In 2009, I was doing research on Flávio de Carvalho, the most anarchic and radical of Brazilian modernist artists, when I came across a wealth of material: the transcript of all the columns the artist wrote about his fashion theory, which culminated in his Experiment n.3, or the Summer New Look: he created an outfit suitable for tropical men, which included a petticoat, and paraded it through the streets of São Paulo in the mid-1950s, causing a scandal. Delighted with the newly discovered material, I got in touch with his family and authorized the publication of the book. The title was a difficult choice: the columns were called “Fashion and the New Man”, but the author wanted to rework them and publish them under a new title, “Dialectics of Fashion”. As this adaptation was not carried out, but was only planned, we considered it more appropriate to use the original title. In addition to the columns, we included in the book a lecture given by Flávio de Carvalho at the Tropicology seminar organized by Gilberto Freyre in Recife in 1967, which we reproduce here. [Sergio Cohn]
First of all, I’m going to address the problem of the mutations of fashion throughout history. It’s a complicated and delicate problem and naturally I’ll have to approach it in a synthetic way because it’s the result of a study that has already been published in newspapers and will be published in a book that will contain more or less 1,160 pages. In a short space of time, I could only deal with the subject in an extremely abbreviated way.
I have come to the conclusion that two fundamental factors guide the change in fashion throughout history. Studying fashion within history, I came to the following conclusion: firstly, we have a fruitful curvilinear manifestation that is constantly repeated in history. It presents itself with curves and eschews the straight line entirely. It is a sensual and obviously fruitful manifestation. I say fecundating because it is conducive to events in history in which fecundation is involved. The other fundamental form is that of parallel straight lines, which I call antifecundants. These antifecundating parallel straight forms appear periodically in the aesthetic manifestations of human groups, in architecture, sculpture, painting and especially in the presentation of fashionable features.
Another important phenomenon that I believe I have discovered in the course of my research is the way in which mutations take place in history, within the hierarchical classes of which society is composed. After studying various phenomena, I came to the conclusion, which I think is correct, that fashions change through the various hierarchical layers of society, from the bottom up, starting in a lower hierarchical layer, moving through the various layers, reaching the part of the dominant social hierarchy that is usually the king, the court, the nobles who make up the court and the dignitaries of the army and the clergy. There is always this important phenomenon. When mutations take place, they move up the social hierarchy. I repeat that it’s an important thing, maybe I’m wrong, I don’t know.
To illustrate what I’ve just said, I’m just going to quote some data from history, some of which is generally known to the public. We can start with the Mycenaean civilization, which took place between 1,000 and 600 BC and lasted until 1,200 BC. There is very little archaeology of this civilization and the remnants that remain are difficult to find. However, what does exist is mainly in architecture and sculpture; and it shows that this Mycenaean civilization can be considered a fruitful curvilinear civilization. It was composed exclusively of spirals, of curvilinear plant forms that were always repeated. This civilization, destroyed by the invasion of barbarian peoples from the north who left nothing behind, has all but disappeared. There are only rare traces of it. Succeeding this civilization, we find another that presents the exact opposite of the fruitful curvilinear manifestation. We come across the “geometric dipylon” civilization, which took place between twelve hundred and nine hundred years before Christ. The “geometric dipylon” style shows geometric shapes. It’s a civilization that adopted the anti-falling parallel lines. It was here that the famous Doric style emerged, which would become so important in architectural studies. It was the beginning of Greek history. Homer appears, singing the Iliad. It was a civilization of mourning and sadness. The anti-flooding parallel straight forms are associated with mourning and sadness and it is precisely this civilization that comes from a period of destruction, of the razing of the Mycenaean-Minoan civilization, so this classification of mourning and sadness is perfectly justified.
Then there was the archaic civilization, which took place between 900 and 600 years before Christ. The archaic civilization saw the reappearance of fruitful curvilinear forms, which are precisely the antithesis of the Doric-style “geometric dipylon” civilization that preceded it. We then come across the famous statues of Tegeo. Women appear wearing a very important garment that until recently was thought to have originated in the sixteenth century. This garment did not originate in the sixteenth century, but history shows that it did originate in the nine hundred years before Christ. It is the verdugada and the crinoline. The verdure and the crinoline appear precisely in the sculptures of Tegeo in archaic civilization. They are curvilinear forms in which the woman appears wearing verdugades, which are lateral protuberances on the hips. These ladies wore very heavy and richly ornamented clothing. But the clothing worn is the same as that which reappeared in the sixteenth century with Spanish fashion. This clothing must have been extremely heavy, but there is no precise data on this, neither in literature nor in ethnography. There is no precise data on the weight of this clothing. But from the appearance of the statuettes, we can conclude that the clothing must have weighed at least eighty kilos in full dress, both the 16th century Spanish clothing and the clothing worn 900 years before Christ. The aristocratic woman carried on her body a garment that could have weighed eighty kilos! This is a guess, and it should be noted in passing that the garments found in the sixteenth century weighed up to one hundred kilos.
Leaving ancient Greece, we find very important phenomena that spread to the Roman Empire, which was evolving at the time. Greece was the fashion center of the world at the time. Six hundred years, nine hundred years before Christ, Greece dictated fashion in Rome and around the Mediterranean. All the perfumes, all the ointments, all the ointments had Greek names, just as today’s perfumes have French names, because Greece was the center of fashion. The Greek woman was meticulous in the way she dressed and at that time she wore clothes that are still worn by women today. The Greek woman wore a girdle called the “girdle of Venus”, which was made of bronze or iron and had the task of slimming the waist and emphasizing the protuberances of the hips. She wore the Toenia, a vest to keep her breasts erect, directly over her breasts. Over the dress, the Greek woman wore a kind of bra, the Strophion, which was made of gold fabric and decorated with precious stones. For the belly, the Zona, a girdle to make walking easier. So we see that the Greek woman was a highly sophisticated woman and used the same gadgets that we use. She wore a device under her arm, the Anamacalisteron, which was designed to absorb sweat so that it wouldn’t stain her dress. They wore a girdle over their bellies that corresponds to the girdle women wear today for the same purpose. Throughout the centuries, all these gadgets have served the same purpose.
What I would like to draw the attention of the members of this Seminar to is the fact that the archaic fecundating curvilinear civilization was succeeded in the Roman Empire by a high-content antifecundating parallel straight civilization. All the clothing of the Roman Empire, from the beginning to the end, is clothing that can be classified as antifecundating parallel straight. In the straight-parallel-antifecundating garment, the woman’s waist rises. It is below the breasts, while in the curvilinear fecundating garment, the waist is low and is at the level of the hips. This is a phenomenon that the entire history of clothing records quite clearly.
The Roman Empire was a period of struggle, war, blood and great conquests. The straight parallel anti-flood position was in keeping with the mourning caused by the great wars of conquest, which had their greatest exponent in Julius Caesar. Leaving the fall of the Roman Empire, we enter the Middle Ages, the seventh, eighth centuries, and so on. This Middle Ages is extremely interesting, because we see in it some clothing phenomena related to catastrophes of a social nature. Straight parallel clothing remained straight parallel until the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Now, on the threshold of the twelfth century, a series of revolts of a communist nature broke out in the German provinces, with peasants preaching an equality they believed the Bible advocated. These wars lasted for a long time. During the communist-religious wars, we observed that the people of the German provinces wandered through the forests, hungry, ragged, barefoot and sick, feeding on tree roots. The princes of these provinces organized mercenary armies and these armies were able to suppress the great communist uprisings of the time in time. During this period, an important piece of clothing was found. In Germany itself, mercenary troops appeared in very short outfits. It was a costume made up of cuts. There were hundreds of cuts. The fabrics were already sold at the fairs with the cuts, some with 1,500 cuts. The mercenaries paid by the princes copied the clothes of the ragged peasants who wandered raggedly through the forest. The ragged clothing passed from the mercenary soldiers to the officers and then to the university student and the nobility. The strange attire was noted by a social chronicler of the time by the name of Conrad Pelicanus in the year 1400. The adoption of ragged clothing by the aristocracy shows how fashion moves through history. It arises from the humblest men, from men who suffered the most, from men in rags, hungry, sick and dying, then passes to the soldiers, to the officers of the guard, to the students of the university, of Thuringia and finally to the aristocracy and the king. This is almost always the evolution of dress fashions found in the Middle Ages in the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries.
Another important phenomenon in the Middle Ages, also observed in the 14th century: women wore a padding placed over their bellies, giving the appearance of being permanently pregnant. At the same time, they wore long sleeves that trailed to the ground and a long tail. It was a situation of mourning for the events that were in transit, because in the wars with the peasants, it seems, there were two to three hundred thousand deaths: quite a high figure, considering the sparse population of Central Europe at that time. The woman presents herself in this fashion with her belly protruding, with tails on her sleeves, with tails coming out of her hat and trailing along the ground. It’s a great expression of mourning and sadness at the death toll caused by the communist revolutions of the time. It’s a straight parallel style with a high waist under the breasts. After the belly-flop fashion came the Spanish verdugadas fashion. Women present themselves to the world like flowers about to be fertilized. It’s a ray of sunshine from Spain. It was Velasquez, Calderón de la Barca and Murilo Cervantes who appeared on the scene of intelligence. The fashion for Verdugadas and Crinolinas lasted for some time.
With the French Revolution, which began in 1794, there was a complete transformation in fashion. Paris became the center of fashion, no longer Madrid. The fruitful curvaceous fashion of the verdure disappeared. It’s back to the anti-fecundating parallel lines. The French Revolution had cut off the heads of twenty to thirty thousand aristocrats – there are no certain statistics on this – a fact that had already been pronounced by the use of the Spanish gorget in the 16th century, and the reign of terror caused a situation of mourning, pain and suffering throughout Europe. In 1797, the “merveilleuses” appeared sporting long tails. Tails of great importance in the new fashion – because the tail was a symbol of mourning, the mourning of the blood shed by the revolution. With the advent of Napoleon I, the mourning continued. It wasn’t really the “reign of terror”, but another edition of terror: imperialist terror. Napoleon I, conquering the known world of the time, with great bloodshed and great suffering for all, presents himself to the world with a fashion of parallel straights with high waists, waist under the breasts. When the Parallel Straight fashion came on the scene in the history of clothing, the waist was always below the breasts. When curvy fashion came on the scene, the waist was on the hips.
Napoleon I continued to wear tails. The tail is found on both women and men, and this tail, on the coats, extends through the Directory and is found on the costumes of the Empire’s great ceremonies. Napoleon demanded that all of Empress Josephine’s bridesmaids wear long tails. He felt insecure when the bridesmaids didn’t wear long tails, and the longest of them all was the Empress’s tail. It is reported that “the empress’s tail” was 12 meters long. It was the longest tail in the entire court of Napoleon I. This situation continued until the fall of Napoleon I.
With Napoleon III, a new sexual mythology emerged in Europe. Victor Hugo, Liszt, Paganini, Rossini, George Sand appeared and all the women started wearing crinolines. The tail disappears. Joy returns to the world: including sexual joy, the waist that used to be under the breasts drops down to the hips. Men start wearing thin waists. Women wear thin waists, tight vests with iron fins. Some men, too. Women also wear huge false breasts and false hips. It’s even fashionable for French cavalry officers to sport large hips.
This fashion continued until 1870, and after the disaster of 1870, the fashion changed, the fruitful curvaceous joy of the crinoline fashion disappeared and the fashion for parallel straights, long tails, again the sad, mourning fashion, emerged. It was mourning the fall of the Empire: the defeat of the Empire. This new fashion continued until 1908, with parallel straight shapes.
In 1850, women were already seeking major reforms in their social status. We find Madame Elumel strolling around New York wearing pants and a kind of petticoat over her pants and smoking a large cigar. In 1910, Madame Paquin introduced the jupe-culotte to Paris. This phenomenon of the leveling of men and women through clothing was already well established. Women tried to dress like men. And in 1910, in Paris, she wore a jupe-culotte, a jacket, over a shirt with a tie and a big hat. This jupe-culotte fashion provoked discussion everywhere, including among the clergy: the German bishops launched vehement protests against Madame Paquin and the jupe-culotte fashion. And Madame Paquin closed the matter by declaring that she had launched this fashion to make it easier for women to make the movements necessary for modern life and to allow them to dance the tango with greater ease. This ended the discussions and the German bishops no longer had any questions and accepted Madame Paquin’s reforms.
From 1910 to the present day, the dress reform has taken place with a sense of an anti-flood Parallel Straight, showing a situation of mourning, especially for the catastrophes to come. There are many comments I would like to make, but I’d better move on to the slides. The second part of my talk will be about clothing in the tropics. As I go through the slides, I could explain something more.
Before that, I’d like to say a few words about the train, because I haven’t talked about it enough. The train of the dress and the implications it has had throughout history are very important.
The train appears from the earliest stages of history. In mythology, we find the God Thor wearing a lion’s tail. In the 11th century, the grammarian Julis Polux recommended tails for funerals. In 1176, Pope Alexander III had a disagreement with the Doge of Venice because the Doge of Venice wanted to wear a tail longer than his. The pope forbade the doge of Venice to wear a tail larger than the pope’s. But the doge had a larger army than Alexander III and finally the pope agreed to the doge of Venice wearing a tail as long as his own papal tail.
In 1324, the Council of Toledo forbade the clergy to wear tails. In 1431, Pope Eugenius IV declared that he would only give absolution if the person wearing a tail did so “without evil intent”. It’s very interesting; I’d like to know how Pope Eugenius IV would find out about the bad or good intentions of anyone wearing a tail. It’s deeply curious.
In 1509 (Titian’s time), the Venetian Senate banned the use of tails. No one could wear a tail anymore. And in the 18th century, one of the popes denied absolution to anyone who wore a tail. Subsequently, there were further discussions on the subject.
I wanted to draw attention to the fact that the tail always appears in history as a garment of sadness and mourning, something that is anti-sexual and anti-gay. And speaking of animal tails, it should be noted in passing that when a mare is in heat, she lifts her tail and when she’s out of heat, she squeezes her tail in such a way that no amount of human strength can lift it.
Now, let’s go through the slides [The lecturer starts showing slides as illustrations of his work. The following excerpts refer to slides].
Here we see the Spanish gorges that appeared in the 16th century, already foreshadowing the great catastrophe of the French Revolution. The heads are severed from the body, just as the reign of terror and the guillotine were.
Then we have the Doric style, which shows us the parallel lines of the Doric style from 1600 to 900 years before Christ.
Now here we have the fruitful curvilinear forms of the verdure and the crinolines. These are crinolines from the 16th and 17th centuries and from archaic civilization 900 years before Christ.
Here we have images of Egyptians. An Egyptian lady who is being perfumed and groomed by a kind of hairdresser of the time.
Here we have a Greek hero, wearing a “chlamydion”, which of course is red, the color of the heroes of all times.
Here we are in the middle of the Middle Ages and we can already see the end of straight parallel shapes, with the beginning of fruitful curvilinear shapes. Below, on the right, we see a man and a woman wearing the same outfit. They appear several times in history. In early Rome, men and women wore the same toga over their naked bodies.
Here we have a warrior from the Araguaia River, where I was a few years ago, wearing a jaguar skin garment. He’s not wearing a jaguar skin. He has a jaguar skin painted on his body. I would like to draw the attention of the members of this seminar to the Indian’s body paint. The origin of the painting linked to the costume is unknown. No one can explain exactly what it is or how this association began. I think that body painting like that of today’s Araguaia Indians is a remnant of ancient clothing worn by the Indians themselves.
I believe that the elements that gave rise to fashion in the world are to be found in the lowest social hierarchy. It is the indigent, the hallucinated, those who wander the streets, ragged, who give rise to the fashions to come. I pointed out this phenomenon in 1955 in the press. We’re looking at two ragged people here, a reproduction of which I made a few years ago. Today, in the United States, people like them are wandering the streets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and they are the hippies, elements that are influencing fashion. My observation was a prediction made in 1955.
Here we see the phenomenon of the French Revolution. With straight, parallel, anti-flooding shapes. The Directory also uses the same straight parallel anti-undulating shapes. A time of sadness and social mourning.
Here is an illustration of the tail. Down there, the Empress Josephine with her enormous 12-meter tail and these animals on the side are prehistoric animals with tails similar to the Empress’s.
Now we have women from the 17th century, using shapes with cryolines, shapes that are already fecund, and further on we have women from more recent years using straight parallel shapes, a consequence of the blood shed by the French Revolution. An empress from the 15th century and next to her a woman with her straight parallel robes and then the woman who adopted the outfits from Spanish fashion and who is there, in number three, it seems.
Here we have a woman who appeared in the Directory, then a woman wearing anklets who is after the fall of Napoleon I and already the beginning of Napoleon III. We notice that the parallel lines have a long tail which is always a sign of mourning in history.
Here we have a goddess, Artemis, holding a long tail with her left arm. And, of course, the goddess Artemis appeared in iconography some 600 years before Christ.
Here we have elements of Aztec and Egyptian mythology. A man wearing a tail. An element from Aztec mythology also wearing a tail. These are tragic beings who wear tails: gods and bloodthirsty priests.
Then there’s the fashion for the protruding belly, the women who appeared in the 13th and 14th centuries, sporting the appearance of being permanently pregnant, with a peaked hat and long sleeves that are tails. These are the centuries of the great communist-religious upheavals. And in the distance a Christian from the catacombs praying. He wears straight parallel shapes. The Christian from the catacombs is a tragic element.
Here we have a manifestation of the fashion of the ragged man. The fashion for cut fabrics that reached the aristocracy at the beginning of the 14th century.
Here we have a reproduction of a lansquenete on the left who is a German mercenary, the one who suppressed the communist revolts of the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. The fashion came from the ragged and starving peasants. In the center we see a gentleman from the upper aristocracy, showing a purposeful tear in his left leg. A rip was the fashion at the time. A fashion copied from the ragged, sick and shabby man who wandered hungry through the forest. On the right, we have a reproduction of another lansquenete with a large, purposeful tear in his right leg, as well as the fabrics cut from his jacket.
There’s something really interesting here: statuettes from the Araguaia River that I collected among the Tapirapés and the Xavantes, depicting women with a deformity in their leg that is obviously deliberate. I think that in ancient times, women had this deformation on purpose, in order to make them seem more fertile. It’s a fertile curvaceous fashion. This deformation is also found in Africa in various regions.
There, in certain regions of Africa, we find women wearing crinolines. Men who were dancers also wore crinolines in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Here we have a fashion that emerged just after the 16th century, called the fashion of the washerwomen. The women wore a skirt that was raised at the front to imitate the washerwomen. This is interesting because the washerwomen belonged to a lower social hierarchy than the aristocracy who wore the washerwomen’s fashion.
Now we have something very important that I was going to talk about earlier, but I interrupted myself and didn’t say it. It’s the origin of the coat. The coat comes from the lowest social hierarchy. The coat originated with Louis XIV’s conquests, with the invasions of Germany by Louis XIV’s armies. Louis XIV was always at the head of his troops. He invaded Germany and Louis XIV’s soldiers copied the German peasant’s costume, which was a coat. On the left-hand side, we have a representation of a coat on a Carajá Indian figurine from the Araguaia River (author’s collection). This figurine is very interesting, because the Carajá Indian does this without knowing what he’s doing. Perhaps it’s reminiscent of an ancient costume. But it seems that the body painting of Brazilian Indians from other regions actually refers to worn and forgotten clothing.
Evolution of the jacket. On the left, we have a Louis XV soldier. This soldier is a Louis XV infantryman. He couldn’t walk with that uncomfortable coat falling over his legs, so he took the ends and tied them at the back so he could walk better.
Then there’s another form of coat, which you can see below. Then we have a jacket from the Directory.
Here we have more jackets. We’re already in 1898, on the right-hand side.
Here, going back, we see two elements dressed in the same way. A Sumerian man and woman dressed in the same way. This would be the pubertal age of humanity. And speaking of pubescent age, we see that among the ancient Greeks, men and women looked the same until they were about 17 years old, when the man came of age and reached puberty. Then the man would cut off his hair, which was as long as the woman’s, and offer it to the God of Eternal Youth, who also had long hair. And that’s why I gave the title Pubertal Age when the man and the woman wear the same clothes and look identical. Today, with unisex dress, we are approaching a pubertal age, a prediction I made in 1951.
Here we have the use of pants. Many people think that pants originated in Gaul and were discovered by Julius Caesar during his great conquests. On the same slide, we have a Greek from 600 years before Christ who would be a Greek peasant wearing pants. So pants didn’t originate in Gaul, as many people think. Pants have the humblest of origins. It’s a garment worn by the Greek peasant, as we see here, which is passed on to the soldiers, to the warriors, then to the court, to the nobility and spread throughout the nobility.
Here, we have different types of toga. There is a toga that was worn by men and women at the same time (the restricted toga), under the naked body and they walked barefoot through the streets of Rome, in the early days of Rome.
Here we see, if I’m not mistaken, in 1856, on the right, wearing pants and a very strange four-shouldered petticoat, holding an umbrella and smoking a cigar, Mrs. Bloomard, a feminist. The feminist movements play a very important role in leveling the playing field between men and women and, above all, in leveling the playing field in terms of clothing. We are moving towards a time when men’s and women’s clothing will meet. Would it be, I ask, a pubertal age?
Then we have Patagonian Indians and other elements.
This is 1908, with the jupe-culotte. There are several categories. Always present is a high-waisted element from the same period. All the categories of this type of garment have a Parallel Straight anti-undulating shape.
Here we have an element, in the center, wearing a jupe-culotte with antifecundating Parallel Straight shapes, as well as the element on the left, which everyone can see, a woman wearing a jacket, pants, tie, etc.
On the right, a woman with a knee-length waist, which is very rarely found in fashion ethnography.
Here, elements of Parallel Straight Lines in the center and a beginning of a crinoline on the right that belongs to the 16th century.
Here, it’s 1910. In the center, Princess Mary of England and on the left another princess, both wearing Parallel Straight shapes. We are on the eve of the Great War of 1914. The First World War.
Here, new crinolines, this is before the French Revolution. We are now in the Directory and just after the Directory.
Here we have a woman wearing a garment from the Middle Ages, clearly and appropriately Straight Parallel.
When shapes take on the Parallel Straight form, the waist goes just below the breasts. And when it takes on fruitful curvilinear shapes, the waist is on the hips. Here we see the waist on the hips, with the fruitful curvilinear shapes. The image on the left is Titian’s daughter from the 16th century.
Here we have a comparison of early man, where, naturally, men and women dressed in the same way: they were naked, they were hunters, they dressed in the same way. Next to it we have a man from 6,000 years before Christ, man and woman dressed in the same way.
Here we have a woman wearing a Doric chiton, a warrior wearing a clamid, an Egyptian figure wearing a Parallel Straight form.
Here, new Parallel Straight shapes, with high waists, as we see there, one next to the other. Below is the beginning of the crinoline, both on the man and further down we have women with crinolines.
Here the man has prominent hips, and the woman too, in the same century. On the right hand side, Parallel Straights.
Here we have curvaceous fertile forms: the man, too, with a slim waist. They are men from Napoleon III, therefore from 1870. They represent joie de vivre. It’s the beginning of the belle époque, the first belle époque, when romantic emotions were in vogue. The man appears with a slim waist, the same as the woman, bulging hips, protruding breasts. It’s a man who presents himself with feminine forms.
Now, hats, and I’m not going to discuss hats because it’s a very long subject and I don’t want to take up the commentators’ time. The hat is very important in the history of clothing. The hat is a figuration of the soul of man. Primitive man is the man who takes the most care of his soul. The soul was in the head and it was in the form of a hat. All these hats are representations of the soul.
There, in the central figure, a gentleman with a trap installed over his head to prevent his soul from escaping from his body.
Now let’s start talking about jewelry. I’m of the opinion that jewelry has its origins in the humblest of social classes, which are prisoners, slaves and those who are totally below. They wore chains and rings around their necks as punishment. We have our slaves there who also wore these things as punishment. History shows that the crown of thorns itself also has its origins in punishment. Prisoners of war wore crowns of thorns, iron and other metals.
Then we have elements of ethnography, which are using a trap to catch the soul, which are rings placed on top of houses, or around the neck, ears and nose in order to prevent the soul from escaping from the body.
Then we see images of prisoners being carried, tied up with chains, which is the origin of the necklaces worn by the ladies of today’s society.
Then we have an Egyptian figure of a woman tied by her feet to prevent her from moving, because her lover or husband didn’t want her to take up with other men. She was bound with heavy rings on her feet to prevent her from escaping. Below are different types of rings used by prisoners and slaves.
Now we have the crown. The crown of thorns. It was a vegetable and became an object of punishment. Christ’s crown of thorns was actually a punishment device and became a kind of punishment for the prisoners who wore an iron crown with iron thorns and had their heads bloodied and then passed into religious worship.
Now, two words about the current costume and the costume adapted for the tropics. My intention to design a costume suitable for the tropics was only a need to change the clothing, but it was also a prognosis, a prognosis made 11 years ago, of events that are beginning today. These events are very important because they demonstrate the existence of a leveling of the playing field between men and women in terms of clothing, which we are likely to see in the future.
The garment I invented had valves in the jacket, so that the movement of the arms allowed the air between the fabric and the body to be renewed, while the movement of the legs allowed the air between the petticoat and the body to be renewed.
I tried to invent a garment corresponding to the so-called tuxedo. The collar around the neck is just a substitute for the collar. It may or may not be worn, but it doesn’t constrict or bother the neck or impede circulation. It serves a psychological purpose, as a point of support, to compensate for his inferiority when he’s out and about. On my legs I wore a fisherman’s knitted stocking, which today is called a fisherman’s knitted stocking and which was actually a ballerina’s stocking, which I got from a place that sells ballerina’s articles. The purpose of the fisherman’s stocking was to hide the varicose veins that some people have. The sandal is an ordinary sandal. I couldn’t perfect the sandal or design a new one.
At the time, there were no suitable fabrics. With today’s fabrics, ventilation would be almost perfect. This model is a pre-model, so to speak.
The jacket is open at the bottom, so the air circulates. The warm air rises and exits through the neck.