Using Fashion to Teach Historical Context – It’s Not All About Dates
Shakespeare's Ladies Paper Doll
Tell a roomful of students you want to talk about the 18th (or any other) century for the next few weeks, and you’re likely to get a roomful of glassy-eyed stares. But show the same group a picture of a man and women in period costume, and you establish an immediate context for the rest of whatever it is you really want to teach. With fashion as a visual jumping off place, it’s easy to ask them what movies they’ve seen with similar clothes and to help them pinpoint the right period. Still photos of actors in costume can help them remember relevant movies.
Once they’re thinking about the movies (and hopefully a few books) they’re familiar with, you can ask them about transportation (Did everyone ride horses? Had trains been invented? Could ships make it across the ocean?), living conditions (Did they have electricity? Running water? Refrigeration?) and other topics. Sometimes working through these questions will even give students an idea of the famous people major historical events of the era. Once students can picture the past and place it in a context, they’re ready to learn more about it.
Going into additional detail about the clothing itself can help students move beyond events and begin to think about the ideas prevalent in the period. A student who knows that fashionable 18th century women wore skirts so wide they sometimes had to turn sideways to pass through doorways can begin to wonder whether such a woman’s dress influenced the way her society regarded her – or the other way around. The contrast between a gentleman’s lace-trimmed sleeves and embroidered coat and a workman’s rough clothing can become the starting place for a discussion of social inequities and the revolutions in America and Europe.
Students who have learned to think in this way are better able to grasp the flow and sequence of history instead of parroting unrelated facts. And for many students – like me when I was a student and like many of the students I’ve taught over the years – history goes down much better with a spoonful of fashion to sweeten it.