Craze and Shame: Rubber Clothing during the Nineteenth Century in Paris, London, and New York City

Abstract

During the nineteenth century, in France, the UK, and the USA, there was a rapid development of ready-to-wear clothing and of its consumption. In this context, one phenomenon allows us to understand more fully the overall changes in attitudes toward fashion, clothing, and the body: the craze for rubber clothing from the beginning of the 1840s. This material appeared to be miraculous, and proved to be equally useful in underwear and in rainwear. Manufacturers dreamt about seamless garments and about totally adjustable pieces of clothing. Moreover, rubber clothing was thought of as hygienic, as it could be easily cleaned. From the 1850s to the late 1870s, rubber cloth conquered both public streets and intimate private life. But rubber was not only used in clothing. From the beginning, rubber was a material not only for outdoor clothes but also for orthopedics and for the enhancement of comfort. Mackintosh (UK), Goodyear and Roxbury India Rubber (USA), and Hutchinson and Rattier & Guibal (France) were the major manufacturers that produced rubber shoes, raincoats, collars, and cuffs, while orthopedists made corsets in order to straighten bodies, as well as hernial bandages, pessaries, belts against onanism, and other medical appliances. Rubber cloth hugged the intimate bourgeois body: corsets, garters, socks, and braces initially, and in the early 1880s, rubber condoms. In this way, rubber became the material of unproductive sexual pleasure. Over time, rubber clothing came to be regarded as shameful and disturbing. Around 1890, after the unprecedented craze for rubber, the bourgeoisie gave up their rubber clothes in public life.