CARVED IN FASHION
Image: Wooden Carved Cravat, Grinling Gibbons, circa 1690. Image courtesy of V&A
By Sarah Jane Downing
Sir Horace Walpole could barely suppress a smile as he placed the cravat at his throat securing it with a ribbon at the back. It was beautiful, a concoction of intricate Venetian needlepoint lace, with a bow knot at the throat, falling in a lavish array across most of his chest.
Sir Horace smoothed his face into a suitably serious expression and went to greet his guests. He was delighted as they complimented the cravat, and he couldn’t wait for someone to reach out to touch the delicate lace and discover that it was actually carved in wood.
Carved by the amazingly gifted artisan carpenter Grinling Gibbons in 1690, more than a century before, the cravat was intended to display his carpentry skills and just what he could achieve with a single piece of wood, but for one night at least, Walpole donned Gibbons’ creation as style in solid wood.
Image: Wooden Carved Cravat, Grinling Gibbons, circa 1690. Image courtesy of V&A
This was not the first time that wood was worn, nor would it be the last. In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Shakespeare writes about the love-struck Claudio: “and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet” to impress his lady love. The Bard’s elegant turn of phrase makes it clear that the shape and structure of the doublet were solid and robust, and quite independent from the shape of the body.
Elizabethan costume employed a variety of wood to create its structures. The peasecod belly of the doublet was frequently formed by fronds of willow bent into shape and padded and bombasted with buckram and pasteboard. Willow was also used to hold the oversized sleeves in what Shakespeare has Petruchio call a ‘demi-canon’ shape. For those who couldn’t afford whalebone, willow, cane, and rushes would be used to form the stiffeners for farthingales throughout the 16th century.
Wood was ideal for footwear, protecting the wearer from the worst of the mud and effluent of the unpaved streets. The term ‘clogs’ and ‘pattens’ were frequently used interchangeably along with galoshes to represent the protective overshoes, particularly those of country women.
Galoshes or ‘galoches’ or ‘Galoches de bois’ were derived from the wooden soled shoe devised by the Gauls and adopted by the Romans to deal with our climate. Samuel Pepys records in his Diary for 1665 on a day in November when Lady Batten dared to wear pristine white shoes ‘spicke and span’ despite the ‘horrible foule weather’ because she wore stout galoshes to protect them. Unfortunately one was sucked off and stuck in the mud and she was forced to return home with only one, at which she was ‘horribly vexed…’
Image: Netherlands (aka Holland), Zaandam. Zaanse Schans, historic open air museum. Wooden Shoe Museum, highly carved Wedding Clogs. Image courtesy of Alamy
Defined in ‘The Ladies’ Dictionary’ of 1694 as a “wooden shoe with an iron bottom”, pattens were a wooden platform on which to place the shoe balanced on a metal ring to keep the wearer out of the mud. The practicality of pattens was accepted during the late 18th century amongst the fashionable who visited Bath, but “the ceaseless clink of pattens” was an irritation that Jane Austen commented on in ‘Northanger Abbey’.
Whilst British and American clogs have a leather upper to the wooden sole, the Dutch clog, French sabot and German ‘Klomp’ were all carved from a single block of wood such as alder, birch, sycamore or willow. A ‘bodger’ would cut and roughly shape the clogs before they were left outside to dry and season, only then were they properly carved. It was essential that this was done as a pair so that the two were truly matched.
The solid durability of clogs made them the footwear of the industrial revolution, with sufficient demand keeping clog makers in industrial towns like Wigan busy until the 1930s. During World War II the government tried to push the clog as a Utility Fashion, but even the most elegant model couldn’t erase the stigma of engrained poverty. Wood shavings were however embraced, and featured in several hat designs by Parisian milliners as an inventive wartime expedient.
This was not the only wood that fashion required. With the changing shape of corsets, 18th century stays required extra stiffening at the front and the busk came to the fore. This was excellent for keeping the front of the bodice flat to display a decorative stomacher, it was also invaluable for controlling the figure and the posture as a long busk could be worn to flatten the stomach as well as promote the bosom. Although whalebone remained the preferred material for the wealthy, wood also worked well. It also had the advantage of being a substance that many were familiar working with, and just as countless young women lovingly embroidered agricultural smocks for their beaux, they reciprocated by carving busks with beautiful images and messages of love to be worn close to the heart. The busk was inserted into a channel stitched into the centre front of the stays, and to prevent it working its way out, it was tied in place with a busk point or busk lace.
Image: Pacific island bark cloth 'tapa' shows wonderful geometric design. Image courtesy of Alamy
Found in many places including Polynesia, Africa, and south East Asia, Bark cloth is one of the earliest forms of fabric. Bark from certain trees including the paper mulberry and the ficus natalensis can be removed in large sheets, which once steeped in cold water for a couple of weeks to soften them, can then be beaten with wooden mallets to felt the fibres together to create a strong smooth surface of twice the original area. It is said that Polynesian women beating ‘tapa’, bark cloth would use a set of rhythms familiar throughout the islands and so convey messages as they worked.
African bark cloth generally dries to a rich brown whilst paper mulberry ‘tapa’ remains virtually white. Colour made from plant sap adheres well to both, allowing the cloth to be painted or printed with intricate designs for ceremonial use.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the Tlingit people from south Alaska used a technique of finger weaving to create remarkably perfect circles on the fine decorative ‘Chilkat blankets’ to be worn on ceremonial occasions by their Chief. Fine fibre was stripped from the inner bark of the red cedar to create the warp and the weft was woven from hair from the mountain goat.
Throughout most centuries wood has been employed but concealed, or transformed into something unrecognisable. It took the subversive designers of the mid-20th century to bring wood to the fore in all the polished, grained, beauty of actual wood.
In the late 1950’s Texan handbag designer Enid Collins bought a collection of wooden boxes, and in collaboration with her husband set about creating an innovative line of box handbags like trinket boxes featuring lucite handles and brass findings. Each had a mirror inside, and a whimsical design in faux gemstones and sequins in the outside. Poodles and owls gave way to flowers, peace signs, and motifs of ‘love’ in psychedelic fonts as the 1960s became the 1970s. However, Collins’ use of an honest natural material remained directional as the desire for novelty and experimentation gave way to a re-acquaintance and re-appropriation of peasant and folk art traditions. This also brought a hippie style reimagining of the clog complete with brown leather upper riveted to a stout platform sole and chunky heel.
Image: Enid Collins of Texas “Money Tree III” Wooden Box Purse, 1960s Vintage
It took maverick designer Hussein Chalayan to combine wood with surrealism for his A/W00 show in February 2000. The live show at London fashion week featured a living room set where 4 models stripped the covers from a quartet of chairs and donned them as dresses to rapturous applause. Then a fifth strode on to step into the centre of the coffee table, deftly pull it up from the centre to hook it to her belt, at which the legs snapped up out of the way leaving her wearing a kind of mahogany telescopic crinoline.
Since then wood has featured in a variety of outstanding shows, such as Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse’s 2011 show ‘Biomimicry’ where she used laser cutting techniques to cut shapes like reptilian scales from discarded plywood and applied them to fabric in harmless mimicry of exotic leathers. Whilst textile designer Elisa Strozyk has created a collection of dyed wooden textiles using a mosaic of triangular maple fragments backed with cotton to create a unique hybrid material. By varying the size and shape of the pieces it can be light and flexible enough for clothing, and strong and structural enough to create the liquid parquet of her wooden carpets.
Image: Biomimicry, Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse. Image courtesy of Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse
Although utilised in very different ways, the combination of wood and textile endures. The ingenuity that inspired the Elizabethan tailor to take willow fronds for basket weaving and use them to reshape torsos and support swaggering status is the same ingenuity employed by millennial designers to reimagine wood as fluid and repurpose it for innovative textiles for a new generation.
By Sarah Jane Downing
Sir Horace Walpole could barely suppress a smile as he placed the cravat at his throat securing it with a ribbon at the back. It was beautiful, a concoction of intricate Venetian needlepoint lace, with a bow knot at the throat, falling in a lavish array across most of his chest.
Sir Horace smoothed his face into a suitably serious expression and went to greet his guests. He was delighted as they complimented the cravat, and he couldn’t wait for someone to reach out to touch the delicate lace and discover that it was actually carved in wood.
Carved by the amazingly gifted artisan carpenter Grinling Gibbons in 1690, more than a century before, the cravat was intended to display his carpentry skills and just what he could achieve with a single piece of wood, but for one night at least, Walpole donned Gibbons’ creation as style in solid wood.
Image: Wooden Carved Cravat, Grinling Gibbons, circa 1690. Image courtesy of V&A
This was not the first time that wood was worn, nor would it be the last. In ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Shakespeare writes about the love-struck Claudio: “and now will he lie ten nights awake, carving the fashion of a new doublet” to impress his lady love. The Bard’s elegant turn of phrase makes it clear that the shape and structure of the doublet were solid and robust, and quite independent from the shape of the body.
Elizabethan costume employed a variety of wood to create its structures. The peasecod belly of the doublet was frequently formed by fronds of willow bent into shape and padded and bombasted with buckram and pasteboard. Willow was also used to hold the oversized sleeves in what Shakespeare has Petruchio call a ‘demi-canon’ shape. For those who couldn’t afford whalebone, willow, cane, and rushes would be used to form the stiffeners for farthingales throughout the 16th century.
Wood was ideal for footwear, protecting the wearer from the worst of the mud and effluent of the unpaved streets. The term ‘clogs’ and ‘pattens’ were frequently used interchangeably along with galoshes to represent the protective overshoes, particularly those of country women.
Galoshes or ‘galoches’ or ‘Galoches de bois’ were derived from the wooden soled shoe devised by the Gauls and adopted by the Romans to deal with our climate. Samuel Pepys records in his Diary for 1665 on a day in November when Lady Batten dared to wear pristine white shoes ‘spicke and span’ despite the ‘horrible foule weather’ because she wore stout galoshes to protect them. Unfortunately one was sucked off and stuck in the mud and she was forced to return home with only one, at which she was ‘horribly vexed…’
Image: Netherlands (aka Holland), Zaandam. Zaanse Schans, historic open air museum. Wooden Shoe Museum, highly carved Wedding Clogs. Image courtesy of Alamy
Defined in ‘The Ladies’ Dictionary’ of 1694 as a “wooden shoe with an iron bottom”, pattens were a wooden platform on which to place the shoe balanced on a metal ring to keep the wearer out of the mud. The practicality of pattens was accepted during the late 18th century amongst the fashionable who visited Bath, but “the ceaseless clink of pattens” was an irritation that Jane Austen commented on in ‘Northanger Abbey’.
Whilst British and American clogs have a leather upper to the wooden sole, the Dutch clog, French sabot and German ‘Klomp’ were all carved from a single block of wood such as alder, birch, sycamore or willow. A ‘bodger’ would cut and roughly shape the clogs before they were left outside to dry and season, only then were they properly carved. It was essential that this was done as a pair so that the two were truly matched.
The solid durability of clogs made them the footwear of the industrial revolution, with sufficient demand keeping clog makers in industrial towns like Wigan busy until the 1930s. During World War II the government tried to push the clog as a Utility Fashion, but even the most elegant model couldn’t erase the stigma of engrained poverty. Wood shavings were however embraced, and featured in several hat designs by Parisian milliners as an inventive wartime expedient.
This was not the only wood that fashion required. With the changing shape of corsets, 18th century stays required extra stiffening at the front and the busk came to the fore. This was excellent for keeping the front of the bodice flat to display a decorative stomacher, it was also invaluable for controlling the figure and the posture as a long busk could be worn to flatten the stomach as well as promote the bosom. Although whalebone remained the preferred material for the wealthy, wood also worked well. It also had the advantage of being a substance that many were familiar working with, and just as countless young women lovingly embroidered agricultural smocks for their beaux, they reciprocated by carving busks with beautiful images and messages of love to be worn close to the heart. The busk was inserted into a channel stitched into the centre front of the stays, and to prevent it working its way out, it was tied in place with a busk point or busk lace.
Image: Pacific island bark cloth 'tapa' shows wonderful geometric design. Image courtesy of Alamy
Found in many places including Polynesia, Africa, and south East Asia, Bark cloth is one of the earliest forms of fabric. Bark from certain trees including the paper mulberry and the ficus natalensis can be removed in large sheets, which once steeped in cold water for a couple of weeks to soften them, can then be beaten with wooden mallets to felt the fibres together to create a strong smooth surface of twice the original area. It is said that Polynesian women beating ‘tapa’, bark cloth would use a set of rhythms familiar throughout the islands and so convey messages as they worked.
African bark cloth generally dries to a rich brown whilst paper mulberry ‘tapa’ remains virtually white. Colour made from plant sap adheres well to both, allowing the cloth to be painted or printed with intricate designs for ceremonial use.
During the 18th and 19th centuries the Tlingit people from south Alaska used a technique of finger weaving to create remarkably perfect circles on the fine decorative ‘Chilkat blankets’ to be worn on ceremonial occasions by their Chief. Fine fibre was stripped from the inner bark of the red cedar to create the warp and the weft was woven from hair from the mountain goat.
Throughout most centuries wood has been employed but concealed, or transformed into something unrecognisable. It took the subversive designers of the mid-20th century to bring wood to the fore in all the polished, grained, beauty of actual wood.
In the late 1950’s Texan handbag designer Enid Collins bought a collection of wooden boxes, and in collaboration with her husband set about creating an innovative line of box handbags like trinket boxes featuring lucite handles and brass findings. Each had a mirror inside, and a whimsical design in faux gemstones and sequins in the outside. Poodles and owls gave way to flowers, peace signs, and motifs of ‘love’ in psychedelic fonts as the 1960s became the 1970s. However, Collins’ use of an honest natural material remained directional as the desire for novelty and experimentation gave way to a re-acquaintance and re-appropriation of peasant and folk art traditions. This also brought a hippie style reimagining of the clog complete with brown leather upper riveted to a stout platform sole and chunky heel.
Image: Enid Collins of Texas “Money Tree III” Wooden Box Purse, 1960s Vintage
It took maverick designer Hussein Chalayan to combine wood with surrealism for his A/W00 show in February 2000. The live show at London fashion week featured a living room set where 4 models stripped the covers from a quartet of chairs and donned them as dresses to rapturous applause. Then a fifth strode on to step into the centre of the coffee table, deftly pull it up from the centre to hook it to her belt, at which the legs snapped up out of the way leaving her wearing a kind of mahogany telescopic crinoline.
Since then wood has featured in a variety of outstanding shows, such as Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse’s 2011 show ‘Biomimicry’ where she used laser cutting techniques to cut shapes like reptilian scales from discarded plywood and applied them to fabric in harmless mimicry of exotic leathers. Whilst textile designer Elisa Strozyk has created a collection of dyed wooden textiles using a mosaic of triangular maple fragments backed with cotton to create a unique hybrid material. By varying the size and shape of the pieces it can be light and flexible enough for clothing, and strong and structural enough to create the liquid parquet of her wooden carpets.
Image: Biomimicry, Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse. Image courtesy of Stefanie Nieuwenhuyse
Although utilised in very different ways, the combination of wood and textile endures. The ingenuity that inspired the Elizabethan tailor to take willow fronds for basket weaving and use them to reshape torsos and support swaggering status is the same ingenuity employed by millennial designers to reimagine wood as fluid and repurpose it for innovative textiles for a new generation.