The Fashion Historian

It's Textile Month here on The Fashion Historian! Each week this month we'll be bringing you a textile themed post. This week, in Part 1 of a two-part series, learn about how the art of non-Western cultures influenced the explosion of American textile design in the 1920s!

Safari silk titled "Kando" or "Samburu" by Belding-Heminway Co., 1930. Newark Museum, New Jersey. This print depicts African warriors standing behind shields.

Pomegranate illustration from Dr. Otto Wilhelm Thomé's Flora von Deutschland, Österreich und der Schweiz, 1885. Image from http://www.biolib.de/.

The pomegranate (Punica granatum) is a fruit-bearing shrub, originating from the Middle East and Mediterranean Basin. Throughout history, the pomegranate tree has been used for a variety of purposes. It's bark has been used to cure leather, it's rind and flowers have been used as textile dye, and it's fruit has been prized for its delicious taste and medicinal properties. Images of the pomegranate have permeated visual culture since ancient times. In Ancient Greek mythology, for example, the pomegranate was the food eaten by the dead in the underworld. In the world of fashion history, the pomegranate has had an extraordinary impact on textiles.

Silk from the 15th or 16th century. Museo Civico d'Arte Antica.

This textile shows the so-called "pomegranate motif". This stylized design of a central floral image surrounded by wavy stems has its origins in the Ottoman Empire. Under the reign of Süleyman I, also known as Süleyman the Magnificent (r. 1520-66), the arts flourished, and the textile design of a flowering plant such as carnations, blooming palmettes or pomegranates surrounded by a lattice pattern became extremely popular. These textiles made their way across trade routs to Western Europe where they were prized for their elegant patterns and luxurious materials. These motifs were also adopted by Western European artisans, and dominate textile design of the Renaissance.

Length of brocaded velvet, late 15th century, Italian (Venice). The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Today, it's hard to understand the extreme value textiles held in the centuries before mass mechanized production. Of course in the pre-industrial period, everything was made by hand. Creating textiles with complex designs such as the pomegranate motif took an enormous amount time and incredibly skilled artisans. Furthermore, the rich colors and expensive materials present in many surviving textiles with the pomegranate motif added additional cost. Red and black dyes were among the most expensive dyes on the market. And many textiles incorporated metal-wrapped threads. To create metal-wrapped threads, thin strips of actual gold or silver would be wrapped around a strand of thread (usually silk). When this thread was woven into a fabric, the resulting textile would literally be made of silver or gold. The above textile is a silk velvet with metal-wrapped threads. The rich red color, complex pattern, and use of metal threads would have made this piece extraordinarily expensive.

Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and her son Giovanni, by Bronzino, c. 1514. The Uffizi.

Textiles were among the most expensive items a person could buy. Textiles with the pomegranate motif were used for clothing (as can be seen in the portraits above and below), furnishing, and ecclesiastical garments. When looking at the art of the period, textiles with the pomegranate motif show up in a large number of portraits and religious art. Their use was not just because the textiles provide a visually interesting pattern. As this post shows, the use of these textiles was also a potent expression of wealth and power.

Portrait of a Girl, by Antonio del Pollaiuolo, c. 1460-65. Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.

Furthermore, the prevalence of the pomegranate motif in visual culture attests to the connections between cultures all over the globe. Too often people tend to think of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as a time when cultures were isolated, and global interactions were not present. But the pomegranate motif is just one piece of evidence that proves that a global exchange of ideas and cultures was alive and well.

The Maasai peoples are pastoral nomads, living in the Serengeti Plains. Their wealth, livelihood, and religion all revolve around cattle. The Maasai have also cleverly adapted to increasing globalization. They charge a fee for any photographs taken of them, using Western curiosity about traditional African cultures to their advantage.


Maasai people in their shukas.

The main garment worn by the Maasai is the shuka, which is a basic piece of fabric that can be worn in a variety of ways, depending on the personal style of the wearer. It was initially made out of animal skins, mostly cowhide but never elephant skin, but cotton is now the main material. The fabric is rubbed with color or dye to make it red, becoming a sort of camouflage with the red dirt of that part of Africa. In the dry grass plains the shuka can be white to camouflage with the grain.


Maasai warriors.

Maasai life is predicated by age sets. For men there are three stages. Childhood, warriorhood, and elderhood. A boy reaches warriorhood around the age of 15, undergoing a series of rituals called almal lengipaata. The warriorhood is the most fabulous time of a mans life, and lasts for about fifteen to twenty years. A young man in warriorhood can be recognized by his appearance. The hair is grown out and braided in very intricate patterns, sometimes using as much as 16 strands at a time. They wear earrings and bracelets, as well as beaded necklaces that hang down the front and back of their bodies. They also wear symbols to show off their achievements. The errap is worn around the top part of the arm, made of leather with coils of metal wire in the front and the back, and shows that this man has fought and killed another man. The Olawaru is a lions mane headdress, meant to show that the man has killed a lion. The enkuwaru is a headdress made of ostrich plumes, meant to show that the man has fought a lion but the lion survived. The body is decorated with white limestone chalk in intricate non-symbolic patterns, and the hair is colored red with ochre and animal fat.


Elaborately braided hair colored with ochre.

The transition from warriorhood to elderhood takes place during a ceremony called the eunoto, which can be extremely traumatic because all of the mans carefully tended hair is shaved off by his mother. The first man to have his head shaved wears a leather cape called an engilaa alamal. The head is then covered in ochre. The elders are expected to take a wife and have children and take on serious responsibilities within the tribe. He will carry a fly whisk made from an elephant tail as a symbol of authority.


Maasai women.

There are only two stages of life for women, childhood and adulthood. A woman enters adulthood after she has undergone circumcision. Mothers of warriors wear surutia, coiled metal medallions. If her son is the first to get his head shaved during the eunoto ceremony, he wears his mothers surutia and it becomes loosurutia. Married women can also wear elongated leather earrings. But the main distinguishing feature for women is their elaborate beaded collars, which are higher in front and lower in back. The collars are made by the women themselves, and thus become more elaborate as women grow and acquire more skill. Heads are shaved to show off the beaded collars, which move around when the women dance.

Beads in particular have some meaning to the Maasai, with red beads having a connection to blood, blue beads having a connection to the heavens and the Gods, and green beads having a connection to prosperity, fertility of the land, and peace. All other colors are purely decorative.