Decadent Bodies on display in popular performance: A ‘decadent’ dalliance with desire?: The ‘immoral’ costume conventions shaping the bodies of late 19th century Principal Boys

‘Decadent Bodies on display in popular performance’ – Conference panel with Professor Emerita Viv Gardner, University of Manchester and Dr Kate Holmes, University of Exeter, Decadent Bodies, Goldsmiths University of London, 28-29th July 2022.

Fashionable dress played a crucial role in communicating respectability throughout the nineteenth, and into the early twentieth century. Social conventions dictated which part of the female form should – and should not – be displayed in public. Furthermore, as Sos Eltis has argued, ‘the late Victorian actress was still vulnerable to age-old assumptions of sexual looseness, to the common association of actress and prostitute.’ Yet different codes of conduct operated within the increasingly lavish Music Halls operating across London and in numerous cities outside the capital. Within their walls, female performers donned costumes deliberately designed to expose parts of their body that they ordinarily took great care to conceal. Reflecting on the moral concerns which such decadent and revealing attire would inevitably have provoked in an off-stage environment, this paper considers why and how such costuming conventions became an accepted and desirable element of popular performance during this period. Specific attention will be paid to the stylised and transgressive ensembles adopted by Principal Boys: Hyper-feminine garments – cut to showcase bust, hips and legs – and yet created for roles in which ‘women’ masqueraded as ‘men.’ What messages did these costuming conventions communicate regarding both the ‘principles’ of the Principal Boys who wore them – and what might they suggest about the socio-cultural attitudes of the audiences who flocked to watch them perform?