Pretty Gentlemen. Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-Century Fashion World

Abstract

Most people have heard the term macaroni through the ditty “Yankee Doodle”, but few, even within art history and fashion studies, know of the extensive visual and textual materials related to the ‘macaroni men’ in eighteenth-century culture. In his global research into all things macaroni, Peter McNeil has pulled together a rich history of this cosmopolitan presentation of the (male) self to resurrect the macaroni men, questioning what their fashion sense enabled and exploring alternative conceptions of masculinity. The first book-length study devoted to this male fashion figure of the 1760s and 1770s, it starts off with a series of questions related to the meaning of clothing, the swiftness of changes in fashion, and the classical framework through which young men of the eighteenth century engaged in fashionable luxuries that improved their appearance. With over 150 illustrations, mostly of objects rarely seen and little known, the reader is introduced to a visually rich history of the macaroni. McNeil’s painstaking research over many decades in collections around the world has gathered a large resource of previously unknown (or at least hardly known) objects and garments. Indeed, the preface provides a delightful introduction to the adventures that the author had in his quest to view every piece of porcelain, text, painting, print, and sculpted memorial dedicated to the macaroni. Holdings of the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto include richly embroidered silk coats and waistcoats of French and English origin, as well as a coral-pink ribbed-silk suit with ermine lining and cuffs, that bring to life examples known through the paintings of JeanEtienne Liotard, Thomas Gainsborough, and Pompeo Batoni of English aristocrats, many of which are Grand Tour portraits. There are also wonderful illustrations of examples of male dress from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Museum of London, the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, and private collections in the United Kingdom and the United States. Extraordinary accessory objects are also reproduced—including a pair of coloured and embroidered silk stockings, swords with elaborate chasing and gilt mounts, shoe buckles and buttons, a wig-bag and power bellows—which were objects that may have otherwise appeared to be the subject of excessive and conspicuous consumption, only known through caricatures. This is one of the major contributions of the