4 The Gender of Modernity and Ottoman Dress
4.3 The Spread of Mass Produced Dress in the Ottoman Empire
The term mass-fashion-system can be applied to the phenomenon of modern dress.
It differs from traditional dress, in which clothes are produced not by the means of modern mass production as well as its form of consumption. It is produced in higher numbers and consumed in high rates. Under the mass-fashion-system, single pieces of dress are not worn until they lose their function (through use), but are rather changed when they become outdated. In the Ottoman Empire a mass-fashion-system had been established in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, making ready-made clothes after the latest European fashions available in European warehouses.137 The mass-fashion-system mass-fashion-system brought forth the polarization of gendered appearance in the Ottoman Empire just as it did in Europe, as Charlotte Jirousek has argued. She shows that while Ottoman basic garments were the same for men and women, those in Europe were cut entirely differently.138 Men wore first a hose and later trouser, while women wore skirts without bifurcated undergarments of any sort, whereas Ottoman dress foresaw the wearing of a şalvar as a basic undergarment for everyone. Both Ottoman men and women wore a similar style of layered garments with similar pieces combined.
134 See Ibid., 132.
135 See Ibid., 133.
136 Ibid., 133.
137 Charlotte Jirousek, ‘The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire’, in Consumption Studies and the History of the Ottoman Empire, 1550 - 1922: An Introduction, ed. Donald Quataert (Albany, NY: State Univ. of New York Press, 2000), 201–41.
138 Ibid. 234, and Ibid. 217.
4 The Gender of Modernity and Ottoman Dress
Another basic difference between Ottoman and European clothes, according to Jirousek, was that in Europe from the fourteenth century onwards clothes had been tailored so as to reveal or stress the contours of the body and individual fit.139 In contrast, Ottoman clothes were shaped in a way to conceal the body. The Ottoman dress consisted of a basic shirt and baggy pant combined with layered coats, vest, jackets, sashes and headgear.140 According to Jirousek this basic style was not subject to major changes for centuries since the sixteenth century, even though traditional dress, as she terms is, was never static either, but differed substantially in the rate of change to mass-fashion. Yet, as I think it is important to emphasize, basic items of modern mass fashion also remain beyond changing fashions, as can best be seen in the permanence of the men's standard suit. Fashion thereby is not just a taste-driven change but more crucially a socio-economic system. Thus, with the transition from the traditional to the mass-fashion system, following Jirousek's terminology, the meaning of dress as well as its form changed. A significant example of a change in the fashion system in relation to social relations is the gendered meaning of dress. With the introduction of the mass-fashion-system gendered appearances became polarized. In the Ottoman Empire this began in the eighteenth century, i.e. with the altered cut of the antari, its neckline becoming wide and deep and its upper part tighter. It was combined with a kind of extremely large headgear, and the silhouette thus produced resembled European bodies and headgear of the same period, as Jirousek demonstrates.141
In the 1860s, the istanbulin as an Ottoman version of the frock coat appeared and spread especially among the civil officials. It had a shortened, popped collar and was, with variations, in use until the Republican period, while single-breasted frock coats with short turned town collars were still in use. Parallel to this, according to Nureddin Sevin, jacket and trousers became en vogue. Regarding European fashion, the models of Parisian and London tailors at that time appeared in Istanbul after five or six years. Sevin also discusses multi-colored redingots, which were popular during this period.142
139 Jirousek, ‘The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire,’ 218; and Jirousek, ‘Ottoman Influences in Western Dress.’
140 Jirousek, ‘The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire,’ 210; and Scarce,
‘Principles of Ottoman Costume’.
141 Jirousek, ‘The Transition to Mass Fashion System Dress in the Later Ottoman Empire,’ 217.
142 See Nureddin Sevin, Onüç Asırlık Türk Kiyâfet Târihine bir Bakış, 1. bs., Kültür Bakanlığı Yayınları / Kültür Eserleri Dizisi, Türkei Kültür Bakanlığı. - Ankara, 1976- 1195 (Ankara: Kültür Bakanlığı yayınları, 1991).
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Koçu defines setire, setre, setri as “a term used for coats of European shape.”143 That means setre designates different kinds of jacket, such as a frock coat or sports jacket, cut in a European style. The redingot in contrast was the frock coat which became fashionable in the Ottoman Empire during the reign of Abdülhamid II. It was loosely cut and closed with two buttons before the breast,144 a second row of buttons just for embellishment. Its color was mostly black, sometimes grey, and it was combined with trousers of the same color and cloth.145 According to Koçu the gray redingot was exclusively worn by very rich Westernized men, thus denoting extravagance. The denotation of the wearing of gray as extravagant points to the adoption of late nineteenth century sober styles which made the slightest variation a marker of divergence. The redingot was combined with a vest and shirt. The istanbulin, introduced through the reign of Abülmecid and worn also during Adülaziz' reign, was completely closed with buttons on the front. Koçu argues that it was specifically invented for those older Ottoman statesmen who had trouble getting used to the uncomfortable starched shirts with their stiff collars. Thus, the istanbulin with its closed front, was invented to prevent them from the wearing of starched shirts and collars as well as the necktie (boyunbaği). 146
In accordance with global trends of modern male fashion, during the Hamidian period Ottoman men's dress became more sober and less decorated, and European fashion had become widely established among the elites. This was also indicated by the abandoning of the istanbulin-style frock coat in favor of the redingot, which had closer resemblance to those worn in Europe: “The normal European frock coat (redingot), worn with vest, starched shirt, and necktie, took over […].”147
143 In the originial: “Avrupa kesimi ceket karşılığına kullanılmış bir isimdir,” Reşat Ekrem Koçu, Türk Giyim, Kuşam ve Süslenme Sözlüğü, Sümerbank Kültür Yayınları 1 (Ankara: Başnur Matbaası, 1967), 204.
144“göğüsü iki düğme ile iklenip kapanır,” Ibid., 196. See entrence Redingot in Ibid., 196-197.
145 Koçu, Türk Giyim, Kuşam ve Süslenme Sözlüğü, 196.
146 Ibid., 134.
147 Carter V. Findley, Ottoman Civil Officialdom: A Social History (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 1989), 213. On the constitutional period see Kemal H. Karpat, ‘Transformation of the Ottoman State’, in The Politics of Modern Turkey: Critical Issues in Modern Politics, ed. Ali Çarkoğlu and William M. Hale, vol. 1 (London u.a.: Routledge, 2008), 77-80.
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