Back Issues: Tracing fancy dress from the enchanting to the cringey

Children love to dress up and pretend to be someone else.

Who they choose to be – or are persuaded to be – mirrors the world around them.

In Palmerston North, and elsewhere, fancy dress has long been a feature of social life for people of all ages.

Generations of residents have paraded their desires, fantasies, jokes and cruelties in costumes created from diverse and evolving materials.

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Fancy dress balls were a remarkably popular form of entertainment – initially for adults and then increasingly for children – from the late 19th century and to the postwar period.

But how did adults and children dress up in the century before Black Widow and Obi-Wan Kenobi came into being?

There are telling examples among a list of characters at a ball held at the Foresters’ Hall on The Square in October 1878.

Mayor George Snelson presented himself as Uncle Tom alongside Louisa Snelson as Night.

A male guest attended in blackface as Brudder Bones from minstrelsy, while a female guest aspired to be a houri (heavenly virgin) with cosmic promise and beautiful eyes.

Crossing ethnic boundaries was a big feature of fancy dress at that time and, if we think of Pocahontas costumes, clearly continues in various guises today.

A Mary Queen of Scots was seen on the arm of a Robin Hood, and a bold British tar and a jolly beggar competed for the attention of a Swiss peasant girl (actually a married woman).

Dressing up in the national dress of others – not only Swiss, but also French, Albanian and Turkish – was a prominent part of the fantasy.

None of the mostly English, Irish and Scottish migrants at the ball chose to dress as Asian and Pacific peoples.

That was to begin with the next generation who went to balls dressed up as Japanese and Hawaiian, and also as Māori.

Forms of ‘’othering’’ ranged from cartoonish disrespect to genuine admiration.

There were occasionally Māori warriors, Daughters of Erin, and Highland laddies and lassies at local fancy dress balls in customary clothing of their own.

Extremes of social class offered tempting character types, from dressing up lavishly as Spanish queens to dressing down roughly as swagmen.

Fancy dress balls were held for charitable and community purposes.

Poster balls were common fundraisers in the early 20th century, where attendees either wore poster advertisements for particular goods or the goods themselves.

A poster and fancy dress ball was held at The Theatre Royal in 1901 to fund a pavilion for the Palmerston North Bowling Club.

Costumes featured posters for everyday products, such as Morepork Bacon, Bee Jam, Carfax Tea, Swan’s Beer and Club Coffee.

Local businesses, including Dayton Bikes, Payne’s Boot Shop and The Silver Grid, a smoked fish and oyster eatery, were also represented through fancy dress.

During the 20th century, parades for the city’s jubilees gave residents a chance to dress up in another form of fancy dress: historic fashion.

At Palmerston North’s jubilees of 1927, 1937 and 1952 many participants reimagined the local past as dark-suited men with top hats and bustle-dressed women with bonnets.

In 1927 five female staff from C M Ross Co Ltd approximated a timeline of styles from the 1870s to the 1920s for the department store’s float.

Traditional forms of fancy dress were also a feature of the 50th jubilee.

On the Bergers’ paints float a boy wore a bicorne hat to become a sea captain, while another was a classic court jester; though the adults’ costumes are not as easy to figure out.

The ‘’fancy costume’’ competition held that year had a particular appeal for girls, who entered as harlequins and pierrettes, as well as personifications of many nations.

Fancy dress balls were a fixture at many local schools for a large part of the 20th century.

Many children, especially girls, drew inspiration from the natural world by representing flowers, berries, butterflies, moths, chickens, cats and fish of various kinds.

Children frequently dressed up as adults to become bakers, firefighters, nurses and shepherds, among many others.

Nursery rhyme and other book characters, such as Little Red Riding Hood and Peter Pan, were popular.

Considerable effort and skill could go into creating effective outfits and some local examples have endured.

Alice Hunt’s father, metal worker and jeweller James Fleck, made a Britannia costume that she wore to the Hokowhitu School ball in 1935. This item was recently donated to Te Manawa.

The outfit consists of four main parts: a helmet of beaten brass with a plume of plaited red, white and blue wool; front and back armour plates from beaten brass, a brass trident, and a tin shield painted with a red, white and blue Union Jack.

Alice recalled:”At the ball the outfit was admired by all. I wore it for the grand march, then my father took out the connecting pins, detached the belt and it all came to pieces. I was able to dance in comfort in my long white satin dress.’’

In postwar classrooms children made costumes from paper, paint, wool, sacking, feathers and shells during lessons on indigenous Australians and North Americans.

Unsurprisingly, none of these highly ephemeral and inaccurate creations are represented in Te Manawa’s collection.

Many of the characters that inspired children in the 20th century may be unrecognisable to today’s children, yet certain, mostly mythical and legendary, creatures have endured.

Fairies have had a very long innings. Three fairies – Marguerite Nash, Carol Gilliland and Susan Martin – allegedly ‘’stole the show’’ at the Linton School fancy dress party in 1959.

Pirates have also endured.

More recently, mass-market dress-up costumes have coexisted with creations inspired by wearable art and arts recycling movements.

Fiona McKergow is a professional historian and editor the New Zealand Journal of Public History.