Top Hat, White Tie and Tails

In the 1970s I wore cheesecloth shirts and loons. I don't now. Looking back I shouldn't have then. In the film Beau Brummel, the one with Stewart Granger and Elizabeth Taylor, Beau caused a bit of a sensation when he appeared at court wearing full-length trousers rather than knee breeches and stockings. Watching the Pinoso Half Marathon it struck me that the competitors were wearing clothes that would have been outlandish at best, and scandalous at worst, not so long ago. Fashions change as they always have. If not I'd be dressed like Francis Drake or Somerset Maughan and Inditex and Primark would be customerless.

Despite this constant change lots and lots of events in Spain feature something that we tend to call traditional dress. I was reminded of this when we went to see the start of a romería in Yecla the other day. There was no traditional costume there but it was something traditional, the repetitive, apparently unchanging ritual of rural, and not so rural, Spain.

One of my favourite events in Pinoso is the flower offering at the end of the town's fiestas. More than once, in the crowd, watching the procession pass, some local standing next to me has explained why the invitees from Yecla or Alicante are easy to spot because they wear this and that which aren't a bit like the things worn by the people from Pinoso. To me the fiesta clothing of Monóvar, Pinoso or Algueña is very similar but apparently not so. The Monovarians or Algueñans have this sort of skirt and that sort of shirt whereas we have that sort of skirt and this sort of shirt. 

Go to Valencia for the springtime Fallas festival and watch hundreds and thousands of women wearing a bodice or corset which matches the material of the skirt accompanied by a shawl worn across the shoulders and knotted at the waist - a costume inspired in the clothes that people actually wore in the street, presumably rich people, in the 18th and 19th centuries. Oh, and expect to hear the tune Valencia more than once!

I wanted to add a few lines about the outfits worn for the midsummer San Juan festival in Alicante. I was looking for something short and snappy, like the description that Google gave me for the Falleras (The women in the Valencia Fallas). Instead I found that there were pages and pages of rules about how people should turn out. For instance for women, the mantilla, the head covering, has to be starched and with seven folds to raise the mantilla above the head whilst the hair has to be worn in a sort of bun with the hair well back from the face and with orange blossom in the hair on the left side. I presume that there is some sort of policing of these rules to stop some wild spirit from wearing a carnation in their loose hair. In fact, thinking of it, I've actually seen people being barred from the Easter processions in Cartagena when their gloves didn't have the correct type of buttons.

I wonder if this is going to remain frozen in time or if the women in the flower offerings in the 23rd Century (if we get there) will be wearing shorts and string tops and the men some sort of baggy sports clothing with a funny haircut as a reminder of the traditional costume of the 21st Century?