“Bring on the Virgins!”
Some years ago, at a parade during San Antonio’s Fiesta, featuring, among other groups,
debutantes on floats, a dear friend of mine with a couple of margaritas under
her belt stood up and yelled, as the first Royal hove into view: “Bring on the
Virgins!”
Her remark
had nothing to do with the state of virtue of these nice Texas girls, but
rather The debs, dressed
in heavily beaded gowns with a detachable train in full display, were embedded
into their setting in such a way that they were
the floats. Their attire, encrusted with
thousands of beads, rhinestones, gold thread all on sumptuous fabrics of
velvet, satin, gauze and other metallic materials, glittered almost blindingly
in the sunlight. The other floats from
schools and organizations in the parade paled in comparison.
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| Float with Debutante Duchess |
When I
first came here, more than 40 years ago, I was mystified. What is
this? The trains all had designs and
pictures on them—did this mean something?
Over the years, I learned a lot about it, especially by becoming friends
with Michaele Haynes, former curator of costumes at the Witte Museum, who also
wrote a very enlightening book on the topic, entitled Dressing Up Duchesses.
I refer
y’all, gentle readers, to Michaele’s excellent text, and other numerous books
written over the years about Fiesta and its genesis (I even wrote one about its
19th century origins myself, entitled San Antonio on Parade). But
I have to say that as far as Duchesses, debutantes presented by a local social
organization called the Order of the Alamo goes, I still find it mysterious,
not to say bizarre.
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| Eda Kampmann, Queen #1 - 1909 |
Anywhere
else, debutantes, girls of a certain social class, attaining the age when they
could look for suitable dynastic mates, were presented to polite society in
white ball gowns. I guess our Royal Court may be taken as a Texas-size riff on
this theme. From its establishment
(1909), the duchesses were presented at a private ball, but also appeared in
the Battle of Flowers, the oldest of several festival parades. At their Coronation, they had to make a court
bow, modeled on the one for court presentations in England, and had long trains,
embellished with emblems of their “Court’s” theme.
Originally these were simple, but over
the years the themes became more elaborate—incomprehensively elaborate, often
harking back to Great Empires in Days of Yore.
The trains became longer and heavier, and became a forum for an
allegorical theme for each duchess. To
give but one example of this, I can show you the Duchess of the Mastery of
Michelangelo, from the 2011 Court of Timeless Treasures. I’ve been teaching about Michelangelo all of
my professional life, and can’t see for the life of me what any of those curvy
designs have to do with anything in his work, except for the wheeled pavement
shape of the Piazza del Campidoglio, that wasn’t actually completed until the
era of Mussolini. But it’s so out of
context! The only way you could get some idea of content would be to attend the
Coronation ceremony and listen to the Master of Ceremonies describe it.
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| Duchess of the Mastery of Michelangelo, 2011 |
The girls
wear the robes four times, first at the coronation, then two private parties
and for the public at large, in the parade, where they appear like fashion
tableaux until someone calls out “show us your shoes,” when they demonstrate
their humanity by revealing, beneath their finery, flip flops, cowboy boots,
running shoes or Bullwinkle bedroom slippers.
Nobody on the street has any idea of the train’s “allegory” except that
it sparkles a lot.
The
coronation is their right of passage, when the debs drag 20+ pounds of beaded
train up a long runway, unassisted, to the stage, where they make a full bow to
the floor to their duke, then to be placed on a pedestal onstage until the
spectacle is over. The trains of Queen
and Princess are longer and even heavier.
It’s all
over the top. The English court stopped
presentations and court bows in 1958, but our local girls perform a bow worthy
of an appearance before the Sultan of Turkey or the King of Siam in their
heydays. With all the weight they carry,
they could easily qualify for Marine boot-camp.
The whole ensemble costs thousands and thousands of dollars, and after
it’s all over they either contribute it to a local museum, or store it in a box
under their beds forevermore. To this
proletarian, it’s akin to buying a top-of-the-line, highly personalized
Harley-Davidson, getting to ride it around for four days, and then leaving it
in the garage for the rest of your life, except that there is no way to recycle
a fiesta gown and train, whose allegorical content has no meaning for 99.9% of
the world population.
I am not
sure why all of this preoccupies me; maybe it’s because as an art historian the
question of Iconography is so important.
And I love bearded bling—one of my favorite movies is the 1980 version
of Flash Gordon. I’m sure that the Order of the Alamo members
are equally, if not more lavish with their charitable donations as they are in
sinking it into Fiesta finery.
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| "Flash Gordon" (1980) |
Perhaps
it’s because I want all that ornamentation to have some meaning and a life
beyond one event, unless it’s purposely ephemeral. One of the most elaborate instances of
occasion finery I’ve ever seen is brides’ costumes from Tlemcin, Algeria. The Tlemcin wedding finery is famous enough
to make it a UNESCO world heritage item.
Actually, the brides wear seven separate dresses during the nuptuals,
including a white bridal dress, but the showstopper is her one she wears when
she leaves her parents’ home for the wedding.
It consists of a golden dress, an embroidered caftan over it, a conical
headdress and crown, earrings, and a hanging frontlet of rows and rows of seed
pearls, punctuated by jeweled inserts, plus other scarves, amulets and jewelry,
hennaed hands and special rose-and white circles painted on her cheeks. A gold veil covers the entire outfit as she
makes the journey, which is removed after her arrival.
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| Bride, Groom and Family, Tlemcin, 2014 |
There are a
whole series of craftsmen-and-women who work on various parts of this costume,
and presumably enough weddings for them to make a comfortable income. Each article of the clothing embodies a long
tradition, with fixed significance whose origins date back to Andalusia before
the 15th century, and Berber tribal practice. Some of the more elaborate pieces may descend
through families, and those of more modest means may rent or borrow them.
Here
everyone attending knows the significance of all the finery; it is an intense
shared experience. In addition, women
who are already married wear their outfits again for other family weddings, so
they can be used many times. Very
sumptuous they are, and they mark a lifetime event.
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| Jewish Yemenite Traditional Bride |
Ornamental
and sumptuous bridal attire is found over a good part of the world; in old
traditional societies, it might be the one time that women were allowed public
display, but I leave
such analysis to anthropologists.
On almost
an opposite tack, the generally symmetrical designs covering the trapezoidal
Duchess train has a strange echo in festival street decorations for the Corpus
Christi Festival in Sitges, Spain. It is
a festival I know well, since my ex-in-laws had a wonderful hotel in Sitges
(they are long gone, but the Hotel Romàntic still exists, now owned by the
employees), and I actually had a chance to participate in it in the late
1970’s.
Businesses
along the town’s narrow streets can claim a piece of a street that fronts their
establishment, or sometimes several will cooperate and do the whole block. The decorations consist of colorful carpets
with designs made of flower petals, with fill-ins in brown seeds and green
grass blades. Someone is designated to fashion
the design. Early in the morning, the
streets are cleared of traffic, and participants rush to obtain boxes of
flowers (often varicolored carnations, but also other blooms), and they quickly
reduce them into boxes of petals. These
are strewn within the various areas designated in the design. Prizes are given for the best designs, and
the carpets remain on the streets until late afternoon, when a procession of
the Eucharist, accompanied by dancing, “Giants,”—colossal mannequins costumed as kings and queens---with
hidden dancers inside them. The
procession effectively destroys the carpets, which are then swept up and
disposed of in the evening.
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| Sitges Flower Carpet under construction |
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| Flower carpet - Sitges |
I imagine
that the idea came up in the past with the idea of the procession of the sacred
host over something fragrant, like a bed of roses, but now it’s taken on a secularized
life of its own, to the delight of visitors, who flock to Sitges and are
willing to squeeze themselves along the narrow sidewalks to view the carpets.
The
large-scale designs often have complex symmetrical swirls that, when viewed
from the beginning of the street, resemble those on the debutantes’
trains. In both instances, the designs
are sometimes pictorial, but in the case of the Sitges carpets, these are
usually easily recognized logos of popular culture, and sometimes, just
whimsical designs; our modest one was a series of diagonal stripes of red,
yellow and green—not a prizewinner, but we all had a good time making it.
The
contrast between the coronation robes and the street carpets is apparent not
only in meanings of content, but also in that the former are only worn a few
times, but preserved, normally unseen, while the latter is really ephemeral,
and doesn’t last the day.
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| Fiesta-Goer and his Hat |
The thing
about San Antonio’s Fiesta is that it lasts somewhat longer than the one in
Sitges, and like the Catalan seaside town, it has returned to its populist
origins, now encompasses hundreds of events throughout the city. There are oodles of “Kings” and “Queens” of
various organizations on hand, usually dressed in uniforms or nice dresses,
with crowns. Anyone can decorate and
wear an elaborate had the size of a smart car with unlimited glitter, beads and
artificial flowers, and anyone can fill his or her chest with myriad medals,
which can be purchased for a very modest price from numerous organizations—or you
can make your own. The frozen splendor
of the Coronation once dominated Fiesta week, back when debutantes maybe
mattered more. Now, except for the debs on the floats showing their flipflops,
and Bullwinkle bedroom slippers, it’s just a punctuation mark amongst
everyone’s fun.
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Michaele Haynes' terrific book on the Fiesta Duchesses is, Dressing Up Duchesses, N. Y and London, 1998.
My book on 19th century festivals in San Antonio and the precursors of fiesta is: San Antonio on Parade, Texas A & M University Press, College Station, 2003.
A peek at the 2011 Coronation Ceremony. Can you decipher the allegories?
Two videos on Tlemcin bridal dresses are at (the second one has three parts):
Two videos from the 2011 Corpus festival in Sitges (the second of them shows the parade when the carpets are smashed as well as their building):
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