Jaarboek Kostuum 2000

Table of Contents

1. letse Meij
   Connections: fashion and regional dress
   

   Time and again Dutch regional dress, i.e. the clothes agreeing with the nature and traditions of a certain region, has adopted elements from fashionable dress. Chintz, the taste for which started among the upper classes, is a good example of this. Due to a combination of aesthetic and practical characteristics such as colour fastness, durability and washability, chintz was adopted enthusiastically by the middle classes and within Dutch regional dress. The import of cheaper foreign textiles, including English cotton prints, hastened the decline of the Dutch textile industry around 1775-1780. Yet strong and simple Dutch fabrics, both from Leiden and from locaI weavers, continued to be used for regional dress. Examples of these are the imitations in cotton and linen of Asian gingham. Sometimes fabrics made of linen with silk or wool with silk were used.

   Under the influence of Protestant movements in the second half of the 19th century the low-cut jackets disappeared, except on the Island of Walcheren, in the Dutch province of Zeeland. Prominent elements such as caps, kerchiefs and the kraplap, a cloth covering the chest, got their definitive shapes. In the last quarter of the 19th century women in different parts of Zeeland began to use a silk kerchief. The way the heavy, flowered silk was pleated and pinned as well as the bead-embroidery on the kraplap worn underneath the kerchief, followed the fashions of 1891-1896. Chintz as well as checked and striped patterns remained popular. Staphorst stipwerk, a process invented circa 1928, was an original interpretation of printed fabric. Since 1960 synthetic fabrics are also used in Dutch traditional dress.

   In spite of the nearness of the mundane city of The Hague, Scheveningen dress has changed very little over the past 80 years or so. Scheveningen used to be a simple fishermen’s village with a relatively poor population. Household inventories show that there was also a middle class in Scheveningen, demonstrating its status in Sunday clothes such as chintz or silk vests with silver buttons and lace-trimmed shirts.

   Middle-class women wore jackets, skirts, and a cap with a silver oorijzer (the metal frame worn inside the cap) with gold ornaments, and laced bodices or corsets. One ship owner's wife distinguished herself as early as between 1774 and 1790 by wearing dresses of chintz, silk and other fabrics, and a gold oorijzer. The fish seller was typified by a straw fish hat with a chintz lining and the nonchalant way she wore her bodice or corset.

   Even on the island of Marken, where the embroidered, boned bodice is still outerwear, the aim of bodice and corset, creating a courtly posture and the desired silhouette, was not understood: in Dutch regional dress bodice and corset were used for support.

   Modern Dutch designers are inspired by the artisanal use of fabrics, the either subdued or exuberant colour combinations and the simple basic shapes of Dutch regional dress. Recently fashion students used these in a free or direct relationship to the shape of body.

2. Irene Groeneweg
   Gentlemen and peasants
   Reflections on fashionable and regional dress in the Dutchman’s clothing

   Ever since the late 18th century Dutch regional dress has been considered to be the remains of once nationally worn, specifically Dutch clothes. Its origin is mostly sought in the 17th century, the Golden Age of the Netherlands. Gradually a romanticised image of Dutch regional dress developed, which is critically considered in this article.

   At the beginning of the 16th century, the Northern Netherlands were already amongst the most urbanised parts of Europe. As early as in that century international trade brought about an internationally oriented culture and fashion. The excellent infrastructure of waterways in the small republic promoted the connection between town and country. Until the end of the 18th century there was no significant regional dress in the Netherlands.

   The last quarter of the 18th century saw the start of a quick decline of Dutch economy, which would last for almost a hundred years. Right at the beginning of this period we find the first writers who are interested in the clothes of country people. The most often quoted of these is Johan Le Francq van Berkhey (1729-1812), the more so because he supplied his descriptions of clothes with illustrations. However, Berkhey did not describe regional dress.

   In the economically favourable 17th and 18th centuries distinction in clothes was less due to the difference between town and country than to purchasing power. Among the farming classes of those time were also prosperous entrepreneurs dressing according to the latest fashion. The poor man in town on the other hand, wore more or less the same clothes as his counterpart in the country, as the ads in contemporary papers show. For a long time the most characteristic component of dress for these men was the underwaistcoat, sometimes called kamizool, which they wore as a waistcoat. The gentleman of means would wear this unseen under his waistcoat on cold days.

   The accounts of the rich Utrecht bachelor Jacob de Malapert (1711-1782), which span 43 years, show that being well-dressed cost him on average 180 guilders per year. His, invariably woollen, suits cost around 70 guilders. In 40 percent of the Dutch households the yearly income at that time was below 300 guilders and the clothes of the richer people were out of reach for them.

   The few examples of (women’s) dress which may be called real Dutch regional dress developed not before the 19th century. There are three contributing factors: first there was the decline in prosperity, causing a growing distance between town and country. A second factor is that in the 19th century churches tightened their hold on the lowest classes, in particular the Orthodox Reformed Church in the so-called 'Bible belt', which stretches diagonally across the country. Holding on to traditional ways of dress was subject to stringent social control in the most strict religious country communities. Finally we shouldn’t underestimate the commercial importance of maintaining traditional dress in communities that had always been poor, such as Marken. The first paying tourists arrived there as early as the late 18th century.

3. Margaret Breukink-Peeze
   The chintz trade and aspects of chintz in fashionable and regional dress
   

   From the end of the 17th century onwards, but mainly in the 18th century, chintz – cotton painted or printed with multi-coloured flowers – has been used for a wide variety of garments. Chintz was pleasantly cool to wear, did not fade when washed and was dirt repellent, in short an ideal clothing fabric. The present article describes the trade in, and use of chintz based on a wide variety of source material and literature.

   Indian chintz was imported on a large scale by the VOC (the Dutch East India Company) from circa 1670 onwards. There was also a lot of private trade, even by VOC employees themselves. In written order forms found in archives, some 80 varieties of cotton fabrics are mentioned, but it is difficult to link surviving chintzes to the rather indefinite descriptions.

   The centre of the chintz trade was in Amsterdam. From there, the Indian fabric spread across the country. Chintz was especially popular in regions bordering the North Sea and the Zuiderzee (now the IJsselmeer), where trade connections with Amsterdam were regular.

   Chintz was bought at auctions, in shops, in fairs and markets, from travelling salesmen and in the second-hand trade. There must have been a black market as well, considering how often we find mentions of stolen chintz garments. In the early decades of VOC chintz trade, the fabric was as popular and as expensive as silk.

   Detailed descriptions of missing persons advertised in the Amsterdamse Courant from 1672 on tell us who wore chintz, and how it was combined with other garments. We can clearly see the change in fashionable dress from black to colours, and also how fashionable and folk dress differed. In the 18th century all classes wore chintz. The rich used it mainly in informal dress or undergarments; the middle and lower classes wore it as daily wear and for special occasions. Chintz shoulder capes began as a fashionable item, worn only by the urban elite. Around the middle of the 18th century, they were adopted by the well-to-do middle class, and by the end of the century these capes can be found everywhere in traditional dress. In men's clothing, chintz was used mostly in the commonly worn waistcoats, or in gentlemen’s dressing gowns.

   By 1780 the fashion for chintz had passed its peak, to be succeeded by thin cotton fabrics in white or pale colours. Jackets and skirts, or sack robes, were replaced by the chemise, a straight, high-waisted dress, and shoulder capes by shawls. In the 19th century, chintz disappeared from both fashion and most regional costumes. Only in some places along the Zuiderzee, it became, and still is, an essential part of traditional costume. In Bunschoten-Spakenburg and the island of Marken, women’s chest and shoulder coverings are made of chintz.

4. Sytske Wille
   Hindeloopen or Hindustan?
   Traditional dress with an oriental allure

   In this article the Hindeloopen dress is used to examine the aspects of the influence of fashion on regional dress. The Frisian town of Hindeloopen had an attractive costume, colourful, exotic and rich, which around 1800 was well-known to an international public. At that time, however, the number of women wearing Hindeloopen dress was decreasing, while none of its details had ever been recorded. Outsiders had several hypotheses about the origin of the dress, among which were the following: the long, striking fitted chintz gown, the wentke, would originate from the 18th-century contouche; or, the long, 18th-century flowered men’s banyan could be transformed into a wentke by fitting it.

   The wentke is first mentioned in 1626. A short version was called ‘kassakijntje’. For every day the women wore a black woollen bodice, the oerlof, under which the ûnderst oerlof, a jacket-like undergarment, was worn. Wentke and kassakijntje are related to the 16th-century gown, an overdress opening centre-front. This gown would be trimmed with braid or embroidery. This we see also in the standard design of the wentke: along the front opening, the neckline and the wrists it would be trimmed with so-called langet ribbon.

   The wentke and the kassakijntje are similar in cut to several short, embroidered jackets from ca. 1615 which are kept in British costume collections. These jackets have flared skirts with triangular gores. The gores and seams are accentuated by rich, 17th-century English embroidery. It is possible that the very distinctive Hindeloopen stitching along the gores, seams and hem finds its origins here.

   The contouche or the long banyan may have given a new lease of life to the 17th-century wentke. Until the 1760s garments were usually made of wool and linen, mostly black in colour, combined with red-striped East-Indian cotton. Around 1775 however, they came to look oriental as a result of the use of chintzes.

   When painting chintz for banyans, justeaucorps and waistcoats for men, the way the material would be cut was taken into consideration: the design with decorative borders along the centre-front opening, hem, sleeves and collar would be in accordance with the cut. However, wentkes were made of chintz on the bolt, without painted borders.

   The views of mostly male travellers on the Hindeloopen costume were rather diverse. They called it Circassian and Levantine and in jest they would call Hindeloopen ‘Hindustan’. Whether they condemned or admired it, these men were accountable for the idea that the wentke developed from the banyan. However, the their fleeting glances were totally ignorant of its origin in earlier fashions.

5. Gieneke Arnolli
   Headgear in fashionable and regional dress
   

   Until around 1950 adult women in the Netherlands always wore either a cap or a hat. On the one hand this was because of St. Paul's precept that married women should always have their heads covered. On the other hand it was practical to protect one's head against cold and dirt. Furthermore one could show off one’s standing and affluence by the use of expensive materials such as bobbin lace or a golden oorijzer, the metal frame worn inside the cap.

   We may distinguish five main types of cap in regional dress: the brimmed cap, the coif, the the cornet, the veil cap and the mob cap originating from the dormeuse. Independent of these variants of the folded head kerchief of the late Middle Ages were worn well into the 19th century in Hindeloopen and on the erstwhile islands of Schokland and Marken. At the end of the 16th century a white ‘diadem’ cap, which had evolved from the white head kerchief, was worn by fashionable women, over an undercap with an oorijzer.

   Fashion never stopped influencing the different caps, sometimes directly when a fashionable cap was adopted in regional dress, sometimes indirectly when a cap was adapted to fit in with the fashionable shape. For instance in Friesland, around 1800, the brimmed cap (the so-called Dutch cap), began to grow under the influence of the fashionable fontange. The extremely large size of caps was reached by the end of 18th century; in Friesland the width of the cap was in balance with the width of the fashionable wide skirts.

   At the end of the 18th century the first veil caps came into vogue through the influence of classical antiquity on fashion. This transformation was achieved by lengthening 18th-century short caps, widening the flounce at the back.

   The more common type of cap was the coif, a simple crown with a (lace) frill framing the face and adjusted with drawstrings at the back of the neck. This cap was generally worn. Very diverse types evolved in the course of the 19th century. The Volendam coif has become the symbol of Dutch regional dress, but the caps of the islands of Walcheren, Zuid-Beveland and the city of Axel belong to the same basic type, although they look different.

   Cornets were mostly worn as night caps during the 18th century. They became fashionable around 1800. In the 19th century they remained everyday wear for female citizens, servants and wet-nurses. In several regions where the oorijzer did not survive, the cornet was adopted as the traditional cap.

   It was mainly in the province of Brabant that the mob cap, decorated with ribbon and a bow on top, became part of regional dress. The typical poffer dates from after 1870.

   From the second half of the 18th century onward a fashionable hat was often worn over the cap. When regional dress became less and less current, new fashionable shapes were no longer adopted, but women might continue to wear old-fashioned hats such as the toque.

   Because men were less tied to the home, their clothes and headgear were less conservative. The hat was usually the first thing to be adapted to a new fashion. In the country most hats were replaced with a cap with a beret-like crown during the 1930s, to be succeeded by the baseball cap in the 1990s.

6. Adriana Brunsting
   Kerchiefs: neck and shoulders covered
   

   Kerchiefs, worn to cover the neck and shoulders, go back a long way. They are both part of regional and fashionable dress in the Netherlands. In this article we differentiate between kerchiefs as daily wear and shawls, which were worn as protection against the cold. There is also a difference between regional dress ‘proper’ and regional dress which followed fashion whilst adding some elements which were particular to the region.

   In 18th-century France it became fashionable to wear a fichu, usually made of a transparent fabric, inside a low neckline. This fashion was copied in fashionable and regional dress alike. In fashionable dress it was worn into the second half of the 19th century, in regional dress it survives up to the present day. During the 18th century many kerchiefs were made of East-Indian, checked cotton or chintz. Silk gradually gained importance though. During the 19th century white became favourite, although the multicoloured kerchiefs were still worn too, probably for everyday wear. Between 1850 and 1870 the fichu was reduced to a small scarf in fashionable dress, and from then on was no longer worn.

   However, in regional dress the kerchief remained, in versions which were typical for different places. Just like in fashionable dress it was worn in several ways during the 19th century, although basically it was a diagonally folded square cloth. In Spakenburg the kerchief ended up circa-1950 as two strips of fabric pinned to the back and front of the bodice. In other types of regional dress the multicoloured kerchief disappeared, although the white one is still in use for special occasions. In Scheveningen and in Urk large fringed kerchiefs covering the shoulders are still part of the dress. The neck- and shoulder kerchiefs get a new lease of life in types of regional dress which, after their disappearance as daily dress, are becoming a costume for local and regional events.

   During the first three quarters of the 19th century coats for women were neither worn in fashionable nor in regional dress. Shawls were worn as protection against the cold. Kashmir shawls were on and off very popular in fashionable dress and in addition to these other woollen shawls were worn. At the end of the 19th century the coat replaced the shawl. Meanwhile in regional dress women kept wearing all kinds of square shawls. It was not until the 20th century that certain kinds of shawls became identified with certain places. For funerals a large black cloth, which may be traced back to fashions of centuries ago, covering the wearer from head to foot, remained in use in some places. In Spakenburg for instance, it was worn until 1970.

7. Truus Braaksma
   Jewellery
   Town splendour and country finery

   Regional jewellery has been influenced by fashion, just like regional dress. One typical item of regional jewellery, originating from the 16th century, is the oorijzer, the gold or silver frame worn inside the cap. The type of oorijzer town girls wore ca. 1640 can still be seen 250 years later in the portrait of a Frisian merchant's wife. From the ends of the oorijzer ornaments were suspended, designed after types of earrings worn in town. A variety of elaborate, jewelled pins usually completed the headgear.

   Next to the oorijzer, the necklace was the most important piece of jewellery. In Zeeland women wore an increasing number of strands of ever thicker coral beads, fastened by a large golden clasp. This often resembled round fashion brooches of the 1840s. On Zuid-Beveland in the late 19th-century, a second, non-functional clasp was sometimes added.

   Long periods of mourning were customary both in regional dress and in town in the 19th century. Special types of jewellery were worn, often made with black stones set in silver.

   With increasing sobriety in men’s fashion from c. 1800, regional men’s dress followed along, the amount of jewellery dwindling. Metal throat buttons and tie clasps remained longest. In Zeeland, ornamental trouser buttons survived, and even grew in size. The watch remained, first on a short chain from which small ornaments hung, later on a long chain draped across the stomach. For centuries, men in regional dress used to wear earrings. These remained, long after they had disappeared from fashionable wear.

   Many famous jewellery designs originated from France, but the best craftsmen in the 16th and 17th centuries were Dutch. Country people often bought jewellery at markets and fairs, or from travelling salesmen roaming the whole country. This probably explains why coral necklaces were worn everywhere. But there were also many local gold- and silversmiths.

   Filigree work and granulation are the decorative techniques most often used in regional jewellery. Favourite gems were coral, garnets, sometimes carnelian, pearls and diamonds. Jewellery made from hair and of Berlin iron were much rarer in regional dress than in fashion jewellery.

   After c. 1800, several types of regional dress, especially those influenced most by town fashion, gradually disappeared. Modern styles of jewellery such as art nouveau from c. 1900, were ignored in regional jewellery. In the late 20th century, some Dutch designers have been inspired by regional jewellery. In museums, much less fashionable jewellery than regional jewellery has been preserved.

   In conclusion, it can be said that regional jewellery was indeed influenced by town fashions, but it kept to a more conservative use of materials, and some designs developed independently. More research would be useful, although scarcity of good images from before c. 1800, and the loss of archives of provincial goldsmiths will be a problem.

8. Sigrid Ivo
   Visible or hidden
   The équipage, the frame bag and hanging pockets in fashionable and regional dress

   The silver équipage (later: chatelaine), the bag with a silver frame and hanging pockets worn under skirts are familiar accessories to everyone interested in regional dress. They are seen as typical for Dutch regional dress, but their relationship to fashion is closer and of far longer standing than one would suspect. Until well into the 18th century the équipage was a proper women’s attribute. In the 16th and early 17th centuries it was a fashionable accessory for the elite and an excellent means of showing off standing and affluence.

   During the 17th century a woman would wear a pouch, a purse, a knife case, a pomander, a bunch of keys and other things on her équipage. From the end of the 17th century onwards it was mainly used for sewing necessities while the frame bag replaced the pouch. From paintings, engravings, dolls’ houses, household inventories and publications from the 18th century it becomes clear that the équipage had become a common accessory for large parts of the population, also in certain types of regional dress.

   One would expect that, what with the decline of regional dress during the 19th century, équipages might also be seen only in museums. But the équipage was unexpectedly given a modern, fashionable successor: the chatelaine. Circa 1830 this term was first used to the hook with chains from which the accessories were hung. Thus it is incorrect to designate the équipages of the 17th and 18th centuries as chatelaines. At the start of the 20th century the handbag took over from the chatelaine as a means of carrying personal accessories.

   The Dutch frame bag had precursors as early as the late Middle Ages. Silver bag frames are common entries in inventories from the end of the 17th until well into the 19th century. At first the silver frame bag was worn by the elite, but just like the équipage it was adopted by large parts of the population, and in regional dress during the 18th century. In the 19th century fashionable variants of the frame bag were popular. One example is the chatelaine bag which, like the frame bag, was worn on a belt or on the waistband of a skirt. In regional dress women remained faithful to the silver frame bag well into the20th century. In fashionable dress it stayed popular into the 1930s. The frames were then made of tortoise shell, ivory or synthetic materials as well as silver and other metals. This development was not copied in regional dress.

   Hanging pockets are separate pockets, tied around the waist with a band. They were widely worn in the 18th century, when wide skirts were fashionable. Regional dress copied the pockets and they are still worn today. When circa 1800 skirts became narrow, the hanging pockets disappeared and women started carrying reticules: the first handbags. However, during the 19th century the hanging pockets returned to fashion together with the wide skirts. Later on they were still used as safety pouches for travelling. These days modern variants may be bought for the same purpose.

9. Madelief Hohé
   The christening dress of Marken
   The connection between regional and fashionable dress

   In the regional dress of the erstwhile island of Marken many elements of historical fashion have survived, in adult as well in children's dress. For instance in the Marken christening dress we find elements that can be traced to past fashions.

   In Nederlandsche Kleederdragten (1850-1857), Valentijn Bing and Jan Braet von Ueberfeldt recorded the christening dress of Marken: the child is wrapped in swaddling clothes covered with a white cambric christening cloth and a checked cloth with tassels. Later descriptions by the collectors A. Geerke and Cruys Voorbergh largely correspond with this.

   Until the end of the 18th century fashionable christening dress in the Netherlands consisted of different types of swaddling clothes, either coloured or white. The colour red was widely worn in the 17th century, but christening dress of other colours is also known. Towards the end of the 18th century the white christening robe became more general. In the 19th century it became the fashionable gown for infants about to be baptised.

   In regional dress however, the coloured swaddling clothes were used well into the 20th century. The Marken christening dress as described above is actually ‘antiquated fashionable dress’. We recognise this when comparing it to the christening dress depicted in the 1621 portrait of the so-called Dordrecht quadruplets. There is a similarity in the use of the schorteldoek (which covered the swaddles) and red blinker (strip of bright-coloured material). As happened in so many types of regional dress, fabrics like chintz and checked Indian cotton, which earlier on had had been in vogue as fashionable fabrics, remained popular in the Marken christening dress.

   The use of colour in christening dress does raise questions, since the Council of Trent (1545-1563) decreed that the colour in keeping with the sacrament of baptism was white. On the other hand, children's clothes in the 17th century were often bright-coloured, because lively colours were associated with youth. Christening dress may have followed this fashion. In the Marken christening dress amongst others baai was used, a woollen fabric which by definition was red. Baai was used simply when it was the best fabric for (part of) a garment, its red colour not being of primary importance.

   The study of the Marken christening dress demonstrates that the connection between regional and fashionable dress can give new and valuable insights into historical fashionable dress.

10. Ingrid Grunnill
    Regional costume in print
    Dutch traditional dress prints 1770-1870

    There are two well-known collections of traditional dress prints which appeared in the Netherlands. One is Nederlandsche kleederdragten (1850-1857) by Valentijn Bing and Jan Braet von Ueberfeldt. The other, published by Evert Maaskamp between 1803 and 1807, has a slightly different title per edition and is always referred to under the publisher's name.

    Maaskamp's first plates show city dwellers, some of them carrying a yoke. Apparently yokes fascinated foreign tourists, for Miss Semple has five people carrying them in her book The costume of the Netherlands, published in 1817. Another subject she kept coming back to is how wide the women's skirts were compared to current fashion.

    Maaskamp had several precursors in the 18th century, its most direct one being the collection of seven regional dress plates that appeared in the fashion magazine Kabinet van Mode en Smaak (Cabinet of Fashion and Taste) between 1791 and 1793. The types of dress depicted here would appear again in Maaskamp's book. His plates were widely copied, mostly abroad. Maaskamp concentrated on the northern provinces, but between 1825 and 1828 a collection of prints by Eeckhout and Madou published in Brussels, covered both the northern (the present-day Netherlands) and the southern provinces (modern-day Belgium). These prints too show both city and country dwellers.

    In 1828 the publishers Buffa and Sons issued a volume of lithographs after drawings by Hendrik Greeven which clearly show how great the influence of Maaskamp's book was. It also shows that Dutchwomen's skirts had finally become narrow.

    During the 1840s Buffa published an anonymous album containing lithographs of half-figures of women. Several of these appeared again in Bing and Braet's large and expensive work of the 1850s, which Buffa published in a cheaper edition. Other publishers pirated this work too.

    There were also publishers who commissioned artists to make original drawings for them. These were either used to illustrate stories or published as print collections. A perennially favourite subject was the orphan girl, because the orphans' uniforms preserved the dress of a bygone age.

    The romantic quest for the purest and most original form of Dutch dress was continued from the second half of the 17th until the end of the 19th century and beyond. Of course there was always the production of souvenir pictures for tourists too.

    Maaskamp was copied more often than Bing and Braet were half a century later, probably because by 1860 photographs had superseded prints. However, a reissue of the Bing and Braet book in the 1970s has made its pictures more widely available than Maaskamp's. This almost 200 years old collection with the original descriptions in Dutch, French and English certainly deserves a larger public.

11. Els de Baan
    Dressed up Dutch for a fancy dress party
    

    In the 1880s and 1890s people who had been invited to a fancy dress party could look for assistance in choosing the 'right' fancy dress in English handbooks, such as Ardern Holt's Fancy dress described, Or what to wear at fancy balls. Here we find hundreds of descriptions of characters and figures, occasionally with illustrations. National costumes receive a lot of attention and Dutch regional dress is regularly recommended as a good choice for fancy dress. The possibilities include a Dutch Fisher Boy, a Dutch Fisherman’s Wife from Scheveningen, a Dutch skating costume and even a windmill.

    In the 19th century the figure of the skipper was considered typically Dutch, followed closely by an interest in 17th-century dress as seen in Dutch portraits and genre scenes. On the one side there was an interest in historical dress, on the other side in regional dress. This same phenomenon may be seen in the United States between 1880 and 1920, when Americans showed a great interest in the Dutch aspects of their past.

    We also find a dichotomy in the Dutch fashion magazine De Gracieuse. For masquerade or carnival dress character costumes were considered very suitable, for unmasked fancy dress balls national costumes were seen as most fitting. Historical Dutch dress is never mentioned in this periodical though. Dutch regional dress does not appear until the early 20th century, as fancy dress for children. Shortly after that the windmill becomes popular as headgear for ladies.

    Naturally fancy dress costume had all kinds of fashionable and other era-related characteristics, sometimes accentuated by clothes from the wearer’s own wardrobe. The specific characteristics of Dutch regional dress were watered down more and more during the 19th century, or lost in an unrecognisable mishmash.

    Both in England and the Netherlands the fancy dress version of Dutch regional dress was simplified and standardised during the 1930s. On the whole it was used as a carnival costume for children. In Punch magazine it was treated in a disdainful fashion. The once positive distinction of appearing at a fancy dress party dressed up Dutch was totally devalued by then.

12. Carin Schnitger
    Black lace and wild colours
    Dutch regional dress used by designers and stylists

    If during World War Il the use of elements from regional dress may have been a sign of covert resistance, in later years fashion and regional dress were once again strictly separate.

    In the early 1970s peasant dress from all over the world, working and second-hand clothes were the darlings of international fashion. During the 1960s young people came to dominate the general look of fashion. In the wake of these trends Dutch regional dress was also incorporated into fashion: on the streets, but also by designers like Frank Govers.

    During the 1980s there was another revival of needlework such as knitting and embroidery. Needlework magazines such as Ariadne rediscovered Dutch regional dress with its beautiful materials and embroideries, and started using them for new purposes. Elsewhere these elements had been forgotten, just like the sometimes unexpected combinations of colours and patterns and the special parts of regional dress, some of which date back to the 17th-century. Some designers examined the old materials and needlework techniques in order to use them in their own work in a very disguised manner. The Dutch clothing brand Oilily very obviously used these influences over the years, especially in its autumn-winter collection of 1994-1995.

    Of late years there have only been isolated examples. With some regularity men's clothes take traditional fishermen's dress for a model. But for the most part regional dress is just used as a styling concept for fashion shoots and fashion festivals.

13. Hilde Cammel
    Scheveningen now
    An interview with Piet Spaans

    Piet Spaans, a writer on historical subjects specialising in the history of Scheveningen, has on three occasions conducted a census of the women still wearing Scheveningen dress on a daily basis. In 1986 their number was 460, in 1991 this had dwindled to 281 and on January 1st 2000 there were only 85 women still wearing Scheveningen dress. They all come from fishing families and their ages range between 67 and 97.

    The first two rounds of census were carried out by a large number of volunteers who knocked on all the doors in Scheveningen. The last census is based on several appeals in the media. This caused several women to come forward who lived elsewhere, but had remained faithful to the Scheveningen dress. All women who still dressed in the traditional jacket, skirt and apron, were included. Spaans chose not to take the oorijzer (the metal frame worn inside the cap) into consideration. The many women living in old peoples' homes hardly go out anymore and therefore have no reason to wear it. The outcome is that around 10 percent of the Scheveningen women still wear their local dress.

    The present-day dress consists of skirt, underskirt, jacket, apron, kerchief, shoulder mantle, oorijzer with cap and black stockings and shoes. On Sundays and for special occasions the women will wear their jewellery: a garnet necklace of several strands, a golden ‘heart pin’ to fasten the kerchief centre-front and earrings. The costume parts are the same in working, every-day, Sunday and mourning dress, only the colours and fabrics vary. In the old days cotton and fine woollen fabrics were used, nowadays mixed and synthetic fabrics are used too. Since circa 1960 some women have been wearing knitted woollen cardigans instead of jackets with kerchiefs. Handbags, wristwatches and woollen shawls worn over the shoulder mantle have become popular too.

    Many women abandoned the dress during World War Il. Inhabitants of Scheveningen were evacuated to places all over the country and it was often difficult to obtain the right fabrics and garments. After the war the fishing community opened up and many women were more and more inclined to wearing fashionable dress. Nearly all the women who still wear the costume already did so before the war.

    The Scheveningen Fisherwomen's Choir plays an important part in maintaining the dress. The choir performs in traditional Scheveningen costume and many of the women who still wear it on a daily basis will find something of the old community spirit here. The strong influence of the choir is evident, for instance in mourning dress. The black clothes do not fit in with the colourful image of the Fisherwomen's Choir and therefore mourning dress is now abandoned after a relatively short period.

    It will not be long before the Scheveningen dress dies out completely. It might be interesting to organise another census in in 5 years’ time.