressed as Pierrot, with his Indian ayah, 1920s. the throne in 1837 and her penchant for fancy dress, of a different cast from that of the previous era, offers up a key element in defining the parameters of this book. The coronation of Queen Elizabeth ii in 1953 acted as an impetus for many queenly impersonations in red, white and blue. Despite this, the first years of her monarchy presaged a waning, though not the disappearance, of fancy dress, which, until its more recent upsurge in the 1990s, was primarily associated with children in the aftermath of the Second World War. People of all ages, however, embraced fancy dress in the period covered by this book, a time when many in Britain were living more prosperous lives than previously. Fancy dress continued to reflect the vaunting appetites of the elite but also the inventive and improvisatory tactics of other social classes who were increasingly vocal in their wish to share the good life. The profound repercussions of two world wars severely taxed the everyday habits of the British population, and the upheavals modulated 8 FAncy Dress DeFIneD fancy dress, shading its meanings and appearance. The costumes described and elucidated here were seen in big metropolitan centres and in innumerable small villages and towns across the country. But the British people who wore them were not always within the British Isles (illus. 1). A photograph of Singaporean Chinese children, still British subjects in the year Queen Elizabeth ii was crowned, speaks to the dogged persistence of colonial dressing up, as patriotically inflected as any in the mother country (illus. 2). The facts of fancy dress might seem unproblematic but, even before we enter the psychological domain of identity, expression, per- formance and portrayal, a lucid definition is not so very obvious. It follows, then, that one of the first questions this book asks is: ‘What is fancy dress?’ Competing explanations enrich our conception of it. Trying to capture a finite definition of fancy dress is a tricky under- taking, though we think we know it when we see it. An intelligent 2 Pupils from the Bukit Panjang Government school in singapore celebrating the coronation of Queen elizabeth ii, 1953. 9