Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things (58 page)

The fashion spread quickly to England. But the fad might have died out
if the extravagant, pleasuring-loving British monarch Charles II had not by his own example made neckwear a court must. And had the times not been ripe for a lighthearted fashion diversion. Londoners had recently suffered through the plague of 1665 and the devastating citywide fire of 1666. The neckwear fad swept the city almost as fast as the flames of the great conflagration.

The trend was reinforced in the next century by Beau Brummel, who became famous for his massive neckties and innovative ways of tying them. In fact, the proper way to tie neckwear became a male obsession, discussed, debated, and hotly argued in conversation and the press. A fashion publication of the day listed thirty-two different knots. Knots and ties were named for famous people and fashionable places, such as the racecourse at Ascot. Since that time, neckwear in some form—belt-long or bowtie-short, plain or fancy, rope-narrow or chest-broad—has been continually popular.

The
bow tie
, popularized in America in the 1920s, may also have originated among Croatian men.

For many years, fashion historians believed the small, detachable bow tie developed as one of many variations on longer neckwear. But that was opened to debate by the discovery that, for centuries, part of the costume of men in areas of Croatia consisted of bow ties. They were made from a square handkerchief, folded along the diagonal, pulled into a bow knot, then attached with a cord around the neck.

Suit: 18th Century, France

Today a man may wear a sport jacket and slacks of different fabric and color, but the outfit is never called a suit. By modern definition, a suit consists of matching jacket and trousers, occasionally with a vest. But this was not the suit’s original definition. Nor was a suit worn as business attire.

The tradition of a man’s suit originated in France, in the eighteenth century, with the fashion of wearing a coat, waistcoat, vest, and trousers of different fabrics, patterns, and colors. The cut was loose, bordering on baggy, and the suit was intended as informal country wear and known as a “lounge suit.” In the 1860s, it became fashionable to have all components of a suit made in matching fabric.

Because country lounge suits were also worn for horseback riding, tailors were often requested to slit the jacket up the back—the origin of the
back slit
in modern suits. Another suit feature originated for utilitarian purposes: the
lapel hole
, truly a buttonhole and not intended for a flower, since on cold days a man turned up the collar of his lounge suit and buttoned it closed.

Gentlemen found lounge suits so comfortable, they began wearing them in the city as well. Tailors improved the cut, and by the 1890s, the leisure lounge suit had become respectable business attire.

Tuxedo: 1886, Tuxedo Park, New York

On the night the tuxedo made its debut, slightly more than a hundred years ago, it should have been pronounced scandalous attire, inappropriate for a formal occasion. The tailless coat was after all an affront to the customary black tie and tails of the day, formal wear that originated among English dandies in the early 1800s. However, the coat was designed and worn by a family whose name and position tempered the social reaction.

The tuxedo story begins in the summer of 1886, in Tuxedo Park, New York, a hamlet about forty miles north of Manhattan. Pierre Lorillard IV, a blueblood New Yorker of French extraction, heir to the Lorillard tobacco fortune, sought something less formal than tails to wear to the annual Autumn Ball. He commissioned a tailor to prepare several tailless jackets in black, modeled after the scarlet riding jackets then popular with British fox hunters. There is some evidence that Lorillard was inspired by the fashionable Edward VII, who as Prince of Wales had ordered the tails cut off his coat during a visit to India because of oppressive heat.

On the night of the ball, Pierre Lorillard suddenly experienced a lack of daring and declined to wear the jacket of his design. Instead, his son, Griswold, and several of Griswold’s friends, donned the tailless black dinner jackets, and with a nod to the British riding coat that had inspired the creation, they wore scarlet vests.

In the 1880s’ highly restrictive code of proper attire, the splash of scarlet and the affront of taillessness should probably have done more than just raise eyebrows. The ad hoc costume might well have passed quickly into oblivion, had it not been designed by a Lorillard and worn by a Lorillard, in a town built on land owned largely by the Lorillard family. Under the circumstances, the informal wear was copied and eventually became standard evening attire.

The American Formalwear Association claims that the Lorillards’ act of rebellion launched a multimillion-dollar industry. In 1985, for instance, the sale and rental of tuxedos and their accessories grossed $500 million. Eighty percent of all rentals were for weddings, the next-largest rental category being high school proms.

For weddings and proms, one standard tuxedo accessory has become the
cummerbund
, a wide sash worn around the waist. It originated in India as part of a man’s formal dress. The Hindu name for the garment was
kamarband
, meaning “loin band,” since it was once worn lower down on the abdomen as a token of modesty. In time, the garment moved up the body to the waist, and it was appropriated by the British, who Anglicized the name to cummerbund.

The tuxedo took its name, of course, from the town in which it bowed. And today the word “tuxedo” has formal and glamorous connotations. But the term has a frontier origin, going back to the Algonquian Indians who
once inhabited the area that is now Tuxedo Park. The regional Algonquian sachem, or chief, was named P’tauk-Seet (with a silent
P
), meaning “wolf.” In homage, the Indians referred to the area as P’tauk-Seet. Colonists, though, often phoneticized Indian words, and a 1765 land survey of the region reveals that they recorded P’tauk-Seet as “Tucksito.” By the year 1800, when Pierre Lorillard’s grandfather began acquiring land in the area, the name had already become Tuxedo. Thus, “tuxedo” derives from the Indian for “wolf,” which may or may not say something about a man who wears one.

Hats: Antiquity, Europe and Asia

The similarities in sound and spelling between the words “hat,” a head covering, and “hut,” a primitive home, are not coincidental.

Long before Western man designed clothes for the body, he constructed thatched shelters. A
haet
, or
hull
, offered protection from the elements and from the darkness of night. And when he protected his head—from heat, rain, or falling debris—the covering, whatever its composition, was also labeled
haet
or
hutt
, both of which etymologists translate as “shelter” and “protection.”

The association between a head covering and a primitive home goes further than hat equals hut. The earliest inhabitants of the British Isles wore a conical hat made of bound rush, called a
cappan
. They lived in a shelter, also constructed of rush, known as a
cabban
. The two terms are, respectively, the origins of our words “cap” and “cabin.” The evolution of language is replete with examples of peoples borrowing words for existing objects to christen new creations.

The first recorded use of a hat with a brim was in Greece in the fifth century
B.C
. Worn by huntsmen and travelers for protection from sun and rain, the felt
petasos
was wide-brimmed, and when not on the head it hung down the back on a cord. The
petasos
was copied by the Etruscans and the Romans, and was popular well into the Middle Ages.

The Greeks also wore a brimless hat shaped like a truncated cone. They copied the design from the Egyptians and named it
pilos
, for “felt,” the material of its construction. It appeared with variations throughout European cultures, and with the rise of universities in the late Middle Ages, the
pileus quadratus
, or four-sided felt hat, became the professional head covering for scholars—and later, as the
mortarboard
, was worn by high school and college students at graduation ceremonies.

Hats today are more popular with women than with men, but this was not always the case. In classical times, women rarely wore them, while men kept them on indoors and in churches and cathedrals. The customs continued into the sixteenth century, when the popularity of false hair and the mushrooming size of wigs made wearing hats inconvenient if not impossible.
As the fad of wigs died out, men resumed the practice of wearing hats, though never again with the devotion of the past. And three customs underwent complete reversals: a man never worn a hat indoors, in church, or in the presence of a lady.

It was at this time, the late 1700s, that women in large numbers began to wear hats—festooned with ribbons, feathers, and flowers, and trimmed in lace. Previously, if a European woman wore a hat at all, it was a plain cap indoors, a hood outside.

Women’s hats that tied under the chin became
bonnets
. The word “bonnet” already existed, but throughout the late Middle Ages it denoted any small, soft hat; only in the eighteenth century did it come to signify a particular kind of feminine headwear. Milan became the bonnet capital of Europe, with Milanese hats in great demand. So much so that all women’s headwear fell under the British rubric “millinery,” and a Milaner craftsman became a milliner.

Top Hat: 1797, England

John Etherington, a London haberdasher with a fashionable shop on the Strand, emerged from his store in the twilight hours of January 15, 1797, wearing a new hat of his own design. The London
Times
reported that Etherington’s black stovepipe hat drew a crowd so large that a shoving match erupted; one man was pushed through a storefront window. Etherington was arrested for disturbing the peace. Within a month, though, he had more orders for top hats than he could fill.

British costume historians contend that Etherington’s was the world’s first top hat. Their French counterparts claim that the design originated a year earlier in Paris and that John Etherington pilfered it. The only evidence supporting the Parisian origin, however, is a painting by French artist Charles Vernet,
Un Incroyable de 1796
, which depicts a dandy in an Etherington-like stovepipe hat. Though artists traditionally have presaged trends, the British believe the painting may be more an example of an artist’s antedating a work.

Fedora
. A soft felt crown with a center crease and a flexible brim mark the fedora, whose name is derived from a hat worn by a character in an 1882 French play. Written by playwright Victorien Sardou, whose dramas were the rage of Paris in the nineteenth century,
Fedora
was composed for its star, Sarah Bernhardt, and it established a new trend in hats. A fedora, with a veil and feather, became a favorite woman’s bicycling hat.

Panama
. Though it would seem logical that the Panama hat originated in the Central American capital it is named for, it did not. The lightweight straw hat, made of finely plaited jipajapa leaves, originated in Peru. Panama became a major distribution center. North American engineers first encountered
the hats in Panama, during the 1914 construction of the Panama Canal, and considered them a local product.

Derby
. In 1780, Edward Smith Stanley, the twelfth earl of Derby, instituted an annual race for three-year-old horses, the Derby, to be held at Epsom Downs, near London. Popular at that time among men were stiff felt hats with dome-shaped crowns and narrow brims. Regularly worn to the Derby, the hats eventually acquired the race’s name.

Stetson
. In the 1860s, Philadelphia haberdasher John B. Stetson was searching for a way to earn a profit from his hat business. Recalling a vacation to the Midwest and the number of wealthy cattle ranchers he’d met there, Stetson decided to produce an oversized hat fit for “cattle kings.” The “ten-gallon” Western cowboy hat, named “The Boss of the Plains,” transformed Stetson’s business into a success and became a classic symbol of the Wild West and of the men—and women—who tamed it. Buffalo Bill, General Custer, and Tom Mix wore Stetsons, as did Annie Oakley and Calamity Jane.

Gloves: 10,000 Years Ago, Northern Europe

Gloves evolved from the desire to protect the hands from cold and from heavy manual labor. Among the numerous examples discovered in parts of Northern Europe are “bag gloves,” sheaths of animal skin that reach to the elbow. These mittens are at least ten thousand years old.

The earliest peoples to inhabit the warm lands bordering the Mediterranean used gloves for construction and farming. Among these southerners, the Egyptians, around 1500
B.C
., were the first to make gloves a decorative accessory. In the tomb of King Tutankhamen, archaeologists retrieved a pair of soft linen gloves wrapped in layers of cloth, as well as a single tapestry glove woven with colored threads. Strings around the tops of the gloves indicate they were tied to the wrist. And the separate fingers and thumb leave no doubt that hand-shaped gloves were used at least 3,500 years ago.

Regardless of the warmth of the climate, every major civilization eventually developed both costume and work gloves. In the fourth century
B.C
., the Greek historian Xenophon commented on the Persian production of exquisitely crafted fur costume gloves; and in Homer’s
Odyssey
, Ulysses, returning home, finds his father, Laertes, laboring in the garden, where “gloves secured his hands to shield them from the thorns.”

It was the Anglo-Saxons, calling their heavy leather hand covering
glof
, meaning “palm of hand,” who gave us the word “glove.”

Purse: Pre-8th Century
B.C
., Southern Europe