0 Dress in Spain pdf

Spain
Key words
Spain, folk dress, dance, Balenciaga, majo, Manila shawl, Spanish-style fashion,
Glossary
Basquiña (a type of skirt)
Cape
Cloth cap
Espadrilles
Fan
Farthingale
Gandaya (hairnet)
Guardapiés (a type of skirt)
Majo, maja - member of the Madrid artistic scene of the early nineteenth century,
distinguished by their elaborate outfits
Manila shawl
Mantilla
Ornamental comb
Red (hairnet)
Ruff
The influence of Spanish dress on European fashions is concentrated in two periods:
court life of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the so-called moda a la
española [Spanish-style fashion], and that of the majos at the end of the eighteenth
and during the nineteenth centuries. The stereotypical idea of the Spanish was fixed
around 1800, an image which emanated from the south, from Andalusia, and which
still survives today. Within the scope of folk dress, some pieces stand out which
originated in Spain, such as the mantilla and the peineta, the Manila shawl and the
man’s cape, which show that the combining of cultures is fundamental for the creation
of diverse clothing. Very different objects to traditional ones are the tourist products
which are sold in Spain: Manila shawls, fans, lace shawls, flamenco dresses, and even
Mexican sombreros, possibly made in China. From the diversity and richness of
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traditional Spanish dress, it has become a banality which is the result of not knowing
about the popular origins of these clothes, but this folk dress continues to be studied
and great international designers are bringing it up to date. In the early 21st century,
Spanish fashion production is divided into independent designers and small labels
which want to create a space for themselves in the international arena, and large
commercial enterprises which are successful at a global level.
The regions of Spain all have very different characteristics. The geography and
climate are extremely varied, as are the different signs of identity displayed by its
inhabitants. Four languages and several dialects coexist, along with distinct types of
food and different customs. There are four large geographical areas: the cold and
rainy region in the north, facing the Atlantic, of small, single-family farms and large
wooded areas; the central area with a continental climate, which is cold in the winter
and hot in the summer, with large expanses of cereal and livestock fields. There is the
Mediterranean area in the east, with a mild climate where the inhabitants have
traditionally devoted themselves to agriculture, commerce and fishing. Finally, there
is the warm, dry South, near to Africa, where crops and livestock occupy large estates.
A product of cultural and regional diversity , Spanish folk dress has a richness and
variety that has amazed European travellers since the sixteenth century, and which
later led the Romantics to create the stereotypical image of a supposed “Spanish”
identity. Although there have been attempts to make the popular clothing of the
population more uniform, and to create a regional or even national dress, it is
nonetheless clear that, even in twenty-first century Spain, traces of what has
constituted the social life and dress of each region can still be perceived.
Fashion in Spain has had two stellar moments of influence over European fashions.
First was the so called moda a la española [Spanish-style fashion], which spread from
the powerful Spanish court of the Hapsburgs to other European courts through
matrimonial and political alliances, from 1530 to 1665. The clothing caused a great
impact due to its forms and colours. Women adopted a geometric silhouette which
erased the natural forms of the body (as seen in the painting Las infantas Isabel Clara
Eugenia y Catalina Micaela, 1575, by Alonso Sánchez Coello). The strict etiquette of
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the court also imposed a proud and upright body, which in women was achieved
through the triangular chest box which flattened it, the verdugado, a structure of
hoops sewn into or below the skirt, and chapines, shoes with high platforms which
were also worn by Venetian courtiers. Men’s clothing emphasised their private parts
and legs, with a domed chest, pumpkin hose, codpiece and patterned stockings. Men
dressed in huge rigid white collars named lechuguillas [ruffs], made of a fine material
and ruffled with lace (seen in the paintings by Alonso Sánchez Coello, El príncipe de
don Carlos, 1558, and Diego Velázquez’s Francisco Pacheco, 1619-1622, and Felipe
IV, 1623-27). The clothing was made with extremely rigid and highly decorated
fabrics and displayed all its width to show the material and technical richness. In
1665-68, French fashions were introduced into Spain, at first alongside the rigid
Spanish fashions, until Phillip V adopted French fashions at the beginning of the
eighteenth century.
Later, the fashion of the majos, which still has some international influence today,
began in the second half of the eighteenth century and lasted throughout the
nineteenth century. The controversy between the Spanish fashion named castiza, a
term which designates the autochthonous, and French fashion, was revived by the
majos.
“Typically Spanish”
Spanish popular culture has experienced the constructions of myths and stereotypes
which favoured the label of “typically Spanish”, and which were manifested in dance,
music and customs. Since the Romantic period, European travellers and novelists
have created an exotic yet traditional image of Spain, particularly in the South, and
they constructed an idealised model of the Spanish people, which was composed of an
historical sense of honour and pride, mixed with hospitality and friendliness,
resistance to modernity, exoticism, a belief in traditions and legends, along with
popular characters like the bandits, gypsies, bullfighters and majos.
A number of garments can be described as “typically Spanish”, including the faralaes
dress, also known as the flamenca, sevillana or gitana, which is tight around the
body, with a skirt which unfurls in a cascade of flounces and ends in a train. As for
men’s suits, the traje de luces [suit of lights] with a torera (short, fitted bullfighter’s
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jacket), is worn by today’s bullfighters in a reflection of the majo’s three piece suit
from the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries.
The cape, which wrapped up the man from his neck to his feet and was common in all
Spanish villages. It defined the Spanish male silhouette and was so important to a
feeling of identity that, in 1766, a rule in Madrid which outlawed the use of long
capes that could hide weapons provoked a popular uprising known as the Esquilache
Riots. The image of the Spanish Romantic-era man which abounded in Europe in the
nineteenth century always wore a cape and hat.The Manila shawl merits a special
mention. Since 1795, these shawls have been woven in China, commercialised in the
Philippines and, via Mexico, arrived in Seville from where they were sent all over
Europe. From 1870 to 1920, actresses and dancers appeared wrapped up in shawls in
the paintings of Ramón Casas, Henri Matisse, and Pablo Picasso. In the south of
Spain, they are still worn today on special occasions, during Semana Santa (Easter
week) and at the Seville Spring Fair. At the Corpus Christi Carnival, balconies are
decorated with these shawls, since many families have kept those belonging to their
grandmothers. The Manila shawl is also present in popular Mexican dress.
Additional items of dress that are ‘typically Spanish’ include the mantilla, which is a
lace or woollen veil which covers the head and shoulders and occasionally the face,
the gandaya, which is a small hairnet made of a very open silk knit, in the style of a
bag designed to contain the long hair of both men and women in the eighteenth
century, and the montera, with two peaks, which is a man’s cloth cap which are still
used in the north and centre of Spain.
Espadrilles, an open sandal derived from those of the Romans, have a sole of esparto
or hemp, and a heel and toe of cotton, and are tied up the leg with cotton ribbons.
They were worn every day by country people and workers until the beginning of the
twentieth century, and they still form part of the Catalonia police force’s dress
uniform. Well known designers like Christian Dior and international labels such as
Lacoste have recently included them in their collections.
In addition to these items of clothing there are some elements of dress which can
immediately be recognized as Spanish, such as the flounces of the faralaes dress, for
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the flamenco dance, -lace and braids and lunares, an accessory with small polka dots,
a pattern which is associated with everything Spanish.
Finally, ‘typically Spanish’ dress also includes some forms of
construction, notablythe farthingale [guardainfantes], which is an interior
structure in the form of an ellipse designed to widen and expand the skirts, which
could be seen in the dress of the Spanish court in the seventeenth century (such as in
Velazquez’ painting Las Meninas, 1656), and the bustles, which were formed of
material collected in the shape of a ball, such as those which appeared in the clothing
of seventeenth century paintings, and they have been copied in fashions of the
twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
These various factors, which surpassed the regional sphere and have become signs of
national identity, influence contemporary international fashion and designers like
Christian Dior, John Galliano, Christian Lacroix, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Moschino and
Azzedine Alaïa. Standing out in this landscape is Spanish designer Christian
Balenciaga, who drank from the fountain of Spanish culture, but managed to avoid
stereotypes.
Sources of study
Investigations about the survival or change of clothing primarily make use of old
documents: manuscripts relating to goods inventories, notes of matrimonial dowries
and testimonies where clothing is described, along with its colours, fabrics and
decoration. Ordinances of artisan trade also portray ways of dressing, along with
pragmatic sanctions and laws prohibiting luxuries in dress (such as the excessive use
of embroidery), and so we gain knowledge of ways of dressing in an indirect manner.
Also, eighteenth and nineteenth-century orders for the search and capture of
delinquents describe the clothing of those who were running from the law.
From amongst published books, the tales of French and English travellers from the
sixteenth, eighteenth and especially the first half of the nineteenth centuries provide
valuable information. In 1808, Alexandre de Laborde described an itinerary around
Spain with statistical facts and in 1846 Richard Ford wrote Gatherings from Spain.
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Novelists also related their impressions: Alexandre Dumas in Voyage en Espagne
(1846); Théophile Gautier in Voyage en Espagne (1845) and Prosper Mérimée with
his work Carmen (1845) in which he portrays an ardent and beautiful woman in a
Romantic Andalusia. In Spain, writers such as the poet and dramatist Félix Lope de
Vega (1562-1635) explained how their characters dressed. And even in the
nineteenth century, costumbrismo novelists (who depicted an interpretation of
everyday life, mannerisms, and customs) like Benito Pérez Galdós, Juan Valera and
Emilia Pardo Bazán detailed, respectively, the clothing of the popular classes of
Madrid, and the customs in northern Spain’s rural areas.
Also essential is iconographic information. In the book Colleción de Trajes de
España [Collection of Clothes from Spain, 1777] by Juan de la Cruz Cano y
Olmedilla, appear engravings of fashionable and popularly dressed people. The
Colección general de los trages que en la actualidad se usan en España, principiada
en el año 1801 en Madrid [General Collection of the clothes which are currently used
in Spain, commencing in the year 1801 in Madrid], for which A. Rodriguez did the
drawings which inspired the 112 engravings, including 53 of rural people and 47 of
urban people, which provide us with a traditional and antiquated, though picturesque,
image of the country. The people have simplified their clothing, but nevertheless
show a certain natural manner and movement, and they come to life thanks to
humorous comments.
The diffusion of fashions in the nineteenth century was possible thanks to the use of
figurines, from 1830, which recorded different fashions. Inspired by these
engravings, the Romantics formed the basis of costumbrismo and promoted the
‘picturesqueness’ of everything Spanish. Amongst the first fashion magazines
appeared El Correo de las Damas [Women’s Post, 1830]. Photographs were
substituted for engravings in fashion magazines after 1880, in the Ilustración
Española y Americana [Spanish and American Illustrated Magazine], the Ilustración
Artística [Artistic Illustrated Magazine], Bazar and Museo Universal. La Moda
elegante ilustrada [Elegant Illustrated Fashion] particularly stands out. Periódico de
las familias [Families’ Periodical] (Madrid, 1863 to 1927) had Europe wide
circulation. The Salón de Moda [Fashion Room] was illustrated (Barcelona, 1884 to
1914) and Feminal had photographs (Barcelona, from 1907) both of which circulated
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the fashions of modernist clothing. Since 1909, El Hogar y la Moda [Home and
Fashion], illustrated until 1936 and thereafter with photographs, and Lecturas
[Readings, 1921], with photographs, reached all Spanish villages and are still
published today. It just remains to highlight La moda en España [Fashion in Spain]
(1940-1973) and Alta Costura [Haute Couture, 1948-1964].
Between 1861 and 1896, the French photographer J. Laurent dedicated himself to
photographing different themes around Spain, amongst which can be found depicted
the popular clothing of the provincial couples who went to Madrid in 1878 to show
off their outfits at the wedding of King Alfonso XII. Another source of knowledge
are the paintings and drawings by the students of the Madrid School of Ceramics who
traveled throughout Spain between 1913 and 1982, and who dedicated special interest
to local people, their customs, and their clothing in life portraits. The 1910 series of
paintings, Las regiones de España [The regions of Spain] by Joaquin Sorolla (18631923), for the Hispanic Society of New York show 14 happy and colourist country
scenes.
Clothing in Spain’s museums
Exploring museum collections is essential to fully understanding Spanish clothing.
The Madrid Clothing Museum displays an important collection of popular clothing
and fashion up to the present day. Their collections were begun in 1925 and were
reopened to the public in 2004. The National Museum of Ceramics and Sumptuary
Arts “González Martí”, in Valencia, holds a collection of the region’s traditional and
bourgeois clothing. The Barcelona Textile Museum and Documentation Centre has,
since 1946, maintained a collection of fabrics from the Mediterranean region, as well
as a Modernist patrimony which includes clothing, textile designs, collections of
samples, and, most importantly, Juan Alcega’s book of patterns, from 1589. The
Barcelona Ethnological Museum has an important collection of popular clothing from
Salamanca and Toledo, Mallorca, Teruel and Catalonia, as well as from the old
Spanish colonies in America and North Africa, Guatemala, Mexico and the
Philippines, which allow us to study the links between and propagation of the Spanish
style of dress.
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Barcelona’s Textile and Costume Museum holds a collection of European clothing
and accessories from the sixteenth century to the present. Particularly important are
the section of clothes from the eighteenth century to 1920, which was begun in 1968
with a donation from Manuel Rocamora, and the collection of Balenciaga clothing
and accessories.
Folk dress in Spain
Folk dress is the best way to describe the dress of the different villages of Spain,
rather than ‘typical’ or ‘regional’, which are ideological constructions. The origin of
folk dress has been discussed and can be summarised in two trends of thinking. The
first trend maintains that it was a reproduction of the clothing of the eighteenth
century French court, whilst the second opines that it stems from earlier clothing,
which in the eighteenth century adopted certain characteristics of the clothes of the
aristocratic class. In either case, when we analyse the different styles of clothing we
see on the one hand a certain homogeneity in form and in the decoration of fabrics
which remind us of the clothes of the eighteenth century court, and we also see some
of their own traits which have survived. The dress of the popular classes changed in
the mid nineteenth century in Spain’s industrialised areas, because women who went
to work in the factory could no longer weave or sew their own clothes, as they had in
pre-industrial society.
The differing folk dress of the various regions acquired the status of an identity card
from the second half of the eighteenth century and was used daily from 1770 to 1860.
In rural areas, this style of dress survived a little longer. It fell out of use around 1840
in the first industrialised areas, Catalonia and the Basque Country, whilst in rural
Galicia and Extremadura people continued their artisan weaving and sewed their own
clothes until around 1960. Some clothing has elements of sixteenth century
structures, like the clothes from the village of Ansó (Huesca) in the central Pyrenees.
The outfits which have survived are those for special occasions or festivals, used by
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rich agriculturalists, or for the important life ceremonies of religious tradition, such as
baptism, holy communion, wedding and when in mourning. Today there exist very
few examples of work clothing, which has disappeared due to its physical debilitation
and scarce social prestige.
The history of folk dress often confuses everyday clothes with those for special
occasions, and homogenises the map of local dress, some of which can become
symbols of a region or even of a country. Today, folk dress in Spain is restricted to
some festivals of singing and dancing, or ceremonies, since during the era of
globalisation it began to fall into oblivion. Some clothing is still in use, such as the
charra in Salamanca for weddings and local festivals; the fallera (festival queen) in
Valencia for the festival of Saint Joseph, as well as that of flamenco for collective
festivities such as the Seville Spring Fair. In Aragon folk dress is used in the offering
to Our Lady of the Pillar; and in the Canaries for all popular festivals.
In its morphology, women’s folk dress imitated that of the eighteenth century court: a
fitted doublet with sleeves, a bodice without sleeves, and skirts which were covered
with an over skirt called either a manteo, guardapiés or basquiña, a pinafore, a scarf
for the shoulders, a cloak, and stockings with buckled shoes. The under-clothes
consisted of a white shirt and corset (jotillo or cotillo), stockings, petticoats to plump
up the skirt and, from the middle of the nineteenth century, under-trousers. Men’s
clothing was also an evolution of the eighteenth century three piece suit, which
consisted of a jacket, chupa [long waistcoat] and breeches , with an undershirt and
stockings. In the nineteenth century, this became a short jacket, waistcoat and
trousers, with a linen or hemp shirt and shorts as underwear. On their head they wore
a hat or a cloth cap. The cape of both the country man and the fashionable man
defined the desired Spanish masculine silhouette of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries. Footwear consisted of espadrilles or clogs, depending on whether the
climate was dry, hot, humid or cold. Shoes belonged more in the city and boots on
livestock cultivators. Today, only certain garments seem to have survived with new
uses, such as, for example, the Manila shawls, mantillas and espadrilles.
Today, most studies of Spanish folk clothing are local or regional descriptions of
garments and materials, but rarely is there a cultural interpretation of the meaning of
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folk dress , as was proposed by Luís de Hoyos. In 1909, Hoyos was the first
investigator to treat folk dress as one of the main themes of ethnology, and
fundamental to the scientific study of the varied and diverse cultures of Spain. He
proposed using the observation of everyday clothing as a methodological instrument,
through fieldwork similar to that of naturalists.
As professor of the Teaching School of Higher Education from 1914 to 1936, he
organised investigations to gather information in situ about local dress. For this, he
drew up a questionnaire which future teachers had to use to gather responses from
different people throughout Spain in order to gather oral history, photographs,
patterns and fabric samples. This information allowed them to move on from a mere
description of local dress to a scientific interpretation and the collection of a series of
clothes which could be studied at a national level. Hoyos formed his first collections
of clothes in 1915 in order to create a new national ethnological museum. In 1924, he
organised the Regional Dress Exhibition and in 1934 was director of the Spanish
People Museum in Madrid. His daughter, Nieves de Hoyos, conservator of the
clothes and director of the Spanish People Museum, is the leading scholar of folk
dress in Spain.
From the facts he gathered, Hoyos deduced that clothing, as well as houses, music and
customs can be grouped into three geographical and cultural areas: the north, the
centre and the Mediterranean area. Nieves de Hoyos subsequently subdivided these
three larger geographical areas into ten regions, according to the ornamentation,
embroidery and appearance of their clothing (Hoyos 1947), which she describes in El
traje nacional de España [The National dress of Spain] (Hoyos, 1954).
The North
The northern area of Spain, which is humid and on the Atlantic, reaches from the
north of Portugal to the extreme west of the Pyrenees. Their clothing is of Celtic
origin and made of heavy materials such as wool. In Galicia, a rainy area of soft
green hills, whose economy is based on agriculture and fishing, the outfits were of
darkly coloured linen and wool, with little ornamentation. The women dressed in
long woollen skirts, called manteos, adorned with jet and velvet ribbons, and the
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dengue, a triangular woollen garment crossed over the chest. They covered their head
with a floral scarf. The men wore a jacket, waistcoat and long johns, and a cap or
woollen hat. They were characterised by wooden clogs worn over the shoe, wooden
soled shoes and the choroza, or cape, made from straw to protect from the rain,
similar to that of Japanese peasants. In the Pyrenees, the black clothing of the mayors
of the valley of Aezcoa (Navarre) had a ruffed collar, a legacy from the seventeenth
century which had remained in this village isolated from commercial and cultural
routes.
The central area
In the large central zone, from the western border with Portugal to Aragon, the
clothing was more rigid, made of thick wool and leather. It was clothing for
stockbreeding populations in an extreme continental climate, which is warm in the
summer and frozen in the winter. The traditional clothing of this region is richly and
technically ornamented. The charros from Salamanca merit special attention, not
only for their Baroque ornamentation in bright and contrasting colours, but also for
their current validity. These were the clothes of stockbreeding societies. Migrants to
America took them when they travelled and they passed on these traditions to
stockbreeding areas of Mexico. The dress of women from La Alberca (Salamanca)
included a smock, and over it three manteos or woollen skirts, a doublet, embroidered
mantilla, buckled shoes from the eighteenth century, and a collection of voluminous
necklaces and jewels, made of coral and silver beads, amulets and ancient relics.
Heavy embroidery, applications of reduced fabrics and lace decorated their
delantales, pieces of festival clothing which have lost their practical use of protecting
the clothing whilst at work, but which concentrate a dense symbology in their
decoration and form. The men wore short embroidered waistcoats with a square neck,
from around 1800, with coin buttons, a jacket, short, fitted long johns, and a cape.
The male maragato from Leon wore an almilla chest garment of woollen cloth, and
baggy trousers from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fitted to the knee, along
with a wide leather belt with small bags for gunpowder, and embroidered with silk
threads, very similar to the hunter’s outfit from the seventeenth century which is
preserved in the Barcelona Textile and Dress Museum.
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In the Pyrenees, the women of Ansó wore shirts with a pleated neck, as in Aezcoa,
and which have also survived since the Renaissance in Hecho, Ibiza and the Isla el
Hierro (Canaries). The main item of dress is the basquiña, a long outer dress without
sleeves, which had the form of a flower when it covered the head. This was combined
with the open sleeves of a Renaissance tradition, united at the back by the cuerda,
which was an embroidered belt. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the
ansotanas [from Aragon] dressed in these clothes to sell Aragonese tea and they
walked all over Spain. In the 1920s, the Ansó motorway was built and hand
embroiderers disappeared along with the home tailoring of these clothes. As in other
isolated areas, the clothing was lost as soon as the zone became industrialised or when
a system of communications was created, which allowed the exchange of products
with other regions. In the neighbouring village of Hecho, the men wore an almilla, a
jacket of white wool with black ribbon embroidery which the emigrants from this area
of the Pyrenees took to Sololá (Guatemala), where men wore the same garment. In
this village, the women dressed in anguarinas, a very archaic wide coat with loose
sleeves.
The Mediterranean
The clothing of the Mediterranean area, from the eastern Pyrenees to the south of the
country, and including Andalusia, and the Balearic and Canary islands, has traces of
the Arabic and Roman cultures, which were agricultural and commercial. The
materials, like silk, cotton and linen, corresponded to the warmer climate, and as such
are lighter and more flexible.
The silk suits decorated with bright colours worn by the rich peasants, merchants and
artisans of the eighteenth century in Valencia have evolved to become the fallera,
clothes worn with great ostentation on the day of Saint Joseph, the 19 March. This
clothing is very bright and colourful and greatly appreciated by today’s Valencian
society, since it defines the wealth of the family and their involvement in social life.
It consists of a skirt of worked silk, shirt, doublet lined with ribbing made of esparto
or rice to make it rigid, and a hairstyle of lateral buns with filigree needles which
recall the sculpture of the Dama de Elche of the Iberians (a culture which populated
the eastern coast of Spain from the fifth century BC until the 1st century AD). The
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most notable garment of Arab origin is the zaragüelles, the wide and short pants made
of white cloth of the Valencian peasants.
In Catalonia, folk clothing was lost before 1850 with the introduction of textile
industrialisation, or was reduced to isolated places in the Pyrenees, until the first years
of the twentieth century. In the first decades of the twentieth century, only amongst
fishermen and peasants did the use of barretinas persist. These were long caps of
woollen knitwear, which were different from the worker’s cap and the top hats of
upper class men. In their festival clothing, they conserve the memory of elements
such as the gandaya, similar to those of Goya’s majos (El baile a orillas del
Manzanares, 1777), for men and women, and the manegots or lace elbow-length
gloves. In the Balearics, Ibizan peasants’ clothing consisted of a pleated black
woollen cloth; the rebosillos, or triangular headdresses of a fine cloth of the
Mallorcans, and wide, baggy trousers, which are no longer worn. The folk dress of
Andalusia responded to the reality of the very varied geographies and ways of life,
and they had no direct relation to the stereotypical clothing of the Andalusians.
The Canary Islands offered a style of dress which was also very different from those
which have been described up till now, but still with influences from the clothing of
the eighteenth century. Some older elements were the shirts and wide, short pants of
the men, and the mantillas and wide cloaks which covered head and face and were
worn with skirts. Their cloth caps, muffs and shoes were of Renaissance origin.
The twilight of folk dress
In the 1930s and 1940s, the engineer José Ortiz Echagüe travelled throughout Spain
and took photographs of people “posing” wearing their festival clothing, as can be
seen in his work España, Tipos y Trajes (Spain, Styles and Clothes). Despite their
unquestionable quality, the photographs reflect an idealised reality of static characters.
Ortiz captured with exactitude the differences and picturesqueness without talking
about social class or whether the picture showed clothing for festivals or everyday
use. However, it is the best document that we have of an era in which regional
clothing was exceptional. Even in 1933 the extinction of folk clothing was recorded,
as a result of the industrialisation of textile makers and of the production of clothes.
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After the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the Franco Dictatorship (1939-1975)
stressed the value of folk clothing, along with music and dance, to confirm a feeling
of “Spanishness”, but in most cases the songs, dances and dress were arbitrarily
changed so they were in accordance with the prevailing conservative and Catholic
moral doctrine. “Spanish” dress underwent a process of simplification and local
elements were eliminated in order to make the bright and colourful local clothing
valid to a wider community, so that it could be chosen as the provincial or even
regional dress. Between 1940 and the 1970s, the government created the Female
Section which, amongst other missions, recuperated the folklore of songs, dance and
dress and showed the supposed common roots of diverse popular expressions. Since
this period, more or less authentic folk clothing was kept alive by folkloric dance
groups in each region, and also in regional movements which were founded by
migrants in their new city.
Fashion in Spain
At the end of the eighteenth century, the artistic notion of going back to nature
influenced a greater appreciation of the people of rural areas, and of what was
considered popular. As we have seen, amongst the bourgeois and aristocratic classes,
the defence of Spanish dress emerged, in the face of French and English fashions, and
they also defended the use of Spanish fabrics to protect local industry. In 1788 M.O.
published Discurso sobre el luxo de la Señoras y proyecto de un traje nacional
[Discourse on the luxury of ladies and the plan for a national dress] where they
proposed a new Spanish dress. Although women used French or English style dress
at home, when they went out they covered up with the Spanish mantilla and basquiña.
The women of the upper classes adopted neoclassical clothing; straight and light with
a belt below the breast in the French style, as seen in Goya’s painting María Teresa
Cayetana de Silva Duquesa de Alba, (1795). Goya depicted society at the end of the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, delighting in a detailed description of the clothing
of the popular and noble classes. The artist showed a great interest in the fashion of
men and women, reflected in the social obsession with appearances (Hughes, 2003)
and by the affirmation of Spanish identity through clothes. At the beginning of the
nineteenth century, men in Spain dressed in the English fashionable style, with a short
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tail coat in front with coattails and high neck, waistcoats covered with patterns and
brightly coloured brocade, and fitted pants or long tight trousers which were worn
inside high boots.
Industrialisation in the nineteenth century
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the industrial revolution took place in
Spain, particularly affecting Catalonia (woollen fabrics), its capital, Barcelona
(indianas and patterned fabrics) and Valencia (silk fabrics). The textile mills became
mechanised thanks to the invention of the steam machine and they also implemented
the Jacquard technique for the decoration of fabrics. These factors allowed the mass
production of fabrics, which were also more varied than ever before. The industrial
production of clothing also became a reality from 1850 thanks to the sewing machine,
which Miquel Escuder made for the first time in Barcelona in 1862. The first mass
produced clothes were military uniforms and men’s work clothes, as well as chales
and cloaks for women, followed by underwear and finally women’s clothing. These
technological advances revolutionised the way all social classes dressed. The
bourgeoisie followed European fashion trends, with accelerated changes. Later styles
of the nineteenth century imitated those of the eighteenth throughout Europe, although
they incorporated new fabrics and artificial dyes, which could be seen in women’s
clothes.
Around 1830, women’s silhouettes changed totally with respect to previous French
Imperial fashions. The belt was put back in its natural position, the dress and sleeves
increased in size, and the corset reappeared. The Romantic trend looked back towards
the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as well as villages in the South, and the
emergence of national identities . Everything “Spanish” was fashionable in Europe.
Spanish dress appeared in fashion magazines: women, dressed in mantillas and the
peineta, a large vertical comb which was placed beneath the mantilla, and with a fan
in their hand. Until the mid nineteenth century, certain folk elements endured
amongst the upper classes, such as the mantilla, shawl and the man’s cape. In the
1840s, the cape became shorter and they wore the esclavina, a shorter cape over the
shoulders, overlaid and joined to the cape.
15
Between 1850 and 1868, clothing saw a maximum expression of volume from the
French influence, thanks to crinoline, called miriñaque in Spanish. This was a rigid
internal structure which was a substitute for petticoats and gave the skirts the form of
a bell. Whalebone corsets compressed the torso until it suppressed breathing. During
this period, the Spanish Empress Eugenia de Montilo made the mantilla fashionable in
Paris. The bustle was another French contraption (1860-1880) which centred
attention on the back part of the body since it gave volume to the dress, which could
even be emphasised more with metres of pleated fabric and overlaid elements of lace.
The popular classes dressed in a Spanish style throughout the nineteenth century.
1885 saw the influence of English tailor John Redfern, who adapted the masculine
three piece suit for women of every social standing.
In nineteenth century Spain, all men wore a wide, darkly coloured cape, unlike the
rest of Europe. The bourgeoisie dressed comfortably in an English style. The
brightly coloured three piece suit of the eighteenth century evolved to become a dark
ensemble which remained practically the same for 150 years. During its first years, a
morning coat was worn. Then appeared the sack coat, the frock coat for visiting and
the tailcoat for the evening, along with the dinner jacket. In 1880, the three piece suit
was well established. The hat also kept changing, with the cloth cap ceding to the top
hat, which was worn until the end of the century. Then, through the influence of
sport, appeared the cap of the workers and the upper classes, the soft hats of the early
twentieth century, the straw boater, and the panama, made of a flexible fibre.
[[Please remove this box; this section can go into the article as is, and there are
already two other snapshots in the article]]
Modernism (1890-1910)
Modernism was an artistic and architectural movement which took place at the end of
the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Stylistically, it was related to
the English Arts and Crafts movement and European Art Nouveau, but it had its
particular emergence in Barcelona. The architect Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) created
personal works with organic forms based on nature and geometric shapes, such as his
Sagrada Familia, Pedrera or the Parque Güell. In keeping with the architecture, a
great appraisal and resurgence of the decorative arts took place.
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Modernist dress reflected the total artfulness and richness of Catalonia’s textile
industry. Bourgeois women wore dresses decorated with a profusion of lace,
embroidery, and patterned fabrics with large hats, as if they were in the catalogue or
window of a family business.
The corseted body of the modernist woman belonged in the nineteenth century, but it
was popular until World War One. With a great deformation of the posture, women
acquired the forced form of an S: swollen chest, extremely thin waist with flat
abdomen. The corset and the posture learnt in society defined this artificial silhouette,
which compressed the torso to represent a sinuous line which imitated the stalk of a
flower. The dresses of 1895 had voluminous sleeves, until the silhouette began to be
more slender around 1900, with a narrow waist and fine cotton blouse with a high
neck. In 1905, belts made a narrow waist stand out, whilst in 1907, in imitation of
Imperial dress, the belt once again went up to beneath the chest; dresses were
rectilinear and made of transparent fabrics and bright colours. Clothing was also
simplified and the corset became lighter. The Textile and Dress Museum conserves
dresses from this period signed by Caroline Montagne and Maria Molist.
Underwear
The history of women’s under-clothing before the twentieth century merits a separate
section. Until the mid nineteenth century, it consisted only of a long linen or cotton
shirt, which was worn day and night. Some women used long trousers beneath their
skirts, but most did not wear under trousers until around 1850. At first, these were
two legs joined with ribbons, only later did they become one single piece.
Throughout the nineteenth century, interior garments multiplied and their artisan
production became more complicated. Corsets fitted the body like works of
engineering, and linen shops filled with flounces, lace, ribbons and botoncillos
[buttonwoods]. The modernist woman of the time wore an ensemble of a shirt, corset,
over corset, trousers and various petticoats. In 1895, the Barcelona Corset Centre
made the first corset in Spain and called it a Comodón. Use of the corset continued in
Spain until 1910, when it evolved into a girdle. Tailors’ and corset makers’
fabrication manuals are real catalogues of corsets for women. Until the 1960s, corsets
and girdles were considered to be necessary pieces, from girls of 4 years old, and even
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to pregnant women. The use of the girdle lasted a long time in Spain, through the
imposition of the Catholic moral linked to Franco’s totalitarian regime which
considered it to be an indispensable sign of virtue and femininity. Even today, some
doctors recommend their use in certain situations such as after giving birth and in
postoperative processes and today many older women still wear them. Corset makers
who have small artisan establishments in cities defend, as they did 100 years ago, the
usefulness of this item for upholding the spinal column and erroneously adduce that
they are comfortable and give a more aesthetic silhouette.
Early twentieth century
The practice of sports has prompted a new regime of caring for the body, and a new
image of a liberated woman, who can ride a bicycle, play tennis or go to the beach to
sunbathe. In keeping with the rest of Europe, hygienists suggested more comfortable
clothing for women, without the oppression of the corset which deformed the body,
but it was a long process, especially in Spain. Some outstanding influences on an
international level were Paul Poiret and Mariano Fortuny who, at the beginning of the
century, advocated the abolition of the corset and promoted a more natural body shape
for women. After the First World War, women did not wear corsets because they had
to go to work. Fashion started to become more democratic, dresses became simpler in
both form and decoration, and clothes stopped being a piece of armour. From 1910 to
1930, Spanish fashions copied those in Paris because of the dressmakers who traveled
to the capital of fashion, along with figurines, magazines and catalogues.
Mariano Fortuny (1871-1949), an artist of Spanish origin, was a painter, scenographer
and dress and fabric designer. In 1906 he created the Knossos tunic then the Delphos
in 1907, which he patented in 1909 and produced until his death in 1949. The tunics,
which imitated the clothing of Greek statues, were made of a pleated silk of his own
invention. Their form and silhouette were adapted to the natural form of the woman’s
body. Some Delphos tunics are still maintained in collections and museums, with
variations in sleeves and necklines, but all with the same concept of timelessness and
not restraining the body.
18
In 1915 Sonia Delauney (1884-1979) created a few abstract dresses for theatre, which
were greatly admired by the Spanish aristocracy. These dresses represented the
artistic vanguard, particularly because of their decoration and geometric form. She
opened a shop in Madrid named “Casa Sonia” (1918), and then shops in Barcelona
and Bilbao in 1919.
The first Spanish fashion designers appeared during this period, and opened
workshops, such as Pedro Rodríguez (1919), Cristóbal Balenciaga (1919), Lino
(1930) and Marbel (1930). Asunción Bastida (1902-1975) opened his haute couture
house in 1926 in Barcelona and one in Madrid in 1934, making knitted garments and
sportswear, in the line of Chanel, until 1970.
In 1925, the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes
[International Exhibition of Decorative Arts and Modern Industrialists] took place in
Paris. The clothes, just as with all decorative arts, adopted the art deco style. The
clothing of bourgeois women, which followed the fashions of Paris, was a straight
tunic which hung from the shoulders without a belt, short and of a transparent fabric
but with a heavy ornamentation of jewels and embroidery inspired by oriental motifs
and those from classical antiquity. Under garments were not tight, bras and slips were
straight and loose. The body was liberated and clothing became increasingly flowing
and comfortable. The 1920s represented a period of freedom and modernity in Spain,
along with the luxury and refinement brought about by a good economic period for
the country. Modern women went out walking in trousers and shirts like young girls.
Coco Chanel was the model followed by the most daring Spanish women: they cut
their hair in boyish styles, smoked, drove cars, did sport, and wore flat shoes and
dresses which flowed with the lines of the body. Men also adopted a straight line in
their suits, which because of the influence of sport also incorporated a coloured
knitted sweater or waistcoat.
Haute couture in Spain between 1930 and 1950
In the period between the wars, both men and women’s daywear was conservative,
with straight, comfortable, darkly coloured suit jackets for work, with shoulder pads
19
and the waist in its natural place (like in the century before, around 1830), and knitted
jackets and waistcoats. In the evening, there were long and sophisticated evening
dresses inspired by the classicism of the dresses of Hollywood actresses, with bias
cuts and draped fabric.
After the Civil War, Spanish society was culturally and economically impoverished,
and found itself internally divided and isolated from the rest of Europe. Dresses were
recycled since there was no industrial production of fabrics and barely any
dressmaking at this time. In this landscape of austerity and morality dominated by the
Franco Dictatorship and the Catholic Church, there was a certain vitality in the
dressmaking done at home and which imitated international fashions circulated
through magazines, films and designers who travelled to Paris.
After the war, some pioneers of Spanish fashion took great risks to move forward
with a collective project of haute couture for the conflict’s winning elite and to open
doors for themselves outside of Spain. In 1940, Pedro Rodríguez created and
presided over the Cooperativa de Alta Costura [Haute Couture Cooperative]. The
Cooperative organized the Primer Salón de la Moda Española [First Meeting of
Spanish Fashion] in Barcelona in 1941, in collaboration with El Dique Flotante, Santa
Eulalia, Asunción Bastida and Pertegaz. Meeting biannually, they celebrated 100
meetings until 1991, and still meet occasionally today. In 1843 in Barcelona, Santa
Eulalia was founded, named after the patron saint of the city. This house produced
made-to-measure clothing from 1900 and in 1926 presented haute couture to Spain for
the first time, and continued to hold fashion shows in their sumptuous rooms until the
1990s. Today, Santa Eulalia has adopted a tendency towards being a luxury multilabel shop, but maintains tailored made-to-measure clothing for men.
The most outstanding designers who opened establishments during these difficult
years, with few materials and general economic difficulties, were Carmen Mir in
1940, Manuel Pertegaz in 1942, Rosser, 1947, Pedro Rovira, 1948, Josep Ferrer, 1953
and Antonio Meneses in 1958, all in Barcelona. In Madrid, Lino opened in 1930.
Vargas-Ochagavía (1947) with his petticoats brought a Spanish style to an
international audience until 1975. Natalio offered impeccably tailored suits during the
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1950s and 1960s. Marbel, who worked with Poiret, opened in Barcelona in 1936 and
in 1942 in Madrid and he stood out thanks to his imaginative evening wear.
The internationalisation of Spanish fashion, 1950-1960
International trends were followed in Spain during this period, particularly those of
Christian Dior, who in 1947 began an historical return to the female figure with the
fitted torso, narrow waist and wide skirts, inspired by the crinoline fashions from
1850 and the skirts of Music Hall dancers from 1900. During these years, boleros,
short fitted jackets with a Spanish influence were worn with dresses or skirts which
shaped the female form. This silhouette, called the “hourglass”, would remain
popular in Spanish society until the 1970s, because it fitted in with the traditional
image of the married woman caring for the home and her children, and who is
submissive and attractive to her husband. Men at this time continued to dress in
comfortable three piece suits, hat and gabardines.
During the 1950s, Spain gradually overcame her economic situation of poverty and
her political and cultural isolation. Spain opened herself up to the outside world in the
1960s for various reasons: the Concilio Vaticano II of 1962 to 1965 helped to make
the strict post-war morality more flexible, which also affected ways of dressing. On
the other hand, the country saw the beginning of industrial development which
allowed it to slowly overcome autarchy. Spanish society opened itself up to modern
trends which came from America and Europe through cinema and television.
American cinema and the tourism which arrived in Spain brought yet more liberated
customs. Migration permitted knowledge of new social, political and economic
situations. However, women still had to wear a veil and mantilla to go to obligatory
mass on Sundays, a girdle to hide the body and even tights during hot summers.
Women using elastic bathing suits, bikinis or trousers, and walking in the streets in
summer without girdles or tights were severely frowned upon.
The 1950s and 1960s were a vital period for Spanish haute couture, which achieved a
certain international reach. In 1965 in High Fashion of Spain at the New York World
Fair, Asunción Bastida, Carmen Mir, Elio Berhanyer, Pedro Rovira, Marbel Jr.,
Vargas Ochagavía, Lino and Herrera y Ollero were shown on the catwalk. American
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women came on cruises to Barcelona and dressed in Pertegaz and Pedro Rodríguez,
who triumphed in America. In Spain they continued to follow international trends,
from Dior’s structured and feminine New Look, the sportier American Look and the
unique style of the master, Balenciaga.
From Fashion to fashions- 1968-1980s
In keeping with European and American movements, at the end of the 1960s and in
the 1970s, young people rebelled against the strict rules of the dictatorial regime and
the Catholic Church, which governed all areas of social life and they decided to dress
differently to their parents and grandparents. In the 1970s, the political transition to
democracy allowed Spanish conservative society to become conscious of the youth’s
social revolution, with hippies and punks, and their way of life changed radically.
Fashion diversified and became unisex: young people combined long or short skirts,
wide tunics, shorts or trousers; they left their hair long, showed their bodies naked.
Young people dressed in an informal way, with shirts, and Texan and hunter’s
trousers in imitation of their heroes from American films such as Marlon Brando or
James Dean.
Spanish haute couture began to be exported, but unlike Italian or French fashion
exports, they could barely serve international demands. At the end of the 1970s, a
crisis began, which was attributed to various causes: Spain’s industrial and
commercial structures were too small, taxes increased, labour was more expensive.
Society had changed, and people wanted to dress like the youth, with more accessible
and wearable clothes. The crisis would undergo its most difficult period during the
transition to democracy in 1974, when the law of taxes on luxury goods finished off
most fashion houses.
At the same time, industrial tailoring was gaining quality, and designers moved on
from the system of producing one-off pieces to prêt-à-porter. It was the production
of small series by these designers which finished off the exclusive world of artisan
haute couture. In Barcelona at the end of the 1950s, Josep Ferrer designed the first
trousers for women, and in 1967 he introduced the revolutionary miniskirt in
Bocaccio, the fashion site of the gauche divine [Divine Left]. The Spanish designer
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Paco Rabanne (1934-) established himself in Paris in 1966, with a collection entitled
12 robes importables en matériaux contemporains [12 unwearable dresses in
contemporary fabrics], with dresses made of plastic and aluminium. He investigated
the use of new materials, such as plastics, glass and metals which he fixed together
with hoops, like medieval coats of chain mail, to create dresses which were seen as
futuristic.
In the 1970s on the island of Ibiza, hippies from all over the world met. Ad lib is a
trend which came from Ibiza and created the hippies’ white clothing trend, which
imitated the under clothes of the Spanish grandmother with her petticoats and
openwork, and wide patterned tunics, which formed part of the way of life of the
tourists on the Mediterranean coast. Kelson, created in 1962, presented folk-patterned
tunics and bathing suits. In 1963, fabric and tailoring industrialists associated
themselves with the Moda del Sol [Sun fashion] to promote Spanish fashion at a
national and international level.
Particularly outstanding at this time were Andrés Andreu (opened in 1966), Margarita
Nuez, who began in 1965, and Poser Marcé from 1970, who are all still active today
in Barcelona. Also still open today is Elio Berhanyer, who opened in Madrid in 1960,
with his well constructed and geometric dresses, in both haute couture and prêt-àporter, with a daring combination of colours and influences from Op art. In 1969 he
presented his Elio Berhanyer Vanguard. However, in 1978, most haute couture
houses closed or changed their activity to prêt-à-porter, as well as diversifying with
accessories and fragrances.
The slogans “Fashion of Spain” and “Fashion is design” of the 80s were applied to a
limited group of designers such as Manuel Piña or Jordi Cuesta. In Madrid, the
Movida was a nocturnal movement in nightclubs. It was reflected in fashions which
exaggerated forms with bright fabrics. Jesús del Pozo has worked in male fashions
from 1974, and female since 1980, with an artisan system of production which
concentrates on the construction of dresses. He has designed the wardrobe for some
of Pedro Almodóvar’s films. Sybilla, born in New York, is a designer who worked in
Spain, where she investigated form from 1985. She reinterpreted modernist and deco
influenced clothing, as well as Balenciaga’s structures, with great elegance and
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surprising colour combinations. Like other designers, she has also created a second,
more economic line, Jocomomola. From this generation of the 1980s, those who
stood out were José Tomás, Nacho Ruiz, Jesús Alvarado and Agatha Ruiz de la Prada
in Madrid. In Valencia, from 1972, Francis Montesinos studied Spanish and
Valencian folk dress in order to reinterpret it in an extravagant Baroque style. He also
designed skirts for men, inspired by the peasant’s zaragüelles.
Antonio Miró (1947-) learnt his love for quality fabrics alongside his father. In 1968,
he opened his shop Groc on the Costa Brava (Girona), painted yellow and with a rock
air, aimed at nonconformist youths. From 1976, his prêt-à-porter collection for men
and women represented an elegant and discreet Barcelonese style, related to the
Mediterranean world, music, design, cinema and architecture, and aimed at left wing
bourgeois intellectuals. In the 1990s there was international interest when he
designed the outfits for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games.
Manolo Blahnik, acclaimed by the New York Times as the most influential shoe
designer in the world, was born on the island of La Palma (Canaries). Since 1970, he
has worked in London and has created classic and imaginative models, with all kinds
of materials and dimensions. He has received numerous international prizes and is the
shoemaker of the celebrities. His shoes are made by professionals in Italy and are
sold in London, New York, Tokyo and Madrid.
The globalisation era, 1980-2000
Four Spanish labels, Adolfo Domínguez, Custo Barcelona, Mango and Zara have an
international reach. In particular, the last two deal with providing quality fashion at
accessible prices for large sectors of the population, which until then had no access to
designer clothing.
Adolfo Domínguez (1950) started his business in 1977. His slogan “the crease is
beautiful” defends his use of natural materials, especially linen, the traditional fibre of
his native Galicia, chosen for its flexibility and comfort, free of form, timeless and of
a good quality, which was in tune with the political transition to democracy and the
left wing man. At the beginning, he combined austerity and exclusivity, for people
24
who did not want to stand out socially. He used great dimensions and asymmetries,
mao collars for men, innovative fabrics which incorporated plastic or metal threads.
His clothing is suitable for both the rural and urban world, man and woman, casual or
formal dress. Since his first collection in 1983, he has acquired a large international
distribution and he currently has over 400 of his own shops in 18 countries and 1,600
employees, along with an accessible label, U (since 1999).
In 1981, the brothers David and Custodio Dalmau created the label Custo Barcelona
which sells original shirts patterned with a mixture of kitsch, childlike drawings,
comic, pop art and surrealism with influence from the world of Californian surfing,
full of colour and new forms which contrasted with the sobriety of Barcelonese
fashion. In 1996 they presented their collection in New York, where they were very
successful with the celebrity world.
Amongst these flourishing Spanish businesses we cite two cases which have
contributed to the democratisation of fashion. Mango, from the Andic brothers, was
established in Barcelona in 1984, and has 1,000 franchised shops selling female
fashion in 89 countries. At the moment they contract famous people such as Penélope
Cruz to create their own fashion collections, and at the same time offer a more
classical line. On the other hand, Zara, from the Inditex group, has revolutionised
processes of production and the commercialisation of fashion. Created in 1975 by
Amancio Ortega, Zara is an enterprise which is analysed in business schools as a good
management model. They currently employ 32,000 people, produce 1.5 million
articles each week, and 11,000 designs annually which they sell at a good price, and
which are sent twice a week to their own 630 shops. These shops are located in the
most central streets of cities with over 100,000 inhabitants, and have very meticulous
window displays. The shops are between 1,000 and 2,000 square metres, have
modern interior design and are the indicators of the success of the collections. Only
two weeks pass between creation and sale with the just in time system. This
phenomenon produces a great acceleration of change in the world of fashion and also
the uniformity of ways of dressing.
At the same time as the appearance of globalisation in fashion, independent designers
fought for their corner of the market. Susanne Hergenhahn creates comfortable and
innovative knitwear. Amaya Arzuaga, who presented her first collection in Paris in
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1994, also plays with knitwear, asymmetries, transparencies and fabric quality. Lydia
Delgado has a refined style in black and white, inspired by the ballet world but with a
pinch of humour. She opened her tailoring workshop in 1985 and in 1988 created her
second label, “Fin up”. Josep Font started up in 1991 with a neo-Romantic and
perfectionist style, which is prized in Europe, the US and Japan. In 2002, he launched
“Josep Font’s 2” for young people. The nonconformist Josep Abril designs
comfortable, chic yet austere clothing for men, with a high quality of fabric and cut.
Since 1995, in Barcelona and Paris, Spastor have presented their well constructed
masculine collections which have a vanguardist air, yet are restrained, and are
transgressors of the androgynous form and in the use of fabrics. Syngman Cucala
launched his first urban yet comfortable masculine collection in 2002, where he
investigated fabrics and proposed garments with imperfections.
Txell Miras, José Castro and Miriam Ponsa received the Barcelona es moda prize in
2006 and 2007. Txell Miras has experimented with clients and forms, construction
and deconstruction since 2003, in Japanese and Belgian lines. Miriam Ponsa makes
innovations in the construction and application of fabrics in the unstructured Amberes
line. José Castro designed for Antonio Miró, and subsequently created collections for
the emerging young clothing enterprise Desigual, collaborated with the prestigious
fabric shop Gratcós, and he also has his own label, with international reach. Since
1998, Mariana Méndez’ bags have included the innovation of fabrics and an artisan
treatment of fibres.
Concerning the diffusion of Spanish fashion, since the 1980s, festivals and fashion
shows have been organised in San Sebastian, Barcelona and Madrid, and the first
collective and individual exhibitions of designers have highlighted Spanish fashion.
The State supports fashion with publicity campaigns, but only a few isolated cases
manage to become international designers. Currently, the autonomous governments
of Barcelona and Madrid respectively sponsor the Cibeles and 080 fashion shows. At
the label of the Modafad association, young designers have the opportunity to get to
know the fashion world.
In January 2005, the fashion scene changed along with the tailoring industry in
Europe, with the liberation of the market which propitiated the massive entry of
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Chinese products, which together with the previous globalisation of production, were
the causes of the decline of the Spanish textile and fabrication industries.
Silvia Ventosa.
27
References and further reading
[[Please combine the two referente lists in alphabetical order]]
1881-1981 Cent anys d’Indumentària (1982) Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona.
Bastardes, Teresa and Montserrat Garrich (1990-1998) Conferències. Barcelona:
Museu Tèxtil i d’Indumentària.
Bernis, Carmen (2001) El traje y los tipos sociales en El Quijote, Madrid: El Viso.
Bernis, Carmen (1962) Indumentaria española en tiempos de Carlos V, Madrid:
Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.
Blahnik by Boman, a photographic conversation, (2005) London: Thames and
Hudson.
Boehn, M.V., La moda. Historia del traje en Europa. Desde los orígenes del
Cristianismo hasta nuestros días. 6 vols. Barcelona: Salvat Editores, 1928-1929 with
articles on Spanish Fashion by Marqués de Lozoya and María Luz Morales.
Casado, Concha y Joaquín Díaz (1988) Estampas castellano-leonesas del siglo XIX,
Trajes y Costumbres, Leon: Ediciones Leonesas, S.A.
Cruz Rodríguez, Juan de la (2002) Las indumentarias tradicionales de Canarias.
Tenerife: Centro de la Cultura Popular Canaria.
España, 50 años de Moda (1987) Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona.
Genio y Figura, la influencia de la cultura española en la moda (2005) Tokyo &
Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para Exposiciones Internacionales.
Hoyos, Luis de, Hoyos, Nieves de (1947/1985) Manual de Folklore, Madrid: Itsmo.
Hoyos, Luis de. Etnografía Española. Cuestionario y bases para el estudio de los
trajes regionales (1922) Madrid: Museo Nacional de Antropología, vol. 1.
Hoyos, Nieves de (1954) El traje regional en España, Madrid: Publicaciones
españolas.
Hughes, Robert (2003) Goya, London: Harvill Press.
Kamitsis, Lydia (1999) Paco Rabanne. London: Thames and Hudson.
Miller, Lesley Ellis Miller (2007) Balenciaga. London: V&A Publications.
28
Moda en sombras (1991) Madrid: Museo Nacional del Pueblo Español.
Ortiz Echagüe, José (1947) España, tipos y trajes. Madrid: Mayfe.
Pertegaz (2004) Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte.
Puerta, Ruth de la (2006) La segunda piel, historia del traje en España. Valencia:
Generalitat Valenciana.
Smith, Paul Julian (2003) “Classic fashion? The Adolfo Domínguez Sample Book.”
In Contemporary Spanish Culture, TV, Fashion, Art and Film. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Sousa, Francisco de (2007) Introducción a la historia de la indumentaria española.
Madrid: Ediciones Istmo.
Bean, Ruth (1981) Juan Alcega. Tailor’s pattern book, 1589, (facsimil), Bedford:
Carlton.
Dalrymple, William (1777) Travels through Spain and Portugal in 1774. London.
De La Cruz Cano y Olmedilla, J. (1777-1788/ 1998) Colección de los trages de
España tantos antiguos como modernos, Madrid: (facsimil), Turner.
Ford, Richard (1846/2000) Gatherings from Spain, Ian Robertson editor, London:
Pallas Athene.
Laborde, Alexandre de, Itinéraire descriptif de l’Espagne, et tableau élémentaire des
différentes branches de l’administration et de l’industrie de ce royaume. Paris: Chez
H. Nicolle et Lenormant, MDCCCVIII, 5 vols and an atlas.
Rodríguez, A. (1982) Colección general de los trages que en la actualidad se usan en
España, principiada el año 1801 en Madrid. Madrid: Biblioteca de Estampas.
Townsend, Joseph (1792) A Journey through Spain 1786 and 1787. London, printed
for C. Dilly.
See also: Ethnic (folk) dress in West Europe; National dress in West Europe; The
dynamics of fashion in West Europe; The structure and form of European clothes;
Early history of dress and fashion in Italy and the Iberian peninsula; Garment,
knitwear and retail industries; Fashion designers; Home production; Underwear;
Accessories; Gender; Costume for dance;
SNAPSHOT: Majos, the meeting point between folk dress and fashion
29
In the mid eighteenth century in Spain, within the framework of emerging
nationalisms in Europe, the fashion was for the old-style dress of the majo and maja
of Madrid, as a reaction against the French and their fashions. This style of clothing
would come to define the stereotype of “typically Spanish” clothing until the present
day.
The word majo today denotes physical beauty and sensuality, as well as the proud but
quarrelsome character of a valiant man, though who also has affected mannerisms.
The dress of the majo represented the extreme visibility of the masculine body in
movement, since it perfectly shaped the silhouette. It was characterized by its
precociousness, decoration and very careful artisan production, unlike the jacket,
frock coat and tail coat of French influence, worn along with a shirt, neckerchief,
cummerbund and long johns, and this ensemble was decorated with braids and
embroidered in bright colours. Long hair with no wig was secured in a red or
gandaya (different types of hairnet). The maja woman dressed in a short fitted
doublet, fringed jacket, a skirt or guardapiés (overskirt) and apron which showed the
shoes, with a scarf round the shoulders and cap over the hair, a shawl and a fan in the
hand, an indispensable outfit to give the impression of a warm country and which
encoded signs of communication.
Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) drew ten tapestry covers for King Charles IV, in
which he related the life of the idealised popular classes: La maja y los embozados
(1777), La gallina ciega (1788), or the well known paintings of La maja desnuda
(1797-1800) and La maja vestida (1800-1808). At the end of the eighteenth and
beginning of the nineteenth centuries, noble men and women dressed up as majos for
carnivals, to go on trips to the country or for a walk through Madrid.
Unlike the majos, the petimetres (from the French petits maitres), lechuguinos or
dandies were men and women who followed the fashions of the French empire.
Although majos and petimetres clashed in the defence of either Spanish or French
fashion, both groups shared an extreme attentiveness to their clothing and
affectations.
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In 1808, the traveller Laborde defined “national” or “Spanish dress” as that worn by
the majas, covered with a mantilla and basquiña, outer skirt and black blancas o
negras. During the nineteenth century, the maja’s clothing changed to become a
dress with flounces. The clothing worn by flamenco dancers, with a shawl and heeled
shoes is really the idealisation of a dress which originated in the large and rounded
dresses of around 1850, and which by the end of the nineteenth century also had
flounces and fixed braids. In 1870, Mariana Fortuny painted La Vicaria which
represented a scene from the eighteenth century with a maja and a bullfighter in
Madrid. This painting, praised by Théophile Gautier, helped to embed the stereotype
of an archaic and picturesque Spanish society, which had already shaped the dress of
the Romantics and which was very successful in the nineteenth century and the first
half of the twentieth century in Europe. The dress of the male majo became today’s
bullfighter’s costume, the traje de luces.
Silvia Ventosa.
END OF SNAPSHOT
SNAPSHOT
Three designers in Alto Costura
Pedro Rodríguez (1895-1989)
In 1900, Pedro Rodríguez arrived in Barcelona from Valencia and in 1919 opened his
haute couture house there. In 1929, the designer triumphed at the Barcelona
Universal Exhibition and in 1937 he opened another house in San Sebastian. In 1939,
after the Civil War, he reopened his workshops in Barcelona and Madrid.
He was portrayed as a perfectionist of the cut, which he made on the body of the
client. He chose difficult fabrics such as silk with which he recovered the draping
which can be seen in Greek statues and clothes used in cinema in the 1930s. He stood
out because of his use of the bias cut, jeweled embroidery, Bohemian glass, jet
trinkets and porcelain handmade by Maes, which he combined with tulle and organza
transparencies. He used the best materials, creating a simple elegance and exclusivity
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in a style of fashion which at times looked to international trends, but which was
defined as timeless. In the 1950s and 1960s, his designs were successful in the United
States, Japan and Germany. His fashion house was open in Barcelona until 1978. He
is considered to be the master of Spanish fashion designers. The Barcelona Textile
and Clothing Museum has a large collection of dresses chosen by the designer himself
and in 2007 it received a donation of dresses and accessories belonging to one person,
who dressed exclusively in Pedro Rodríguez designs from 1932 until the 1980s.
Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972)
Balenciaga is the most internationally well-known Spanish designer. He opened his
house in San Sebastian in 1919, one in Madrid in 1935, and in 1937 he moved
permanently to Paris. His are one-off pieces, made-to-measure and timeless. His
work is distinguished by his investigation of different forms and materials.
To achieve perfection of form, Balenciaga understood and magisterially combined the
three basic elements of the dress: fabric, structure and construction techniques. He
used light fabrics, like simple taffeta, fluid silk crepe, silk gabardine, chiffon and lace
and also the gazar and ziberline rigid silks and thick wool. The fabrics were smooth
or brocaded, cloqué, with heavy embroidery, jewels and lace. He was a master of the
cut and other tailoring techniques: from straight Japanese sleeves to pleating and silk
flounces. In one piece he would combine concepts such as reducing the torso and
widening the skirt, both tailoring a dress and keeping it away from the body. He
accentuated new areas of the body with lots of volume on the back, showed off the
wrists and clavicle with square leather coats and recovered the sack model of dresses
without a belt. In most of his dresses, he prioritized comfort, but evening dresses
were more complicated, with boning for the body or petticoats with hoops, ruffles,
lace and stoles, to achieve exaggerated forms which reinterpreted the geometric
silhouettes of the guardainfante, crinoline or bustle. In daytime dresses, women’s
suits or tunics, he did away with ornamentation and cleansed the line, using very little
fabric for a simple and unstructured tailoring. The sack dress, which at the time was
controversial, avoids marking out the waist. Along with flounces and the straight
forms of the kimono, this style of dress has been copied and reinterpreted until the
present day.
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Balenciaga’s main innovations occurred during the 1940s and 1950s. The 1960s
represented a refinement of the previous years and he retired in 1968, upon seeing the
changes in the fashion landscape. His main contributions were the construction of
clothes which showed new silhouettes, sometimes inspired by traditional or historical
Spanish clothing, such as that of the Basque sailors or the friars’ tunics in the
paintings of Francisco de Zurbarán (1598-1664).
Pertegaz (1918-)
Manuel Pertegaz is the oldest current representative of Barcelonese and Spanish haute
couture, working from 1942 when he opened his fashion house in Barcelona, until the
present day. His work locates itself between two generations of designers, with
Balenciaga and Pedro Rodríguez on the one hand, and the younger designers such as
Margarita Nuez or Roser Marcé on the other. After the Civil War, the Catalonian
bourgeoisie which went to Paris to dress in Balenciaga’s fashions discovered
Pertegaz’ expertise and since then he has been one of the social elite’s favourite
designers. In 1945 he showed his collections in New York and opened a fashion
house in Madrid. In the 1950s he was successful in Paris and in New York in 1952.
He was touted as Christian Dior’s successor on the latter’s death in 1957. In the late
1960s and early 1970s, he was in his most productive and creative phase, with 700
employees, and his main buyers were American. Amongst his famous clients were
Ava Gardner, Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy. In 1978 he closed his haute
couture houses and dedicated himself to prêt-à-porter [ready-to-wear], which he
combined with tailoring for his clients. Wider recognition of his work came in 2004
both when he created the dress for the wedding of Princess Letizia with Philip of
Bourbon, as well as through exhibitions about his work in Madrid and Barcelona.
Silvia Ventosa.
END OF SNAPSHOT
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