We can iden­ti­fy most of the last few cen­turies by their styles of clothes. But it’s one thing to know what peo­ple wore in his­to­ry and quite anoth­er to know how, exact­ly, they wore it. We’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured videos that accu­rate­ly re-enact the whole process of of how sol­diers and nurs­es dressed in World War I, and how women got dressed in the four­teenth and eigh­teenth cen­turies. Today we go back again to the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry with two videos from Nation­al Muse­ums Liv­er­pool, one that shows us how Euro­pean gen­tle­men got dressed in those days, and anoth­er that shows us how ladies did.

One obvi­ous way in which dress­ing points to changes over the past few hun­dred years: both the gen­tle­man and the lady require the assis­tance of a ser­vant. The gen­tle­man begins his day wear­ing his long linen night­shirt and a wrap­per over it, Japan- and India-inspired gar­ments, the nar­ra­tor tells us, that “reflect British inter­ests abroad.”

To replace them comes first a volu­mi­nous, usu­al­ly ruf­fled shirt; over-the-knee stock­ings held in place with breech knee­bands; occa­sion-appro­pri­ate shoe buck­les and cuf­flinks; option­al linen under­draw­ers; many-but­toned and buck­led knee breech­es; a waist­coat (whose top few but­tons remain open to reveal the shirt’s ruf­fles); a linen cra­vat; a buck­led stock; a coat on top of the waist­coat; and of course, a fresh­ly-dust­ed wig.

Get­ting clothes on for a day in the eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry was even more com­pli­cat­ed for ladies than for gen­tle­men, as evi­denced by the fact that its video requires two addi­tion­al min­utes to show every step involved. We begin with the shift, an under­gar­ment worn with­out knick­ers. Like the gen­tle­man, the lady wears over-the-knee stock­ings, but she ties them with rib­bon garters (at least for days not involv­ing much danc­ing). Over that, “a knee-length white linen pet­ti­coat worn for warmth and mod­esty,” and over that, a stay made using whale baleen. Pock­ets were added in the form of bags worn at the hips, but bags known to get lost if their ties came undone — hence the nurs­ery rhyme “Lucy Lock­et lost her pock­et.”

Prop­er eigh­teenth-cen­tu­ry female dress also required pet­ti­coats of var­i­ous kinds, a ker­chief, a stom­ach­er (often high­ly dec­o­rat­ed), more pet­ti­coats, a gown, a linen apron (with a bib pinned into posi­tion, hence “pinafore”), a day cap, and then anoth­er apron that “serves no pur­pose oth­er than to indi­cate the fine sta­tus of the indi­vid­ual wear­ing it.” Con­spic­u­ous con­sump­tion mat­tered even back then, but so did the painstak­ing cre­ation of the ide­al female fig­ure, or at least the impres­sion there­of. Not only do these videos show us just the kind of cloth­ing that would have been worn for that pur­pose and how it would have been put on, they also show us high­ly plau­si­ble atti­tudes pro­ject­ed by dressed and dress­er alike: the for­mer one of faint­ly bored expec­ta­tion, and the lat­ter one of resigned indus­tri­ous­ness tinged with the sus­pi­cion that all this can’t last for­ev­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Get­ting Dressed Dur­ing World War I: A Fas­ci­nat­ing Look at How Sol­diers, Nurs­ers & Oth­ers Dressed Dur­ing the Great War

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Cen­turies: Watch the Very Painstak­ing Process Get Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Recre­at­ed

The Sights & Sounds of 18th Cen­tu­ry Paris Get Recre­at­ed with 3D Audio and Ani­ma­tion

The Dress­er: The Con­trap­tion That Makes Get­ting Dressed an Adven­ture

How to Make and Wear Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

Ask Ger­mans who lived under the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic what they feared most in those days, and they’ll like­ly say the agents of the Min­istry for State Secu­ri­ty, best known as the Stasi. Ask those same Ger­mans what they laughed at most in those days, and they may well give the same answer. As one of the most thor­ough­ly repres­sive secret police forces in human his­to­ry, the Stasi kept a close eye and a tight grip on East Ger­man soci­ety: as one oft-told joke goes, “Why do Stasi offi­cers make such good taxi dri­vers? You get in the car and they already know your name and where you live.” But this fear­some vig­i­lance went hand-in-hand with tech­no­log­i­cal lim­i­ta­tion as well as plain inep­ti­tude:  “How can you tell that the Stasi has bugged your apart­ment?” anoth­er joke asks. “There’s a new cab­i­net in it and a trail­er with a gen­er­a­tor in the street.”

When the Stasi turned this kind of crude but intense scruti­ny to cer­tain aspects of life, the results almost sat­i­rized them­selves. Take, for instance, this cir­ca-1985 inter­nal guide used to iden­ti­fy the “types of neg­a­tive deca­dent youth cul­tures in the Ger­man Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic,” post­ed on Twit­ter by musi­cian and writer S. Alexan­der Reed and lat­er trans­lat­ed into Eng­lish by a few of his fol­low­ers.

The chart breaks down the sup­pos­ed­ly deca­dent youth cul­tures of mid-1980s East Ger­many into eight groups, describ­ing their inter­ests, appear­ance, polit­i­cal incli­na­tions, and activ­i­ties in the columns below. The rock-and-roll-ori­ent­ed “Teds,” dressed in a “50s style,” don’t seem to rouse them­selves for any­thing besides “birth and death days of idol­ized rock stars.” The “Tramps,” a “clas­sic man­i­fes­ta­tion of the neg­a­tive-deca­dent youth in the 70s,” adhere to the trends of a some­what more recent era.

The fans of “extreme­ly hard rock” known as “Heav­ies” once held a “dep­reca­tive atti­tude towards state and soci­ety,” but seemed at the time to become “increas­ing­ly soci­ety-con­form­ing.” Oth­er youth cul­tures con­sid­ered deca­dent by the Stasi bore labels that might still sound famil­iar across the world. The “Goths,” a “satan­ic and death cult,” are not­ed for their “glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of creepy effects” and for being “fans of the group The Cure.” Though they may have been “hard­ly noticed oper­a­tional­ly,” the “punks” pre­sent­ed a more clear and present threat, what with their “dep­reca­tive to hos­tile polit­i­cal atti­tude, rejec­tion of all state forms and soci­etal norms,” “anar­chist thoughts,” and belief in “total free­dom.”

You can see the chart in a larg­er size here, and if you’d like to exam­ine the real thing, you have only to vis­it Leipzig’s Muse­um in der Run­den Ecke (or view it online here). The doc­u­ment resides in its col­lec­tion of the tools of the Stasi trade, includ­ing, in the words of Atlas Obscu­ra, “old sur­veil­lance cam­eras, col­lec­tions of con­fis­cat­ed per­son­al let­ters, and crisp uni­forms let­ting vis­i­tors get a glimpse into the world of bru­tal state espi­onage.” Ger­mans who remem­ber all the pow­er the Stasi could poten­tial­ly wield over their lives — a pow­er, for all they knew, about to descend on them any moment — must still feel a chill upon see­ing one of those crisp uni­forms. Now we know that their wear­ers might, upon lay­ing eyes on Birken­stocks (“lit­er­al­ly: ‘Jesus slip­pers‘”), red and black worn togeth­er (“con­trasts as a sym­bol of anar­chy”), or a mohawk (or “Iriquois”) hair­cut, have felt appre­hen­sive them­selves.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

Sovi­ets Boot­legged West­ern Pop Music on Dis­card­ed X‑Rays: Hear Orig­i­nal Audio Sam­ples

How Jazz-Lov­ing Teenagers–the Swingjugend–Fought the Hitler Youth and Resist­ed Con­for­mi­ty in Nazi Ger­many

The Nazis’ 10 Con­trol-Freak Rules for Jazz Per­form­ers: A Strange List from World War II

The Nazis’ Philis­tine Grudge Against Abstract Art and The “Degen­er­ate Art Exhi­bi­tion” of 1937

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.