Wow, I knew that high heels started out as menswear in the French courts but I had no idea that corsets and shoulderpads did too. What about hairspray? I'm trying to imagine the court of Edward (see image right) as a kind of 80s music video prototype.  He does look surprisingly modern.

I wonder, though, if all this emphasis on padding and impressive silhouettes is something that had its beginnings in the apparel of war, emphasizing and exaggerating the strength and physical dimensions of the man in question, as well as in the gradual development of ornamental armor. This would certainly explain the class element to decoration: the officers in an army dress to differentiate themselves from the footsoldiers, and are allowed a greater degree of freedom in expressing personality.

I do find it surprising that a tiny waist in a man would be valued in and of itself, and my inclination is to assume that the emphasis was on shoulder/waist ratio.

As for your question 1, why is an inverted triangle an erotic shape for a man? --- I would add, And where is the focal point of that triangle?

Fascinating. I think the military hypothesis is a good one, but we can even push that back farther -- one of the reasons warriors ornament themselves is to appear to be bigger stronger alpha males, similar to various animals puffing themselves up before a display of aggression.

When this happens in a social setting, the message is clearly to try and impress possible sex partners with the characteristics of virility.  There is an interesting parallel in women's makeup: as Emily mentions, the use of rouge, lipstick, mascara etc serves to intensify the sexuality of the female face, mimicking and exaggerating the slight changes which take place when a woman is sexually aroused. This, before we even get to women's clothes.

All this is just to say it's funny how ancient and modern we are at the same time: how intricate and elaborate our ornamentation becomes, how sophisticated, while at the same time serving basically as an impressive transmutation of sexuality, something which is almost pre-cultural. This isn't to undercut the power or importance of ornamentation, of course -- many things in culture are more or less impressive transmutations of sexuality, if certain people are to be believed. Most likely an important quality of being human is this power of transmutation.

Something I like in your whimsical analogy with songbirds, Bella, is the way that birds are always such a beautiful part of their environment -- a kind of intensification of color but one which fits in splendidly with the surroundings, like flowers or ripe fruit.  I do feel this must have been true of the magnificent triangular men you describe! :-)

Looking at people from the past one sometimes gets the feeling that they really felt the world itself was part of their outfit, something which almost never happens now. As was discussed in the post on all cities becoming alike, each person feels themselves disconnected from their background, and if one were to take a photograph of them it would look good more or less anywhere, in any circumstance.  I'm not describing so much the rarefied belle epoque sensibility of the right fabric and cut for every occasion, though this is part of it; I meant more people dressing the way that a film director might dress them, in colors and fabrics which reflect the natural environment and which underline the person's own relation to it, like the characters in Kurosawa's gorgeous Kagemusha.

As an example of the lost art of dressing and carrying oneself as if one were really at home in the world, here is Edna St. Vincent Millay, surely one of the splendid personalities of the early twentieth century, looking as if she had just blossomed.