The Spanish in Clothes

The Museum of Costume / Museo del Traje
09/10/11 - Avenida de Juan de Herrera, 12

Fashion has been on my mind.  Stores have laid out their fall collections of rust-colored sweaters and gray wool topcoats, but summer lingers on. I have been surprised to see Madrileñas carrying traditional wooden fans to wave off the stifling afternoon heat—I thought fans went out of use in the nineteenth century.  It’s a modern-day incarnation of “casticismo”—fidelity to Spanish tradition in the face of foreign influences, as described in an exhibit at the Museum of Costume: In 1766, during the reign of Carlos III, a popular revolt (Motín de Esquilache) was sparked when the government banned men’s traditional Spanish capes and broad-brimmed hats.*

Another exhibit describes a tradition that started in the same decade, when the fashionable people of Madrid began to parade along the newly-created, broad avenue facing the Prado, displaying their fine carriages and clothes. (Today this street is called Paseo del Prado).  My family and I live near a large sports park encircled by a wide, brick path and a track for joggers.  While it’s safe to say that the good people of Madrid dress well, they dress their toddlers even better.  Every evening, entire families from my barrio turn out to enact their own version of the Paseo, accompanied by visions of cuteness in pastel booties and flower-sprigged cotton dresses, or light-blue oxford shirts and miniature khaki shorts. 

Goya's other Maja (with clothes)

The approach to the award-winning building of the Museum of Costume (constructed 1973) is unsettling—the central tower looms over the entry like a huge plinth that might topple forward at any moment.  The museum has examples of Spanish regional dress, as well as early toreador costumes, and the Spanish popular costume called majo (maja for women).  The original wooden interior of an 1847 Chocolate Bar called El Indio provides an authentic backdrop; the coffee mill is decorated with the figure of a South American Indian.

Fashion magazines first became popular in the nineteenth century, during the Romantic age (see previous post on the Museum of Romanticism).  When the same fashion drawings appeared in Paris, New York and Madrid, elegant dress became a standardized, international phenomenon.  Most of the clothing here comes from the 18th-20th centuries, including colorful men’s jackets, ridiculous hoops skirts, awkward bustles, torturous corsets, voluminous undergarments, and some shimmering, beaded dresses from the Años Locos (Roaring Twenties). The exhibit ends with samples of the most famous Spanish designers: Balenciaga, Fortuny, and Pedro Rodríguez. 

Accessories also feature: shoes, gloves, bags, jewels, hats, parasols. Apparently, a new parasol was needed to match or complement each outfit, and harmonize with the hat.  As with fans, women gestured with parasols to convey coded language no longer taught in modern schools of courtship—but ripe for revival as the ozone layer shrinks.  Of special interest is a delicate silk stocking from the eighteenth century, striped all the way up the leg with staves and musical notes that might actually create a melody.  One can only imagine the seduction in which it must have played a role.

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*The locals in 1766 were already restless due to the high price of food and other woes. Authorities said it was too easy to hide weapons under the voluminous capes. 

The Velvet Toilet: Romanticism in High Gear

Museum of Romanticism

The Museum of Romanticism / 
Museo del Romanticismo
09/03/11 - Calle de San Mateo, 13
While the Professor and progeny quietly slumbered (compensating for a 2 a.m. computer-screen kick-off of the TCU Horned Frogs v. the Baylor University Bears), I slipped out into the drizzling morning and headed south, to the grand, 18th-century mansion that houses the Museum of Romanticism. 

In my earlier life I was intimate with the English, Polish and Russian literary outcroppings of the Romantic Movement, and the prospect of a foray into Spanish Romanticism made me giddy with excitement.  Along the way I once again marveled at the ubiquity of contemporary fashion.  The young Spanish men ambling up Fuencarral Street in plaid Bermudas and graphic t-shirts easily could have been mistaken for undergraduates back home at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  The phenomenon of “Romanticism”—a cultural, literary, and intellectual movement of the nineteenth century—seems to have undergone a similar march across the continents. 

I highly recommend the booklet that visitors can borrow (with the 3 Euro price of admission).  It provides a competent summary of the main tenets of Romanticism, as well as a description of the paintings and objects in each room of the museum. According to the summary, Spanish Romanticism coincided with the reign of Queen Isabel II, 1833-68.  This places the Spanish movement a bit later on the continuum than its counterparts in other European countries (the roots of literary romanticism go back to the eighteenth century, in reaction to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution; even Russian writers were dabbling in romantic poetry and prose by the early 1820s).  Such ruminations are beside the point. A walk through the museum is enough to evoke a sensibility of romanticism, an approach to museum-going that true romantics can applaud.

A King's toilet

The gorgeous rooms (ante, drawing, ball, dining, smoking, billiards, children’s, study, music, bed and chapel) contain period furniture and decorative objects, including ceramics, jewelry, fans, toys, clocks, musical instruments, and the pièce de résistance: King Fernando VII’s lavatory—a huge toilet made of mahogany and velvet (pictured).  Among the children’s toys are tiny ivory miniatures no child today would be allowed to touch, with a chess table and game pieces smaller than black ants.  In the smoking room I could picture Lord Byron wearing his oriental turban, reclining on the divan against the paisley wallpaper, recounting his conquests of the married ladies of Seville.*   Indeed, the final exhibit, a scale model of the mansion, has tiny windows through which one can see virtual images of people dining, dancing, and preparing to leave in a coach. (You can see the entire museum in 5 minutes by visiting this page).

Paintings include Goya’s “Saint Gregory the Great;” formal portraits of Isabel II (only three years old when she ascended the throne) and other dignitaries; landscapes; miniatures; and examples of the Andalusian “Costumbrista” school of painting.  These paintings are often set in taverns, inns, or mountain passes, and idealize smugglers, stage coach robbers, and folk in regional Spanish dress.  Two interesting paintings by Leonardo Alenza mock the romantic penchant to idealize suicide: “Satire of the Romantic Suicide,” and “Satire of the Romantic Lover’s Suicide,” both c. 1839.

The Great Ballroom is awash in pink damask.  At a glance, I confirmed that the set of chairs we inherited from the Professor’s grandmother demonstrated this exact sensibility, as filtered through American post-WWII enthusiasm for Old Europe.  Without their ballroom, those chairs in our house never reached the sublime.  Resisting translation, they went to Goodwill, to die or be reborn.

*Byron bragged to his own mother about his encounters with Spanish ladies in a letter sent from Gibraltar dated August 11, 1809.  “I beg leave to observe that Intrigue here is the business of life, when a woman marries she throws off all restraint, but I believe their conduct is chaste enough before.”  In Spain in Mind: An Anthology, ed. Alice Leccese Powers, NY: Vintage, 2007, 28.