Fancy Dress began as an event that provided students the opportunity to dress up in fancy costumes and escape the daily stressors of a college student. Even today, to most attendees, Fancy Dress is boiled down to an excuse to dress up, find a date, and eat out. While this sentiment has been true since Fancy Dress’ beginnings, many overlook the societal and cultural nuances and complexities with which the tradition is burdened.
The Impact of Co-Education
Washington and Lee University saw the first class of women in 1985, halfway through this project’s scope. The female influence on Fancy Dress was not widely recorded in the 1980s through the Ring-tum Phis, a major student publication. However, in Mame Warren’s Come Cheer for Washington and Lee University : The University at 250 Years, she addresses how coeducation shaped the making and attendance of Fancy Dress. She writes, “With a woman’s touch added in the mid 1980s, ball decorations again reached the heights of earlier years” (Warren 198). Warren goes on to attribute specific features of mid-late '80s Fancy Dresses, including live animals. As Fancy Dress evolved, women received more credit and authority in its creation. By 1989, four years after W&L coeducated, the first female chairman of the Student Activities Board was appointed and the arrangement of Fancy Dress was run by a woman.
Another effect coeducation had on the annual event, Warren explains, was the “drop in the number of ballers” (Warren 198). There was an increase of on-campus couples attending the dance which ultimately decreased the number of visiting attendees from neighboring women’s colleges, “thereby reducing the total number of guests in attendance” (Warren 200). In addition to the decrease in the number of attendees, W&L also witnessed the evolution of on campus ‘date culture’ and a new form of ‘dance culture’ provoked by emerging social pressures and constructs during the Fancy Dress season. These new pressures encouraged conversations around the new norm of coeducation and reflected the gender roles and stereotypes of the time. The majority of female perspectives that were recorded in W&L’s Phis during the 1980s revolved around the pressure of not only acquiring a date, but their appearance, behavior, and demeanor during the event as well.
Cultural Appropriation
To further expand on Fancy Dress’ societal and cultural complexities, this section will address the racial and cultural connotations associated with Fancy Dress’ creation and maintenance. In Fancy Dress’ early years, it was expected that attendees would arrive in theme-appropriate costumes. A few examples of early FD themes are: ‘Colonial America/Bal Masque’ (1907-1915), ‘The Chinese Court of Chu Chin Chow’ (1921), ‘1001 Nights’ (1929), ‘American War Centennial' (1963). This criterion inevitably encouraged types of behavior that resulted in what modern audiences would consider inappropriate and offensive–albeit festive–dress. However, due to the conditions under which Fancy Dress was created and maintained, this mindset was perceived as spirited, applauding the creativity and historical accuracy.
The concept of ‘fancy dress’ itself is a complex and historically controversial one. Benjamin Linley Wild, in his “Critical Reflections on Cultural Appropriation, Race and the Role of Fancy Dress Costume,” defines fancy dress as, “a performative form of dress… worn for discrete occasion and limited time that disrupts the place of the individual within the social and political relationships of a specific community” and ranges anywhere from “partywear to cosplay” (Wild 154). The Fancy Dress ball was created under conditions and among societal norms that encouraged the crossing of appropriate racial and cultural boundaries. Created in the early 1900s, Fancy Dress emerged just a few decades after the ratification of the 13th amendment and amidst Jim Crow laws. Students, faculty, and the broader white American population, were not aware of the crossing of these boundaries as problematic the way that those of today would. This environment often exoticized other cultures, creating opportunities for insensitive dress and inappropriate celebration. Various other American traditions also have histories of sacrificing respect and awareness for festivity and spirit.
For example, this type of creative and loosely-defined atmosphere can be applied to other costumed traditions, such as Halloween. The association between Halloween and Fancy Dress, particularly during its early years, is an apt one. J.C. Mueller, et al., in “Unmasking Racism,” regarding Halloween, describe it as
a culturally tolerated contemporary space for the racist ‘ghost’ to be let out of the box… Halloween’s combination of social license, ritual costuming, and social setting make the holiday a uniquely constructive context for negative engagement of racial concepts and identities (Mueller and Dirks 331)
Due to the lax social environment Fancy Dress created, it allowed for and, in fact, encouraged the breaking of these rightfully placed boundaries. Furthermore, these mindsets of the time continued well past the costume tradition and into the 20th century. The social environment in which Fancy Dress was held in the 1980s did not resemble significant changes in awareness or respect. The ‘80s marked the decade that W&L became coeducational and was less than 20 years after it integrated. The lack of awareness that veiled the decisions and actions of not only attendees of FD, but members of the SAB as well, resulting in memorable controversies and modern-day outrage towards Fancy Dress of the 1980s.
Acknowledgement of the Past
Within the exhibit, various themes and concepts are acknowledged but their full scope of significance may not be addressed. As the creators of this exhibit, we want to ensure readers that these topics and details did not go unnoticed by us, however, the resources we have utilized were generally lacking in information on things that today we find quite shocking but in the '80s were not perceived as problematic.