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These quotes, in the article as I found it, blithely skip over decades:
How would Englishwomen have "seen" Josephine before the Peace of Amiens, when women's clothing styles in England had already changed quite a bit? What do the constricting clothing styles of the 1770's have to do with the "Renaissance"? And the last sentence makes it seem as if the Gibson Girls directly segued into the era of the miniskirt with no transition... Churchh 04:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't want to disparage her, but most testimonies are that the neo-Greek fashions spread from Paris. Churchh ( talk) 00:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
http://www.misfile.com/?page=1070 http://www.misfile.com/?page=1071 Are these links suitable as a reference? 84.56.115.20 ( talk) 19:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I have never seen or heard the word empire pronounced om-peer, the only reference to this is a 1999 article, I have been unable to substantiate this elsewhere on the net. Removal?? (Marc 14/10/09 @ 13:26) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.63.26.124 ( talk) 12:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN THE WORD PRONOUNCED om-peer....here's a quote from the American Heritage Dictionary:
Em·pire (om pîr' , em' pir) adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a neoclassic style, as in clothing or the decorative arts, prevalent in France during the first part of the 19th century. [After the First Empire of France (1804-1815).]
Notice the FIRST CHOICE IS OM-PEER'.
(By the way, the copy/paste did not work so well here, so I'll explain that the the o is short in the primary pronunciation; in the secondary, the e is short and the i is long).
My father was in the garment manufacturing business in the 50's and the ONLY way he ever spoke that word in reference to clothing or arts was OM PEER.
So if you you would like (in my opinion) the definitive authority on American English check out the AHD, Third Edition.
N0w8st8s ( talk) 09:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)n0w8st8s — Preceding unsigned comment added by N0w8st8s ( talk • contribs) 08:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't know how much of a revival of the empire silhouette there was in the 1930s, but if there was one, it needs to be discussed separately. Churchh ( talk) 17:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
The 1910s did not see a revival of the empire silhouette in any real sense. Instead, there were some style influences, but most women (except for a small aesthetic minority) were still pretty firmly corseted. This can be seen in the book of photographs published in 1908 by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which showed 1908 women wearing actual surviving Regency gowns; the result looked rather stiff and unnatural, and not very similar to the fashions of 1908 or the 1910s. So I can't understand why a mention of the 1910s (when there were only very limited Regency influences on what most women wore, as opposed to theoretical/artistic "fantasies on modern costume") should replace a mention of the 1960s (when ordinary women were commonly wearing real empire silhouette dresses). Churchh ( talk) 10:12, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The reign of terror might have been an influence on certain other aspects of fashion shifts (less display of luxurious ornate stiff fabrics), but it would be very, very difficult to trace the shift of fashion silhouette to it (the chronology isn't quite right to start with). The rediscovery of the virtues of ancient (Roman/Greek) societies was part of the French revolution -- it was why there was an office named "first consul" etc. And before ca. 1790, fashionable women ostentatiously displayed ornate luxurious fabrics in their clothing, while after 1795, fashionable women ostentatiously displayed crisp clean white (often slightly diaphanous) fabrics in their clothing, so ostentatious display didn't disappear, but was redirected into new forms. Churchh ( talk) 07:02, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Becsh -- It's true that the tendency to wear pure crisp white garments (as opposed to ornately decorated stiff fabrics) tended to diminish the clothing distance between the aristocracy and the middle class (though it did almost nothing to diminish the distance between the middle class and the working class, as was explained above). But wearing white is not by itself the whole "empire silhouette" -- in fact, it's not any kind of silhouette at all (but a fabric choice). All evidence is that the whole empire silhouette "look" didn't really come together until after 1795, when Robespierre's head had been in the basket (no longer on his shoulders) for over a year. That's part of the reason why the term "Directoire" refers to 1795-1799, and our historical clothing article which covers the empire silhouette is called "1795-1820 in Western Fashion". The wearing of white was initially a trend due to neo-Classical influence, and some women started doing this years before the French Revolution (see gallery above). Very probably there's a kind of indirect relationship between French political turmoil in the 1790s and fashion turmoil in the 1790s, but trying to trace style changes directly and immediately to one particular political event often turns out to be unacceptably simplistic and ultimately unhelpful (with the exception of such oddities as the "à la guillotine -- a red ribbon choker worn around the neck!)... Churchh ( talk) 14:31, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
By the way, I came across the second revised edition (1976) of On Human Finery by Quentin Bell. His position is difficult to sum up in a few sentences, but he broadly supports what I said above, in that in his opinion there were only two historical political/military events which had significantly perturbative effects on the Western fashion cycle -- the aftermath of the French revolution ("Napoleonic wars"), and World War I -- but that fashion fluctuations during those periods were not necessarily closely correlated with short-term political events. He flatly denies that the general trend towards neo-classicizing style in women's clothing was "tied to political ideology". Churchh ( talk) 18:14, 19 November 2018 (UTC)
This article is rated Start-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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These quotes, in the article as I found it, blithely skip over decades:
How would Englishwomen have "seen" Josephine before the Peace of Amiens, when women's clothing styles in England had already changed quite a bit? What do the constricting clothing styles of the 1770's have to do with the "Renaissance"? And the last sentence makes it seem as if the Gibson Girls directly segued into the era of the miniskirt with no transition... Churchh 04:16, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't want to disparage her, but most testimonies are that the neo-Greek fashions spread from Paris. Churchh ( talk) 00:42, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
http://www.misfile.com/?page=1070 http://www.misfile.com/?page=1071 Are these links suitable as a reference? 84.56.115.20 ( talk) 19:05, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
I have never seen or heard the word empire pronounced om-peer, the only reference to this is a 1999 article, I have been unable to substantiate this elsewhere on the net. Removal?? (Marc 14/10/09 @ 13:26) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.63.26.124 ( talk) 12:26, 14 October 2009 (UTC)
FOR THOSE WHO HAVE NEVER SEEN THE WORD PRONOUNCED om-peer....here's a quote from the American Heritage Dictionary:
Em·pire (om pîr' , em' pir) adj. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a neoclassic style, as in clothing or the decorative arts, prevalent in France during the first part of the 19th century. [After the First Empire of France (1804-1815).]
Notice the FIRST CHOICE IS OM-PEER'.
(By the way, the copy/paste did not work so well here, so I'll explain that the the o is short in the primary pronunciation; in the secondary, the e is short and the i is long).
My father was in the garment manufacturing business in the 50's and the ONLY way he ever spoke that word in reference to clothing or arts was OM PEER.
So if you you would like (in my opinion) the definitive authority on American English check out the AHD, Third Edition.
N0w8st8s ( talk) 09:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)n0w8st8s — Preceding unsigned comment added by N0w8st8s ( talk • contribs) 08:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)
I don't know how much of a revival of the empire silhouette there was in the 1930s, but if there was one, it needs to be discussed separately. Churchh ( talk) 17:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
The 1910s did not see a revival of the empire silhouette in any real sense. Instead, there were some style influences, but most women (except for a small aesthetic minority) were still pretty firmly corseted. This can be seen in the book of photographs published in 1908 by the Victoria and Albert Museum, which showed 1908 women wearing actual surviving Regency gowns; the result looked rather stiff and unnatural, and not very similar to the fashions of 1908 or the 1910s. So I can't understand why a mention of the 1910s (when there were only very limited Regency influences on what most women wore, as opposed to theoretical/artistic "fantasies on modern costume") should replace a mention of the 1960s (when ordinary women were commonly wearing real empire silhouette dresses). Churchh ( talk) 10:12, 31 January 2018 (UTC)
The reign of terror might have been an influence on certain other aspects of fashion shifts (less display of luxurious ornate stiff fabrics), but it would be very, very difficult to trace the shift of fashion silhouette to it (the chronology isn't quite right to start with). The rediscovery of the virtues of ancient (Roman/Greek) societies was part of the French revolution -- it was why there was an office named "first consul" etc. And before ca. 1790, fashionable women ostentatiously displayed ornate luxurious fabrics in their clothing, while after 1795, fashionable women ostentatiously displayed crisp clean white (often slightly diaphanous) fabrics in their clothing, so ostentatious display didn't disappear, but was redirected into new forms. Churchh ( talk) 07:02, 11 July 2018 (UTC)
Becsh -- It's true that the tendency to wear pure crisp white garments (as opposed to ornately decorated stiff fabrics) tended to diminish the clothing distance between the aristocracy and the middle class (though it did almost nothing to diminish the distance between the middle class and the working class, as was explained above). But wearing white is not by itself the whole "empire silhouette" -- in fact, it's not any kind of silhouette at all (but a fabric choice). All evidence is that the whole empire silhouette "look" didn't really come together until after 1795, when Robespierre's head had been in the basket (no longer on his shoulders) for over a year. That's part of the reason why the term "Directoire" refers to 1795-1799, and our historical clothing article which covers the empire silhouette is called "1795-1820 in Western Fashion". The wearing of white was initially a trend due to neo-Classical influence, and some women started doing this years before the French Revolution (see gallery above). Very probably there's a kind of indirect relationship between French political turmoil in the 1790s and fashion turmoil in the 1790s, but trying to trace style changes directly and immediately to one particular political event often turns out to be unacceptably simplistic and ultimately unhelpful (with the exception of such oddities as the "à la guillotine -- a red ribbon choker worn around the neck!)... Churchh ( talk) 14:31, 5 September 2018 (UTC)
By the way, I came across the second revised edition (1976) of On Human Finery by Quentin Bell. His position is difficult to sum up in a few sentences, but he broadly supports what I said above, in that in his opinion there were only two historical political/military events which had significantly perturbative effects on the Western fashion cycle -- the aftermath of the French revolution ("Napoleonic wars"), and World War I -- but that fashion fluctuations during those periods were not necessarily closely correlated with short-term political events. He flatly denies that the general trend towards neo-classicizing style in women's clothing was "tied to political ideology". Churchh ( talk) 18:14, 19 November 2018 (UTC)