A museum of Maltese clothes through the ages
I wasn’t flying like Marc Sant (see earlier post) so I didn’t fail to notice that the Budget speech included plans for a museum of Maltese clothes through the ages.
What rubbish. For most of the last 1,000 years, the vast majority of people who lived on these islands wore rags. They barely had food, let alone clothes.
People wore rags even in the first years of the 20th century, and beyond that, they wore whatever it was they could scrabble together with pennies. They had one set of basic clothes which they wore all week, and another even more basic set of clothes which were worn on the rare occasions when the basic clothes were washed.
Any clothes fit to show in that museum will be the clothes of the privileged 5% of the population. That’s fine, but please then don’t talk about ‘Maltese’.
We have the same myth-making with ‘Maltese food’. What was Maltese food through the ages? Boiled onions, largely, foraged snails, trapped sparrows, and not even bread because only those who lived in urban areas had access to a baker’s oven and if they made the trek at all they made it once every few days and ate stale bread the rest of the time.
The gourds, tomatoes and potatoes we take for granted as ‘Maltese food’ came to Europe very late in the day and to Malta later still – tomatoes in the late 18th century and potatoes well into the 19th.
If they could get the fuel together in a land stripped bare of trees and wood, the onions and whatever else could be had were boiled together in a pot, the stomach-turning origins of the later slightly refined minestra.
Proper cooking was the preserve of people with money, because only they could buy food. Those with a little money managed as best they could with some very simple dishes. Those with more money could afford to be a little more complicated, but even their complications were really quite simple. It was in the urban areas, where the 5% were considerably more affluent and could play around, even employing cooks, or with wives who had the luxury of spending all day fooling around in the kitchen, that the more complex dishes were developed.
But that is not ‘Maltese food’. That is the food of the 5%.
This tendency of some people to extrapolate from their own social class to the rest of the population really annoys me, and it’s not just because of the immense historical inaccuracy. It’s because it’s so class-centric and so blind to reality. The worst bit is that people in the present whose forefathers wore those rags and ate those boiled onions and foraged snails and trapped sparrows have bought the myths too. They seem to think that their ancestors went around trimmed in baroque lace and feeding on richly-sauced timpana.
If you want to put the past into perspective on the matter of clothes, just consider the present. People have money now, which they did not for the previous 1,000 years of Maltese history. Yet are the few Maltese who wear truly beautiful clothes and well-considered outfits representative of ‘Maltese clothes’? No, they are not.
The people who are indeed representative of Maltese clothes are the ones who fill our streets, bars and shopping centres with their Lycra cycling-shorts, leggings, polyester jumpers and frightening shoes. ‘Twas ever thus. Any museum of Maltese clothes which focuses on the sort of things people go to museums to see is by definition a false portrayal of reality.
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In the spirit of cleansing and redefining, it shall all come to pass.
“Perception is real even when it is not reality.”
This is to give the “popolin” an image “high.”
_______
Reality kicks in later.
Is this museum going to have a special section called Golden Years of Labour?
There was only one “cool” clothes shop (if it could even have been classified as such) in Malta, thanks to the then progressive Labour government, so there really wasn’t much choice, unless one resorted to less “cool” shops like Clobber or Shady Lady or the various bazaars around the island or made one’s own clothes.
We were pretty spoiled for choice, weren’t we? Everybody wore Abanderado underwear, socks (nylon) were either beige, white, grey or black, padded jackets were Red Devil (in all of four colour combinations), and tennis shoes were simple white cotton and rubber made in China or foot-distorting Sanga made in Malta.
Maybe they will exhibit Spider jeans and Soldini footwear. One could buy little more than that in the 80s.
Soldini’s made it to vintage in Porta Genova.
I hope they do not ask Rita Spiteri (Tunis) to supply the museum with samples of her clothes. Not much of them judging from pictures you put up.
Again…..wahahahaaaaaaa! I simply can’t stop laughing!
If I may, those who did produce food, clothes and anything which made life bearable, away from the urban agglomerate, found themselves ostracised then pauperised the moment Mintoff gained power.
What mattered was to render these redundant, of no consequence to the social fabric, that opportunities for initiative, creativity and employment become state sanctioned affairs.
I can guess what clothes will be put on show, Dom’s stylistic obsession with folklore to sate the intelligentsia set against a couple of ball gowns.
Here’s another one obsessed with nothing but class, resident writer at the other Dominic’s court.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/arts/books/46292/someone_like_dom_mintoff_would_have_thrilled_my_father__jim_crace#.VGsz3TTF9mM
“Anyone in a position of power – from politicians to headmasters – would have spoken with the same accent: call it Oxford English, BBC English, Queen’s English, whatever. All of it was so rigidly class-oriented, that to see someone from a working class background rise to power was thrilling. So yes, someone like Dom Mintoff would have thrilled my father. And I was thrilled by it in turn, because I loved my father and would ‘borrow’ the things that thrilled him.”
No wonder British Leyland gobbled up every prospect of industry then, fancy going out on strike to watch England play.
Incompetent people with half-baked ideas.
X’differenza hux! Illum hafna hela fl-ikel u epidemija ta’ hxuna zejda.
Some suggestions for the museum of Maltese clothes:
https://www.facebook.com/priscilla.farrugia.9/media_set?set=a.901121526572127.1073741862.100000228647219&type=1&pnref=story
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1495670057386285&set=a.1374870959466196.1073741825.100008299140986&type=1&theater
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1470093396565282&set=a.1399253420315947.1073741826.100006939065999&type=1&theater
All we need to hear now is that the Museum of Maltese Clothes will be sponsored by Leisure Clothing.
I take it that Rita Spiteri (Tunis) won’t be contributing much to this museum.
A museum for textiles has been in the making for a very long time, since the early 2000s to be precise, when the Malta Centre for Restoration was set up in Bighi and a textiles department established.
The Malta Centre for Restoration was taken over by Heritage Malta. Incidentally, Mario Cutajar (now principal perm sec.) was human resources head at Heritage Malta, back then, so you can imagine the hemorrhage of staff and much else besides. The place still hasn’t recovered.
And now they try to recycle an old idea. Just as well because the national collection has been restored in the meantime.
Why not the Bus Museum we were promised? Or is it too much for Labour to stomach? Perhaps Joe Mizzi still thinks the disused vehicles might come in handy someday.
There is no such thing as ‘Maltese clothes’, not even today because what we wear today is Western clothing, just like the rest of Europe.
Will Madame Tussauds be contracted to create a sculpture of Mrs. Prime Minister so that contemporary Maltese rags can be suitably exhibited?
Towns and villages like Birgu, Zabbar, Zejtun, Qormi and Rabat are over seven centuries old and they all had their windmills, bakeries, dairy farms and butchers.
Between the 5 per cent and the people living on boiled onions, there was a larger more common demography. These people had meat possibly a few times a week, daily goat’s milk, daily fresh bread, seasonal fruit and vegetables, they also had seasonal sweets.
Of course they had home made toys and tailor made shoes and trousers and dresses. Again each village had its rich (ironmongers, butchers, haberdasheries) and its poor.
The life in villages, was far from comfortable and I agree with your point, that the choice in food and clothing was very limited. But here I think you are pointing out only the extremes of the society.
[Daphne – The larger demography was poor too, Maltri. They most certainly did not eat meat a few times a week. They ate a chicken once a year, on Christmas Day. The people you describe lived on minestra every day, and lack of protein was in fact a major contributing factor to general lack of size, as distinct from girth. You are talking of situations in which your blacksmith would have 15 dependents: his 12 children, their mother and a couple of random parents in the pre-welfare state era. However much he earned, they wouldn’t have eaten anything other than vegetable stew and bread.]
How random. A museum of clothes. Are we creating some new trough?
From what I remember from the 60s till early 80s there is nothing to shout about. Even now the style seen in most localities is so low and ugly. Clothes Museum?