Singular life
Dress to impress
Petronella Wyatt
e are what we eat, say some people. In my view, though, the truth is closer to this one: we are what we wear, or eogito dresso sum (is that the wrong way round?). Some of my disciples must recently have come to the same conclusion for The Museum of London has mounted an exhi- bition entitled Power Dressing: the fashion of politics.
Its exhibits encompass 100 years of strategic apparel; ranging from William Gladstone's grey silk topper, Xeir Hardie's cloth cap and Nancy Astor's dresses to Harold Wilson's pipe, Mrs Thatcher's handbag, Ken Livingstone's crapulous tweed jacket and the outfits Mr and Mrs Blair wore on their first day at No. 10.
And about time, too. Decisions on dress have been much overlooked by historians when they have often changed the course of history. Consider some propositions. Had Jesus Christ, for instance, dressed like Herod the Great in silks and splendour would he have seemed such a threat to the status quo?
If Julius Caesar hadn't worn a toga would he have conquered half the world? I mean, had he gone around in a grass skirt would his men have followed him across the Rubicon?
By the same token, can one picture Eliz- abeth I, our own Gloriana, dressed in transparent muslim like a dancing girl? Then, again, if Madame de Pompadour had worn dresses made of buckram and shaped like an upside-down pear she is unlikely to have so entranced a king.
If Gladstone had worn gold waistcoats embroidered with purple lilies while carry- ing a wicker basket and Keir Hardie an opera hat upholstered in burgundy satin it is probable that the constituencies to which both had to appeal would have distrusted them deeply. One doubts that Wilson would have swung the masses and the lower middling sorts so firmly behind him had his favoured smoke been not a simple pipe but a pink Sobranie.
The best way to understand the past is to wear it. All historical biographers should be compelled to dress in the customary attire of their subjects. Macaulay would have been even better on William of Orange had he attempted to climb in and out of that monarch's trousers. Once more into the breeches, dear friends.
I recall a similar personal apotheosis. Having once attended an 18th-century cos- tume ball I understood more about that period than could be comprehended from books. I had hired a costume that consisted of heavy silk, white and silver. It had thick petticoats and a pannier. A pannier is not a type of breakfast pastry as in pannier au chocolat. It is a whalebone construction that hangs from the waist like a frame to maintain the width of the skirt.
I was forced to begin dressing at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. After all the dif- ferent elements had been assembled I began, as they used to say, to 'come over all queer'. My internal mechanism had simply seized up. No air was reaching my lungs. The bodice was so constricting that I was unable to move my chest up and down except in shallow little gasps like an expir- ing amphibian. I felt about to faint. No wonder the women of the past carried smelling salts.
Walking was a further hazard as both sides of the pannier wedged themselves between doors so one had to move sideways like a crab. I recall one man's wife falling over, head first into the mud. 'Get up you old git,' the man said. Just as Lord Chester- field would have put it. After dinner some- one began to recite Goethe. His voice echoed in the night like the trickle of water in a cave. It was with horror that I realised I needed to relieve myself. How was it to be done. It seemed an impossibility. But if you've got to Goethe you've got to Goethe.
The lavatory was at the summit of a long staircase. The space between the wooden seat and the two walls on either side was alarmingly narrow. The pannier, once lift- ed, became wedged between the walls. My dress was thus suspended in mid-air above my waist. Only someone who has found themselves trapped three feet above a lava- tory could comprehend the full extent and agony of my confusion.
It was then in a flash that it occurred to my why middle-class and aristocratic women rarely used to work. It wasn't because they were prevented from doing so by a male-dominated society. It was because they were unable to move. Now if Madame de Pompadour had worn knee breeches...
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