Some trivial question 0_0

[pevampire.livejournal.com]

I know this is really trivial (and somehow stupid...) question but ever since I started studying European history
(at school) I've always wondered...especially for 18th century......

aren't those three piece suits er.....you know......hot? for summer? 
Did they wear the same shirt+waistcoat+frock coat in summers??? or were there some kind of summer suits...?
Those clothes seem really er....tight 

Most of the Asian costumes, with their billowing sleeves, aren't THAT hot........but.........

Comments

[loremaula.livejournal.com]

Well, designs were more or less the same. To show too much skin was considered inmoral. In Summer,they used different kind of fabrics and lighter colors. Women use to have fans.
Take into account that in 18th. Century, wether in Europa was considerably colder than today.

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

oh global warming....i forgot about that...but still it wasn't that dramatic change (or so i think) to me 30 degrees is as hot as 33 degrees (celcius) but then, Europe in summer is not that humid so it might be different

men didn't have fans? 0_0

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Europe has a pretty temperate climate, too... I spent last July in Bordeaux during what everyone assured me was an intolerable heat wave, which was about the same temperature as my hometown (Washington, DC) is from May to September, only less humid. Paris at the beginning of August was hovering around 20 degrees centigrade, and the region around Arras was downright chilly, especially in the mornings.

So yeah, 18th century clothing in pre-global-warming Europe was probably not as outrageous as it sounds in less temperate parts of the world. A little uncomfortable at the height of summer, maybe, but not enough to justify going about in one's shirtsleeves. What I want to know is how people settled Virginia without running around naked all summer.

;_;

[pevampire.livejournal.com]

I guess it's pretty humid in Virginia too....it's ruthlessly humid in Seoul (helped by high buildings that keep the heat in!!!)

I guess it's the humidity. Most Asian countries are humid in summer. Maybe difference between tightness comes from there.

Re: ;_;

[10littlebullets.livejournal.com]

Heh. Most of the eastern part of America is ruthlessly hot and humid in summer, but it's a lot worse in the South (starting around Virginia). Step out of the house and it's like walking into a steam bath.

I don't remember whether the Bordeaux heat wave was humid or dry heat, just that the temperatures were hovering around 30˚ and this was considered unusually hot.

[lucilla-1789.livejournal.com]

In old pictures you can see thick snow in Paris, people ice-skating in Amsterdam... yep, it used to be colder. But in the end, clothing is not about comfortability (why would anyone wear high heels?) and it was out of the question to wear revealing clothes outside. Even in 19th century, when evening dresses were often sleeweless, arms were always covered outside. People wore parasols and didn't sunbath in direct sunlight.

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

Yeah I think I heard of ice-skating in Amsterdam....0_0 I think nearly everyone around the world before 20th century was determined to cover as much as possible.......

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Yes, weather was considerably colder than now at that time.
My mother self remembers that summers about 40-50 years ago were much more fresher and less wet in Sicily (and Sicily isn't Paris). Forests and lack of concrete buildings, low concentration of people in huge towns and the absence of industrial pollution made summer even more accettable. But when hot weather came, if also for a few days it came seriously.
During the famous (and unhappy !) days of Thermidor 1794 the weather was unbearably hot and wet in Paris. Humidity surrounded the city as a thick suffocating cloud, the sews smelt horribly and all the garbage everywhere was awfully rotten (-> just imagine it in a place where the hygienic rules which we use to respect nowadays didn't exist at all - and Paris was one of the biggest towns in Europe at that age). I don't know how high the temperature exactly was - but also if it was only around 30° (and very wet) clothes which were fashionable for that age couldn't be comfortable anyway.
Robespierre and Saint-Just wore their most elegant clothes: Robespierre his blue dress he had been made for the Festival of the Supreme Being and Saint-Just a brand new chamois one.
Your question isn't stupid at all: weather conditions influence strongly human behaviour. So just think to all those people worn for overwork, made crazy for paranoia and fear, hungry because they hadn't eat anything for 2 days if not some bread, always wearing tight dresses... and all that weather. Yes, this was Thermidor.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Ah- you were posting at the same time as me! It's nearly midnight and 18 degrees and stormy now, but it's still uncomfortable in a long-sleeved top! late 18thc coats (jackets/suits) had really tight sleeves, and the shirts underneath wide sleeves, so a lot of fabric - it must have been really sticky!

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

yes. 18th century clothing seems like anything but comfortable especially in er...wet....weather.
Ah well....people do say that high humidity influences people make them cranky and stuff. Maybe that's why demonstrations get more violent in hot, wet weather.

Re: 0_0

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I think the French now have really long holidays in summer - 6 weeks or something - so the cities empty when they are at their hottest. I think the government allows the long holidays to avoid another revolution!

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[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

Hehehehehe :D :D :D

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

A lot of accounts say that the temperature around the 9th and 10th Thermidor (today and yesterday, the 27th and 28th) was unusually hot, but another source I've read quotes the Paris Observatory and Meteorological reports that it was only around 18-20 degrees, cloudy with sunny spells and a morning shower on the 9th, cloudy, misty (?) with a weak sun, stormy but not raining, 20 degrees, on the 10th.
(I'm in England, where it's 18 degrees with a thunderstorm and powerful rain tonight - it's almost midnight - so it would be warm enough at 18 to trigger the sudden rainstorm reported on the night of the 9th-10th!)
I've also read an account that says, by the time Robespierre was carried wounded to the ante-room of the CPS on the morning of 10th Thermidor, he had lost his hat...but the first thing he did on sitting up was to pull his stockings up and ask for clean linen (as in, shirt and maybe cravat, which he presumably wasn't given): immaculate to the last!

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

hm....both accounts seem to be saying that it was wet, which seems bad enough.

Oh by the way, I've seen portraits of Satin-Just with a hat but somehow I think I've never seen Robespierre with hat. Anyway he seems like opposite of me....my sense of fashion and tidiness is reproachable...but then you start not caring about cloaths and stuff when you all you wear is either school uniform or pajama..

Re: 0_0

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I think you would have been expected to carry a hat, even if you didn't wear it. When wigs for men became fashionable in the Seventeenth century, the wigs got so high on top that hats had to be carried under the arms, which meant bending the brim. Hats had been broad-brimmed and flat before that, but the fashion then became to curl the brims up at one side, then two, then three - the tricorn that was popular throughout the Eighteenth century (as worn by Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean!). Robespierre is carrying a tricorn under his arm in one painting. He got really pissed off on one occasion when someone tried to put a 'bonnet rouge' on him. When people stopped wearing powdered curled wigs, the top hat came in, which you wore rather than carried (and in Britain wig powder was taxed in the 1790's,which ended the fashion for wigs very quickly!). Saint-Just didn't wear a wig or powder, and wore a top hat. (I sometimes wear a top hat, and it makes your hair very flat!)

[fatimahcrossin.livejournal.com]

18° in England now ? Think I'm joining you !
Here it's about 38° and wet, wet, wet, wet like a steambath....

I think we would never know what the temperature was on those days - but I like to imagine it quite hot though: you understand, it could give some further explaination to all that mess XD

Hehe, Robespierre cool 'til the end and Saint-Just crying beside him. Oh I'd so so love to know what they said one each other then !

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's been so cold here this summer!
I'm actually surprised the Revolutionaries lasted as long as they did - they must have been absolutely exhausted and living on adrenaline and caffeine and alcohol - that plus the heat! I know that in London the wealthy would leave the city in the summer months but that would have been impossible for the Revolutionary government in Paris.

[citoyenneclark.livejournal.com]

don't forget the sugar! Apparently, most of paris lived off coffee and sugar, That's how they kept their energy up inbetween hunting for bread. Food riots didn't really get bad until sugar prices 5x. Which leads to the very scary question...What would Collot d'Herbois been like on Red Bull? :)

[wolfshadow713.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine a large part of it is that people in the eighteenth century would have been used to dressing rather heavily (by modern standards) in the warm weather. If you had some modern people wear eighteenth century garb in comprable weather conditions, they would probably have a harder time of it. That said, I imagine the middle of summer wasn't always terribly pleasant.