Saturday, April 18, 2015

“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.
Float with Debutante Duchess
harked back to the sheer spectacle of Hollywood epics featuring Roman triumphs, or something similar.

            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.


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.
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.
"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.
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. 

Jewish Yemenite Traditional Bride
            The Algerian wedding outfits are, of course status symbols, and speak of family pride, as are the Fiesta gowns, but they are in no way restricted to a tiny in group.  A bride may wear more or less of the pearls and other accouterments, but she is as splendid as the family budget will allow.

            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.

Sitges Flower Carpet under construction
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.


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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