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sartorialadventure · 5 years

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I had meant to do a post on historical poor and working-class fashions, but found the subject too difficult. Wonderfully for me, this series (A Stitch in Time) is covering some of the same issues I wanted to talk about, and in this episode, even the specific outfit I wanted to discuss!

This is Dido Elizabeth Belle, the subject of the movie Belle starring Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and her cousin, Elizabeth Murray. (As a side note, Dido’s uncle and guardian, the Earl of Mansfield, was a judge, and ruled in 1772 that slavery had no precedent in common law in England, and had never been authorised under positive law. This was popularly interpreted to mean that slavery was illegal in England, and it was widely believed after that time that any slave setting foot in the country would automatically become free.)

I was interested in the contrast between the clothing of the two women here: Dido’s outfit is very plain when compared to Elizabeth’s, and exoticized by sashes and a turban (which was popular among upper-class white women as part of the “Turkish” style, but was also common among black British servants). The episode above explains in more detail that Dido was raised as a gentlewoman, but that as an illegitimate child, there was a difference made between her and the rest of the family, and she held a liminal social position (not unlike a governess, who was neither a servant nor a part of the family).

One thing they don’t mention which I had turned up while researching is that the turban or similar headcoverings could be seen as a sign of one’s belonging to the black community. Slave women in the US often wore their hair up and wrapped in a kerchief: in fact, in some parts of the US south, they were required to do so by law.

The Tignon Laws of 1786 decreed that women of African descent, slave or free, should cover their hair and heads with a knotted headdress and refrain from "excessive attention to dress" to maintain class distinctions. Before that time, black women of Louisiana could vie with white women in beauty, dress and manners. In particular, women of African descent would often adorn their hair with colorful jewelry, beads and other accents, demonstrating an exotic appearance which attracted the attention of white male suitors. This perceived threat to white women's relationships with French and Spanish Creole men incurred the jealousy and anger of white women: thus, the Tignon Laws.

However, black women would not allow the law to keep them down. Historian Carolyn Long notes, "Instead of being considered a badge of dishonor, the tignon…became a fashion statement. The bright reds, blues, and yellows of the scarves, and the imaginative wrapping techniques employed by their wearers, are said to have enhanced the beauty of the women of color." [source] Women of color in Louisiana decorated their tignons with their jewels and ribbons, and used the finest available materials to wrap their hair: they reinterpreted the law without technically breaking it.

^ A West Indian Flower Girl and Two other Free Women of Color, Agostino Brunias, circa 1769.

This excellent article points out,

Even when Louisiana stopped enforcing the laws in the early 1800s, free women of color continued wearing the tignon. It’s a testament to their resilience: The women of New Orleans refused to allow a piece of cloth to humiliate them, erase their status, or diminish their femininity. Instead, they reinterpreted the tignon as a symbol of empowerment. (And Black women in Louisiana weren’t the only women of color to use clothing to resist oppressive laws: In 1773, free women of color in Saint-Domingue were prohibited from wearing shoes, so they wore sandals, adorned their toes with diamonds and continued to do so after the laws were lifted.)

Clearly, while utilitarian, in that it protected one’s hair from the elements, a headwrap could be an expression of individualism, even for enslaved women. “Cassandra Stancil, enslaved in her youth, insisted that she never asked another woman how to tie her head-scarf. ‘I always figured I could do it,’ she said, ‘I could try and experiment and if not get that, get something that I liked.’ [source]

Black women in Africa had worn similar headwraps ever since trade brought European fabrics to Africa. (They are still worn today, such as the gele of West Africa.) Perhaps for these reasons, there are quite a number of images of women of color of all classes in English and French-speaking countries of the 18th and 19th centuries wearing turbans or tignons similar to Dido’s.

^ Unknown; previously attributed to Jeanne Etienne Liotard. Portrait of a Young Woman. France (c. 1750-1799)

^The famous Marie Laveau of Louisiana, 19th century

^Free Woman of Color, New Orleans, 1844 by Adolph Rinck

^William Kay. Seamstresses, St. Kitts (Carribean), 1798.

The headwrap has long been a symbol of pride, beauty, individualism, and community for women of Africa and the African diaspora.

#fashion #18th century fashion #fashion history #black history #black fashion #black hairstyles #headdress #hats #hairstyles #18th century

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