To illustrate a previous feature, I had dipped into my accumulations of antique photographs. I wanted to document what people in Malta wore during the Victorian age, which obligingly cut off almost exactly at the turn of the century. 

A group photo with musicians, c. 1910.

I will repeat the exercise for the Edwardian era to World War I, roughly the years 1901 to 1920.

Prince George, later king, is in the picture above.

Cutting-edge local fashion witnessed a slow shift from Victorian opulence to a newer simplicity and greater rationality and practicality. Though still leaning to ostentation, women gradually started distancing themselves from cartwheel hats which looked like trophies from the Fur and Feather show or like flower arrangements kidnapped from centrepieces on a monarch’s dinner table. 

Also, there were fewer unwieldy crinolines – reinforced hospital tents hanging from their hips. 

The austerity of a catastrophic world war further shrank the space available for vanity and frivolity. The S-shape silhouette constrained by corsets replaced the hour-glass imperative of Victorian trend-setters. Tailored suits started gaining ground.

A lady wearing early Edwardian attire. Photo: The Grand Studio, Valletta

The traditional għonnella was still an alternative elegant fallback for Maltese women. Photo by Antonio Micallef

Except for very formal occasions, men, though still compulsively hatted, began discarding the top hat for the bowler hat and, later still, for the straw boater, the ubiquitous paglietta. The Maltese called top hats tomna, a curious word which means both a hat and a measure. Just like in antique Italian, staio stands for both top hat and a measure. 

Sophistication in a Cospicua studio, c. 1900. Photo by Paul Fenech

"The austerity of a catastrophic world war further shrank the space available for vanity and frivolity"

By now, both male and female fashion in Malta had become almost thoroughly cosmopolitan, virtually indistinguishable from current and mainstream European vogues. 

Difficult what to make of this image photographed c.1905 by the studio P. Aquilina of Strada Stretta, Valletta.

The traditional Maltese faldetta or għonnella struggled valiantly for survival, irrespective of social class, perhaps a subconsciously patriotic statement of resistance to threats of denationalisation and imperial globalisation.

A family photo taken in the early 1900s, by Salvatore Lorenzo Cassar. All images are from the author's collection