As attendees of the Met Gala stalked the stairs of the Metropolitan Museum of Art earlier this week, fashion gawkers around the world gathered around laptops and cellphone screens to marvel at the excess of jewels, creative costuming and perhaps most importantly, the trends. Last year it was all about sheer mesh and corsets; a few years back it was metallics and lace. To go by Monday night’s display, grapefruit-size rosettes are likely headed to a clothing rack near you.
We’re living in an era when fads are able to move through the global population with unprecedented swiftness, and sometimes it seems like we’re living in a time of unprecedented absurdity. But while the first condition can be blamed on our digital age, the second is only a mirage. Human fashion has always been delightfully strange and deeply ridiculous. When have people not wanted to stun and to charm? To own weird little tchotchkes and hoard shiny shells? A love of glitter and flair is embedded in the human heart.
Before we called ourselves consumers, we were just plain old sensualists, seeking to smell good, dress cute and show off. Much has changed, but the desire for pretty things? That stays exactly the same. Here are 10 bygone beauties that once captured hearts the world over.
Nautilus chalices
During the baroque period (ie the 1600s) nautilus cups were briefly and wildly fashionable in shell-obsessed Europe. While I like to imagine noble tables set with fanciful chalices brimming with wine, it’s unlikely that these were used on a daily basis. More often, a shell goblet was given a place of honor in a curio cabinet – at the time, many scientifically minded Europeans believed that one could see the mysteries and wonders of the universe in pearly, spiraled chambers.
Berlin iron jewelry
Black iron jewelry had a real moment in the sun during the Georgian period. Now a sought-after collector’s item, iron jewelry signified wartime sacrifice: Germans were encouraged to give all their silver and gold jewelry to the government to help fund the war effort against Napoleon.
Sea silk
Some believe that sea silk – a fragile fabric woven from the byssus threads that mussels use to adhere themselves to rocks – was the historic basis for the fabled golden fleece. It may not look like much in photos, but when the sun shines on sea silk, it glows and glitters. While there aren’t many surviving examples of this weird fabric, which may date back to 300BC (or earlier), there are a few people working with it today, including Florida beachcomber Joyce Matthys, whose work is now at the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum.
Carnations
Although we’re used to seeing carnations dyed ludicrous hues and wrapped in cellophane, these flowers were once considered heavenly treasures. The species name, dianthus, comes from ancient Greece, where they were used in ceremonial crowns, and means “divine flower” or “flower of the gods”. One legend has it that Diana, virginal goddess of the hunt, came across a sexy shepherd and, “in order not to be seduced”, ripped out his eyes and threw them to the ground. The bloody eyeballs grew into pink flowers with frilly petals and stiff stems. Carnations have also been used historically to treat fevers and stomach aches, and in the 17th century they were a popular cut flower for still life paintings, since they have a nice long shelf life.
Alexandrian glass
Glass is a wonderful thing on its own, but so often in history its popularity was connected to its ability to mimic other materials. Over the centuries, glass has been made to look like porcelain, metal, jewels and rock crystal. That’s supposedly why, some 2,000 years ago, Romans went wild for so-called “Alexandrian glass” (which, as its name suggests, most likely came from Egypt) and its hyper-clear surface. While some glassmakers were focused on making the most colorless wares ever, others were adding gold, uranium and cobalt to their molten silica to produce red, green and blue.
Hair jewelry and wreaths
For many hundreds of years, people have been using strands of hair, plucked from the heads of the living and woven into clothes or jewelry, to symbolize love, fidelity, loss, ownership or domination. Some of these hair pieces are beautiful tributes, while others are actually quite gnarly. During the Victorian era, hair jewelry was elevated to a full-on art form. While some of these pieces were made by professionals, several historic homes in Maine boast their own wreaths, made by members of the household with strands of silver, yellow, red and brown hair – an entire generation of women, dead, transformed into flowers.
Aphrodite of Knidos
Gone, but perhaps not that forgotten, the Aphrodite of Knidos is a much mimicked marble sculpture that once stood in the Greek port town of Knidos (now in modern-day Turkey). The thing that people tend to get wrong about this famous nude is that, at the time, it wasn’t glittery marble white. The stone was likely treated with wax, oil and paint. In the darkness of the temple, her flesh looked so convincingly soft that apparently one worshiper decided to try to couple with the goddess, leaving a small mark on her thigh that tour guides pointed out for centuries afterwards. Sadly, marble statuary is something of a forgotten beauty in itself, for few artists work in this classic yet prohibitively expensive medium today.
Chinese bronze mirrors
It’s hard to date the birth of the polished bronze mirror in ancient China, but beautifully decorated, highly ornate pieces have been found in places of honor in Han dynasty tombs, dating back to the second century BC. They shared many of the same patterns and motifs as Chinese silk fashions – birds, dragons, flowers and zodiac signs among them. Archeologists believe these weren’t just decorative pieces or useful tools for checking one’s makeup; it’s also very likely they were considered magical, either as protective objects or portals to another world.
Mounted teapots and cups
Back before online shopping made buying wares from abroad a one-click process, Europeans and Americans had little access to the fantastic porcelain that comes from kaolin clay and thousands of years of innovation. When a piece of semitranslucent, bright white and river blue porcelain did make it down the silk road and into the hands of dish-crazy westerners, it was a cause to celebrate. In the 15th century, people began the practice of mounting dishware in silver, gold or bronze cages, designed to both protect the piece and enhance its beauty. Ironically, many of the mounted ceramic pieces weren’t all that special by Chinese standards, but to western nobles, they were regarded as more precious than gold.
Pomander balls
These intricate little pieces of jewelry weren’t just for looking sharp; their lace-like metalwork was open to allow wafts of scent to emit from their interior chambers. Back in the late middle ages, European royalty would stuff their pomander balls with precious, aromatic substances, like the oily secretion of a small Asian deer or bits of a waxy ambergris vomited up by a whale. Other popular pomander fillers included rose petals, lavender, orange peels and rosemary.
Katy Kelleher is the author of The Ugly History of Beautiful Things: Essays on Desire and Consumption
