Mummies are Called upon to Contribute to Fashion: Pre-Tutankhamun Egyptian Revivalism in Dress

Abstract

Since 2007, Karin J. Bohleke has served as the director of the Fashion Archives and Museum of Shippensburg University. She holds a Ph.D. in French language and literature from Yale University; she also spent two seasons as an Egyptology reference librarian at the Epigraphic Survey of the University of Chicago in Luxor, Egypt. Her research interests focus on the nineteenth century and include fashion, early photography, the dissemination of French fashions in the United States, and women’s travel accounts of journeys to Egypt. Together with her husband, she actively teaches nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century social dance.The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 instantly inspired “Egyptomania” garments and accessories for women. However, “Tutmania” flappers had numerous precedents throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This paper correlates surges in Egyptomania styles with contemporary events in Egypt, archaeology, and Egyptology. Archaeological discoveries and international tours of artifacts sparked fresh waves of Egyptianizing fashions. Socio-political events, such as Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt, also stimulated fashions. Ancient Egypt inspired motifs, textiles, color, and even personality—in the form of Cleopatra—that have passed from one civilization to another, crossed the East–West divide, and traveled through millennia. This article analyzes attestations of Egyptomania fashions scattered throughout European and American fashion magazines before the 1920s to establish the trends beyond jewelry, painted portraits, and operatic costumes.