At Genesee Country Village, menswear’s evolution showcased in ‘Sporting Life’
Rare view of who wore the pants
MUMFORD — Ever wonder about the origins of the ubiquitous baseball cap? The overcoat and sport coat? Or how and why checks, plaids and stripes became menswear standards?
Never gave it much thought, you say? Well, you are not alone.
For all of the attention given to women’s fashion in print, television and cyberspace, relatively little is paid — or ever was — to what men wear and how their clothing has evolved over time, says Patricia M. Tice, curator of the John L. Wehle Art Gallery and “The Sporting Life,” a new exhibit at Genesee Country Village & Museum.
She says the display in the gallery, which combines sportswear worn primarily by Western New York males during the 19th century with art from that era, offers an unusual departure from the customary focus on women’s garb reflected in museum collections and shows.
“Wedding dresses, we’ve got by the ton. Christening gowns we don’t need. But menswear is very hard to obtain,” Tice said.
She nevertheless managed to pull together dozens of examples of men’s clothing, all more than a century old and most in remarkably good condition, by plumbing the collections of several Western New York museums.
In nearly every instance, individual clothing items or ensembles are juxtaposed with paintings, lithographs or sculptures collected by Wehle, the late Rochester brewing magnate and Genesee Country Village founder, that depict sporting scenes with men wearing much the same stuff.
The word “sport” is broadly defined here as any diversion “requiring skill, physical exertion, competition, and rules governing that competition.”
“Until fairly recently,” the script notes, “many sports were pursuits of the privileged who alone had the leisure time and wealth to engage in them. Horse racing was the ‘sport of kings’; the hunt belonged to landed gentry.”
The Wehle collection, featuring numerous hunting and racing scenes, provided a good starting point for the story.
Works from England show how clothing adapted for outerwear from the 1750s through the 1800s gained acceptance first as sportswear became everyday and formalwear. The cutaway or tailcoat, for example, evolved from the traditional frock coat.
When a gentleman mounted a horse, the fabric of the frock coat bunched clumsily on the rider’s lap. So tailors cut away bulky fabric from the coat front, allowing the long tails to drape stylishly on either side of the seated rider.
Similarly, the overcoat evolved from the heavy, masculine- looking caped coats worn by British coachmen to ward off the elements — replacing the less protective capes and cloaks favored by gentlemen in earlier times.
Thoroughbred jockeys are credited with adopting the short-rimmed riding hat that preceded the baseball cap in order to better see the track ahead.
Europeans and Americans eagerly followed the simpler British styles, “and a new silhouette for men was established,” the exhibit demonstrates.
Some of those styles included more distinctive patterns and brighter colors than were seen when men’s fashion went through a somber black coat-and- stovepipe hat period, after which, Tice observed, “it took a long time to swing back to colorful clothing.”
For example, Nelson Cook’s 1853 oil portrait of Millard Powers Fillmore shows the president’s son ready to go hunting, rifle at his side, shot pouch slung across his chest. He is wearing not buckskin, but a tartan plaid coat with plain trousers.
The exhibition, which will continue until the museum closes for the season in the fall, was mounted with a grant from the New York State Council on the Humanities.
The 19th century living-history museum comprises 68 furnished buildings on 700 acres in Monroe County, about 50 miles east of Buffalo.
An adult all-attractions day pass to Genesee Country Village costs $15. Admission to the Wehle Art Gallery only is $5.
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