Fashion, observed the essayist William Hazlitt, is gentility running away from vulgarity and afraid of being overtaken. That may have been true before the social revolutions of World War I, when fashion in clothes emphasised class distinctions. Today, it would be the other way round – fashion is vulgarity running away from gentility, certain that taste will have a hard time catching up.

Superb composition of Victorian mother and child. Photo by Giuseppe Lorenzo FormosaSuperb composition of Victorian mother and child. Photo by Giuseppe Lorenzo Formosa

In Victorian times, upper-crust women’s clothes, though never described as baroque, still sported some of the essential elements of baroque – extravagance, opulence, decoration for its own sake. 

A Victorian lady and gentlemen photographed in the 1860s by Leandro Preziosi. All images are from the author’s collections

A Victorian lady and gentlemen photographed in the 1860s by Leandro Preziosi. All images are from the author’s collections

Like baroque art, the main aim was to amaze, to shock, to mesmerise. The wearers seem to have had one subconscious message to convey: I know it’s difficult to admire me, won’t you at least admire my clothes (or my car, or my tattoos, or my Petrus, or my diamonds, or my boat)?

A 1890s couple. Photo by Alessandro CaruanaA 1890s couple. Photo by Alessandro Caruana

Both male and female fashion in Malta had by the 1850s become almost thoroughly cosmopolitan – the models to ape became either Parisian chic or British I-don’t-know-what-to-do-with-all-this-money flooding in from the colonies. A minority hung on to the austere indigenous faldetta, whose fortunes, however, declined slowly but adamantly up to its virtual extinction after World War II.

A Victorian lady in carnival or stage costume of a witch. Photo by Giuseppe Lorenzo FormosaA Victorian lady in carnival or stage costume of a witch. Photo by Giuseppe Lorenzo Formosa

Photography documents excellently the fashions of this period in Malta, mainly through the craze for portrait-making. It captures what the bourgeoisie and the moneyed classes wore, not what the working class fancied and could afford. No doubt, all the sitters trudged to the studios in their Sunday bests and it shows. 

A Victorian gentleman. Photo by Schembri & Zahra, VallettaA Victorian gentleman. Photo by Schembri & Zahra, Valletta

Leandro Preziosi, the doyen of Maltese portrait photography, wanted it known that his studio was not open to the lower orders of society. And no one raised an eyebrow at the effrontery of this matter-of-fact classism.

Two Victorian portraits by James Conroy, VallettaTwo Victorian portraits by James Conroy, Valletta

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