Neo-grec Directory-era fashion from 1795-1799 was nostalgia for a re-imagined antiquity. Nostalgia in fashion is a look to the past, for inspiration for the present. This is similiar to the current nostalgia that has taken over popular culture.There are no new styles. Nostalgia is also a sign of cultural decline. A culture which looks to the past, and or has suffered recent trauma, as 9/11 America, or post Revolutionary France.
In America, people for the first time, don't think the future will be better for their children and grandchildren. Nostalgia is amnesia, for people wanting to forget the present, by focusing on a safer past.
The execution of Robespierre on July 27th 1794, initiated for Parisians not only the end of the Reign of Terror, but also the beginning of what was hoped would be a phase of relative peace. The Jacobin Reign of Terror, where people in the name of Democracy used terror to silence all political opposition. The use of terror to enforce political beliefs has it's origins in The French Revolution and the ascent of Democracy. This is the ugly side of Democracy; the politicization of culture. Mob Democracy turned into Totalitarian state sponsored genocide; nazism in Germany, and Stalinism in Russia.This peace, was a mask to forget the Terror, where tens of thousands of royalists, and supporters of the monarchy were executed, and or put to the gullotine. Nostalgia became a form of active forgetting, and the booming commercial industries of Paris made it easy to believe that “the suffering which had come to an end had never happened at all”. Nostalgia as amnesia.
The French women of the Directory looked back to classical antiquity, just like we look back to the past when America was at its zenith, the 50's and 60's. The women of the French Directory looked back to a world that was free of the new social conventions and strife of the day. It was not Judeo-Christian. Judeo-Christian morality is still the world view today in western society, like it was in Directory France circa 1796. Today we call ourselves a secular nation, but our morality is still Judeo-Christian. As an example, the miniseries Rome on HBO several years ago dramatized subjects like incest, homosexuality, and gender issues (which elicit such debate today), very casually, and matter of fact, without contemporary Bourgeois moralizing. For instance, there was no concept of "gay" in antiquity. People were not identified by their sexual orientation. They showed men having sexual relations, but as in ancient times this wasn't differentiated with heterosexual sex. Sex was sex. Period. Whether it was between a man, and a woman, or a man, and a man, there wasn't any distinction like there is today. Incest, is treated, not as a criminal act, or a pathology,necessarily,but as a human behavior that is a fact of the human condition. Why politicize it? Democracy politicized culture. Democracy vulgarized culture, by politicizing morality. The series presented these issues as they would have been addressed at the time, not in a revisionist way, which they usually are. People in antiquity didn't share our world view. Contrawise, what people during the time of the French Directory were shocked over, was the complete abandonment of biblical teaching that the human body is sinful. "Costumes which revealed the shape, and were transparent, were desired because it was widely believed that the natural body was the focal point of antique art".
- Furthermore, the names of famous women from antiquity were used to refer to such revealing dresses: robes à la Diane, à la Minerve, à la Galatée, à la Vestale, à l’Omphale, etc. Fashion is dictated by the moral world view of the day.
- The celebratory atmosphere following the "Reign of Terror" gave way to a number of frivolous yet gruesome fashions and pastimes, one of which was the Victim's Ball. In order to qualify for admittance in one of these sought after soirees one had to to be a close relative or spouse of one who had lost their life to the guillotine. Invitations were so coveted that papers proving your right to attend had to be shown at the door, and some were even known to forge this certificate in their eagerness. All the rage at these grand balls was to have the hair cut high up off the neck, in imitation of "le toilette du condamne" where the victim's hair is cut so as not to impede the efficiency of the blade. Tres chic!
The French women of the Directory in post Robespierre France, considered nudity, as something beautiful, to be admired, as in antiquity. The ancient Greeks worshipped the human body, as a work of Art, to be worshipped, and admired.The human body is to be worshipped, not reviled and hidden. Pornography didn't exist. What is pornographic isn't the human body, it is the manner in which it is exploited by a culturally debased concept of nudity. In the pic inserted, a woman is shown in the a la grec style, of the day, in some fabulous parisian society lady's salon. Notice the complete disregard for modesty. The side of the dress, is completely exposed. This would elicit shock today in any cocktail party. Show up at your next cocktail party in a dress a la Minerve, and if someone asks, say your dressed like a Merveilleuse from the French Directory period, and impress your friends!
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