You can hold your shoulders differently, usually pretty squared. It depends on what you're comparing it to. If we're talking something with a corset, the shoulders can slope, sometimes pretty dramatically (as in late antebellum 19th cen styles) because you don't have to worry about the straps slipping. Wearing an historically-accurate dress from, say, the byzantine to late medieval, the weight of the dress is pretty phenomenal (that's a lot of fabric from the hips down) and the neckline is more like a boat or scoop... so as I recall the shoulders are pulled in a little. Curved forward.
But it's also the line of the spine. If you think about how breasts are wrapped, bound, supported, or just plain encased (whether in something integral to the dress or an undergarment), there's traditionally a lot more than in modern bras... which means the spine, and shoulder blades, are part of the package/binding. We can be considerably looser with our posture -- and the way we swing our arms -- thanks to minimal binding-points (one around the ribs, and one across each shoulder).
Someone who walks with a bit of a jaunt in their step, and shoulders moving freely, is a modern-influenced walk. Not to say you couldn't do the same in most ancient dress, except that in certain times, there might be a 'way' of walking that was supposed to show off the dress or your gait to a certain appearance. Like the large antebellum skirts -- you were supposed to glide across the floor, which means smaller steps with very little lift in the heel. The dress hem shouldn't bounce (not to say people didn't bounce them, just that there's "best behavior" approach and then there's "busy with work" or "my day off" more relaxed way). And in other times, the corset or dress-binding was designed in a certain way to enforce a certain posture, like the straight-back of the Elizabethan era or the Georgian eras, compared to the almost S-curve of the Edwardian.
It's kind of like... how you walk in a pencil skirt is different from how you walk with jeans. The garment restricts movement in certain ways, and makes it easier to stand in certain ways, and your posture and movements adjust accordingly.
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Date: 19 Apr 2011 03:20 am (UTC)You can hold your shoulders differently, usually pretty squared. It depends on what you're comparing it to. If we're talking something with a corset, the shoulders can slope, sometimes pretty dramatically (as in late antebellum 19th cen styles) because you don't have to worry about the straps slipping. Wearing an historically-accurate dress from, say, the byzantine to late medieval, the weight of the dress is pretty phenomenal (that's a lot of fabric from the hips down) and the neckline is more like a boat or scoop... so as I recall the shoulders are pulled in a little. Curved forward.
But it's also the line of the spine. If you think about how breasts are wrapped, bound, supported, or just plain encased (whether in something integral to the dress or an undergarment), there's traditionally a lot more than in modern bras... which means the spine, and shoulder blades, are part of the package/binding. We can be considerably looser with our posture -- and the way we swing our arms -- thanks to minimal binding-points (one around the ribs, and one across each shoulder).
Someone who walks with a bit of a jaunt in their step, and shoulders moving freely, is a modern-influenced walk. Not to say you couldn't do the same in most ancient dress, except that in certain times, there might be a 'way' of walking that was supposed to show off the dress or your gait to a certain appearance. Like the large antebellum skirts -- you were supposed to glide across the floor, which means smaller steps with very little lift in the heel. The dress hem shouldn't bounce (not to say people didn't bounce them, just that there's "best behavior" approach and then there's "busy with work" or "my day off" more relaxed way). And in other times, the corset or dress-binding was designed in a certain way to enforce a certain posture, like the straight-back of the Elizabethan era or the Georgian eras, compared to the almost S-curve of the Edwardian.
It's kind of like... how you walk in a pencil skirt is different from how you walk with jeans. The garment restricts movement in certain ways, and makes it easier to stand in certain ways, and your posture and movements adjust accordingly.