The cravat

History of the Cravat

[Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cravat]

The cravat (/krəˈvæt/) is a neckband, the forerunner of the modern tailored necktie and bow tie, originating from a style worn by members of the 17th century military unit known as the Croats.

From the end of the sixteenth century, the term band

According to the 1828 encyclopedic The art of tying the cravat: demonstrated in sixteen lessons, the Romans were the first to wear knotted kerchiefs around their neck, but the modern version of the cravat (French: la cravate) tour de couu originated in the 1660s. During the reign of Louis XIV of France, Croatian mercenaries were enlisted in 1660 wearing a necktie called a tour de cou. The traditional Croat military kit aroused Parisian curiosity about the unusual, picturesque scarves distinctively knotted at the Croats' necks:

"In 1660 a regiment of Croats arrived in France — a part of their singular costume excited the greatest admiration, and was immediately and generally imitated; this was a tour de cou , made (for the private soldiers) of common lace, and of muslin or silk for the officers; the ends were arranged en rosette, or ornamented with a button or tuft, which hung gracefully on the breast. This new arrangement, which confined the throat but very slightly, was at first termed a Croat, since corrupted to Cravat. The Cravats of the officers and people of rank were extremely fine, and the ends were embroidered or trimmed with broad lace; those for the lower classes were subsequently made of cloth or cotton, or at the best of black taffeta, plaited: which was tied round the neck by two small strings."

Prominent early champions of the style were:


William III of England, here aged 10 in 1660 (section of larger image)	Emanuel de Geer wearing a military sash over a buff jerkin and sporting a cravat with it in 1656, portrait by Bartholomeus van der Helst	John II of Poland, c. 1660

Louis XIV of France in 1667

The Dubrovnik poet Ivan Gundulić is often credited with the invention of the cravat, due to a portrait hanging in the Rector's Palace, Dubrovnik. The scholar depicted in the painting looks very much like the frontispiece to his Osman published in 1844. However, considering the hairstyle, this portrait is more probably a later portrait of his namesake Dživo (Ivan) Šiškov Gundulić, also a Dubrovnik poet. In their honor, Croatia celebrates Cravat Day on October 18.

The Dubrovnik poet Ivan Gundulić is often credited with the invention of the cravat due to a portrait hanging in the Rector's Palace, Dubrovnik. The scholar depicted in the painting looks very much like the frontispiece to his Osman published in 1844. However, considering the hairstyle, this portrait is more likely a later portrait of his namesake Dživo (Ivan) Šiškov Gundulić, also a Dubrovnik poet. In their honor, Croatia celebrates Cravat Day on October 18.


Frontispiece for Osman, 1844	Ivan Gundulić (Giovanni Gondola), but more probably his younger relation Dživo (Ivan) Šiškov Gundulić (1678 - 1721)

During the wars of Louis XIV of 1689-1697, except for court, the flowing cravat was replaced with the more current, and equally military, "SteinkirkkThe Careless Husbandd

The "maccaronis" (note) reintroduced the flowing cravat in the 1770s, and the manner of a man's knotting became indicative of his taste and style, to the extent that after the Battle of Waterloo (1815) the cravat began to be referred to as a "tie".

Note:

A macaroni (or formerly maccaroni) in mid-18th-century England was a fashionable fellow who dressed and even spoke in an outlandishly affected and epicene manner. The term pejoratively referred to a man who "exceeded the ordinary bounds of fashion" in terms of clothes, fastidious eating, and gambling. He mixed Continental affectations with his English nature, like a practitioner of macaronic verse (which mixed English and Latin to comic effect), laying himself open to satire. The macaronis became seen in stereotyped terms by the English aristocracy, as a symbol of inappropriate bourgeois excess, effeminacy, and possible homosexuality. Many modern critics view the macaroni as representing a general change in 18th century English society such as political change, class consciousness, new nationalisms, commodification and consumer capitalism.

The macaronis were precursor to the dandies, who came as a more masculine reaction to the excesses of the macaroni, far from their present connotation of effeminacy.

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