So you thought Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" was scandalous.
Ms. Jackson-If-You're-Nasty didn't have anything on the women of Baltimore in the early 1800s.
Take Betsy Patterson Bonaparte - wife of Napoleon's brother. Her clothes apparently were so racy, they caught the attention of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, who wrote to his son in 1804:
"We hear strange reports of Madame Bonaparte's dress on public occasion, I might rather say, of her no dress, for if the reports are not much exaggerated, she goes to public assemblies nearly naked, or so thinly covered that all her charms are exposed, and little left to the imagination."
What's in the Wardrobe? Getting Dressed in Early Maryland, which opened yesterday at the Homewood House Museum, is a temporary exhibit that highlights both men's and women's fashions during the Federal era.
Although it focuses on the somewhat more reserved family members of Charles Carroll Jr. - son of Declaration of Independence signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton - the exhibit also points to other style-setters in early Maryland society, and uses letters, magazines and resource books to illuminate what fashion looked like 200 years ago.
"Part of what I think is interesting about this exhibition is that some people kind of mistakenly believe that if things were prudish in the Victorian era, that it must have been more so prior to that," says Catherine Rogers Arthur, Homewood's museum curator. "But it's actually the opposite. Things are very cyclical."
Those famous high collars, long sleeves and long, full skirts of the later Victorian era are in many ways a reaction to the extreme fashions of the Federal era, Arthur says.
In today's sweatsuits and jeans society, clothing may seem a trivial subject to study for some people, but back then, "textiles were among the most expensive objects that the people would own," Arthur says, pointing to the fine silks, linens, cashmere, cotton muslin and calico the Carrolls and others imported from Europe. "More expensive even than some of their furniture."
By examining the clothing of the Carrolls and other early Marylanders, visitors to the museum will learn a little more about the way this state's foremothers and forefathers thought, what they believed about themselves and who they were.
