Top 5 Turquerie Costumes in Frock Flicks

As many of you know, in my day job I’m an academic librarian. That means that part of my work involves research, and as I specialize in history and, to a lesser degree, art, my research involves fashion history, both styles and social context. For many years I have been working on a research project about Turkish influence on Western European fashion in the 18th century, and that research has just been published as a book called Dressing à la Turque: Ottoman Influence on French Fashion, 1670-1800. It’s just been released and is available to order from the publisher, Amazon, and many other booksellers.

The book summarizes much of the existing research on what historians call “turquerie,” or Turkish/Ottoman-focused Orientalism, and demonstrates how the overwhelming interest in Ottoman dress strongly influenced fashion from the late 17th century through the early 19th. The particular focus is on fashion of the later 18th century, when gowns including the robes à la polonaise, circassienne, and turque were modeled on Turkish styles and huge popular. The book traces the connections between these styles and Ottoman dress and delves into their social and cultural context.

For a taste of this research and in honor of my book’s release, let’s look at five (secretly six) times turquerie has been done well in frock flicks!

 

Amadeus (1984)

I know you’re all immediately thinking of the scene in this film when a singer tells composer Salieri, “It’s Turkish, darling!” And indeed, many elements incorporated into high fashion referenced Ottoman dress, including:

Where did all these references come from? Let’s look at this 18th-century example of Turkish dress as seen in a stage costume, which was probably the biggest influencer in terms of French people having an idea of Ottoman dress:

We’ll be looking at real Ottoman dress in a moment, so we can compare what they’ve gotten right and wrong, but for now notice the layering (including the short-sleeved outer kaftan), tassels, and fringe.

But there are many other, less obvious, high quality takes on Turkish-influenced French dress on screen:

 

Shadow of the Guillotine (1956)

Honestly, a majority of 18th-century fashions were based on “Middle Eastern” dress via the dressing gown, which became the manteau/mantua, robe volante/sacque, and robe à la française/sack. However, in the late 1760s a new fashion was introduced called the robe à la polonaise, and I have yet to see as good an interpretation as in this French film about Marie-Antoinette:

The robe à la polonaise was PROBABLY inspired by the Polish kontusz, a kaftan-like garment worn by Polish men that was heavily influenced by Ottoman dress. But what they’re really referencing are two things:

The “cutaway” front, which closes at the neckline and then slopes away towards the waist:

That’s likely a reference to the Ottoman fashion for wearing loose outer kaftans that closed at the neck and then hung open in that same inverted V shape:

The Shadow gown features this cutaway line:

Meanwhile, the 18th-century polonaise was cut without a waist seam, likely inspired by Turkish and Polish kaftans cut similarly, and the back of the gown was lifted up into three swags, likely inspired by Ottoman tents:

The lack of waist seam is frequently overlooked, so I give the film props for cutting this polonaise correctly:

 

Farewell, My Queen (2012)

Another incredibly popular late-18th-century fashion that was inspired by Ottoman dress was the lévite. The gown itself is very complicated, because it went through multiple stylistic iterations, many of which are very distinct from each other, and honestly you just gotta read the book to get the full story. But it almost always had a shawl collar and sash:

It was inspired by a stage costume from Racine’s biblical play “Athalie,” specifically the costumes worn by “levite” characters who formed the chorus. There’s no record of what that specific costume looked like, but most biblical plays were costumed in Ottoman/Middle Eastern dress as that was considered to be “ancient”; and we do know the lead character was so costumed:

I’m pretty sure the gown in the painting on the left is a lévite based on the shawl collar and sash; it’s trimmed “à la harpie,” with contrast fabric along the skirt openings and petticoat in serrated teeth:

This film fucks up a LOT of the costuming, so color me impressed that they made this very nice reproduction of the Tischbein painting for Marie-Antoinette:

 

That Night of Varennes (1982) / Marie Antoinette (2006)

As mentioned above, that pesky lévite went through several transformations. There’s only three gowns that I know of that may be extant lévites, and one of them lives at Tirelli Costumi:

It’s not well displayed — I think the bodice front edges would fold back more and be continuous with the collar. It’s patterned in Patterns of Fashion 6, where you can see that the back is cut continuously without waist seam and pleated with multiple teeny tiny vertical pleats.

Because Tirelli is a costume production shop, this gown has been copied twice — first in That Night of Varennes (review coming very soon!):

Another version of the gown was made for Marie Antoinette, and I’m pretty sure it’s a different garment as the bodice front waistline is different and there’s no embroidery:

 

Sense and Sensibility (1995)

By the 1780s, English and then Revolutionary fashions predominated. But Ottoman/Turkish themes didn’t leave French fashion entirely — they remained a strong theme in gowns, outerwear, and headwear.

One thing you see particularly in the 1790s are over-robes that combine elements of the robe à la francaise’s pleats and the robes à la polonaise, circassienne, turque, and lévite’s one-piece (i.e., no waist seam) cut:

So it makes me happy to see these kind of pleated over-robes in Sense and Sensibility, even if they seem to wear them more as outerwear than as part of (say) an evening ensemble as well:

 

Want to know more about how Turkish dress influenced French fashion from the late 17th through the early 19th centuries? Want to know more about the fashions described here and why they were considered Ottoman? Check out my book!