As the loyalty can be asserted in many facets, this paper will explore the display of loyalty in the context of dress and appearance. It will examine the meanings encoded in mourning dress and adornment. The function of clothing was often used for more than its utilitarian purpose. A vast array of special mourning attire had developed over the centuries, which was worn by the bereaved, particularly widows. Mourning clothes were an outward display of inner feelings. It was customary for families to go through elaborate rituals to commemorate their deceased as the Victorians in particular, expressed their eternal loyalty towards their spouses through their mourning attire. Victorian widows wore black garb for the rest of their lives as an indication of their devotion, fidelity and faithfulness for their deceased spouses. The color black had been regarded as an official mourning color from the fourteenth century. Mourning dress for men in the nineteenth-century was simple in contrast to women’s. Mourning cloaks and trailing hat weepers were replaced by a black crepe armband, worn with an ordinary black suit and black tie or with normal clothing. By 1860, mourning cloaks were only worn by the funeral undertakers.
On the other hand, Victorian women in mourning wore black dresses, black mourning gloves and long black mourning veils with accessories such as handkerchiefs, weepers, fans, parasols, umbrellas, aprons, pin-cushions and jewelry. The working-classes appeared in their dark colored Sunday-Best clothing at funerals and servants in the wealthy households wore special mourning attire and accessories during the family’s mourning.
The influence of royalty on mourning attire from the mid-nineteenth century was significant. Much of this can be attributed to Queen Victoria and her own personal grieving for her consort Prince Albert. After the Prince’s death in 1861, the Queen wore black dresses and different versions of black or white widows’ weeds for the remaining forty years of her life. It was Queen Victoria who ‘fanned the cult of mourning and spread it to all classes of society’. During 1850-1890, the etiquette of mourning and the importance of special mourning attire became highly significant in British social history as many of Queen Victoria’s colonial subjects followed her example.
References:
Cunnington, P. and Lucas, C. 1972, Costume for Births, Marriages and Deaths, A & C Black, London.
Konig, R. 1973, The Restless Image: A Sociology of Fashion, Allen and Unwin Ltd, London
Lee, S. 1903, Queen Victoria’s Biography, Smith & Elder, London.
Squire, G. 1974, Dress Art and Society 1560-1970, Studio Vista, London.
Taylor, L. 1983, Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History, George, Allen and Unwin, London.