The adoption of ‘disguises’ dates back millennia, masks and special costumes playing an important role in magical and religious rites, as well as public spectacles and celebrations. By the 19th century, occasions for donning ‘fancy dress’ were plentiful and appearing in costume is something that will have involved many of our more recent ancestors and relatives.

Early festivities
Although the precise origin of masked and costumed events is hazy, one of the earliest examples is the ancient Roman triumphal car – a chariot with masked attendants, driving through the streets to commemorate military victory. In the Middle Ages there developed a tradition of masked mummers accompanied by torch-bearers going from house to house during the carnival season, followed by Renaissance-era and later processional pageants featuring costumed tableaux vivants. Historically the season of carnival extended from after Christmas to Lent, during which time the Catholic Church permitted festivities and outdoor entertainments. The streets of Venice and other Italian city-states became living theatres for masked and disguised revellers, the nobility organising costumed and decorated floats. This tradition inspired the performances of the famed Commedia dell’arte troupes, whose character Pulcinella was the model for Mr Punch in Punch and Judy shows.

English masquerade
In 18th-century London a vogue arose for masquerades – lavish balls or entertainments at which participants arrived incognito, wearing a mysterious mask and voluminous Italian cloak called a ‘domino’, or appearing in fantastical guise as hussars, Indian princes, Turkish ladies and 17th-century ‘van Dyck’ figures. Costumes took their inspiration from various sources, but anonymity and intrigue were key themes of masquerade, with its emphasis on disguise and role-playing. Initially such decadent diversions were the preserve of the upper classes, but the general public had an appetite for dressing up too, and by the late 1700s masquerades were being held in local assembly rooms and halls up and down the country.

‘Fancy balls’
During the 19th century there developed a fervour for the past, inspired by Romanticism, Gothic-revival taste and general Victorian aesthetic eclecticism which favoured antiquity, the middle ages, Renaissance and Tudor eras. Reflecting a pronounced interest in historical costume, growing numbers of ‘fancy balls’ hosted by the landed establishment and nouveaux riches were peopled by costumed figures from history, from King Henry VIII, complete with padded doublet and trunk hose, to Queen Elizabeth I, arrayed in red curled wig, vast ruff and farthingale. These gatherings were also emulated and replicated throughout provincial society, at balls, parties and theatrical events, especially during the winter months – the acknowledged ‘season’ for socialising, music and indoor entertainments.

Long before large fancy dress hire companies existed, there was no shortage of local costume makers. Historically most women could sew, and some dressmakers and seamstresses specialised in creating fancy dress costumes. For instance, in the late 1840s/early 1850s the pictorialist photographer Henry Peach Robinson, who took a keen interest in dress and historical costume, produced carefully researched designs from which his mother, a skilled dressmaker, fashioned garments for local residents to wear to the many ‘costume balls’ held in Ludlow throughout the winter.

As well as past modes, exotic ensembles evoking the mysterious ‘Orient’ were also in demand, including flowing Turkish and Arabian garb and picturesque headdresses. Indigenous clothing styles from the New World, such as North American Indian dress, were also of interest, some interpretations of which we would find unpalatable today. The most famous costumed event of the late Victorian era was the sparkling Devonshire House Ball, hosted by the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire at Devonshire House, Piccadilly. With guests including the Prince of Wales dressed as the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitallers of Malta and Lady Randolph Spencer-Churchill as the Byzantine Empress Theodora, the ball was thrown in July 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

Parties and pageants
With the surge in mass celebrations and public participation that occurred during the 1800s ordinary people also marked royal coronations, jubilees and military victories with local festivities and costumed events. School children dressed up in playful accessories for the above-mentioned Diamond Jubilee in 1897, wearing paper hats, sashes and capes hung with streamers, ribbon bonnets, rosettes and floral garlands. Over half a century later when Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in 1953, in community halls and streets nationwide children were treated to fancy dress parties, dances and conjurers.

Public pageants, processions and displays, both national and local, were more common in the past than today, often involving tableaux of appropriately costumed characters. Fancy dress competitions were also popular, at Christmas and over Bank Holiday weekends, when families had time off work and school. Overtly patriotic themes were especially popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when faith in the concept of Empire still held strong: many a past family member would have dressed up as – or watched others representing – the mighty figure of Britannia and her fearless soldiers and sailors, the Union Jack flag always flying.

Seasonal festivities
Small towns, villages and rural communities often observed time-honoured festivals marking the changing seasons and celebrating the land. May Day was an ancient tradition and in Lark Rise to Candleford (1945), Flora Thompson recalled her 1880s childhood in an Oxfordshire hamlet, describing the annual May Day procession – the most exciting time of year for local children. The girl chosen to be May Queen wore a daisy crown and white veil, other girls who could procure white veils wearing them too, along with white or pastel-coloured frocks and white gloves. Both boys and girls were decked out with bright ribbon knots and bows and sashes, the boys’ sashes traditionally worn diagonally over one shoulder.

Hallowe’en on 31 October, when spooky costumes are donned and skeletons, witches and zombies stalk the streets, dates back centuries. The ancient Celtic pagan festival is said to have been introduced into America by Irish immigrants in the early/mid-1800s, providing a welcome excuse for inventive costume designs. Our modern-day craze in Britain for Hallowe’en costumes, parties and ‘trick or treating’, enjoyed by children and some adults, seems to have been imported from America, escalating in the past few decades.

Hot on the heels of Hallowe’en comes Guy Fawkes Day or Bonfire Night, commemorating the conspiracy to blow up the Houses of Parliament on 5 November 1605. From as early as the 1620s, this event has been marked in various ways, the custom of children wheeling effigies of Guy Fawkes through the streets and begging for pennies first recorded in the late 1700s. In late-Georgian and Victorian Britain participants in Guy Fawkes rituals also dressed up and wore masks, these traditions being handed down through the generations, for example in Lewes, East Sussex where Bonfire is much-celebrated and members of the local bonfire societies wear striped jerseys based on smugglers’ outfits.

Dressing up for the camera
Without a doubt, the invention and spread of photography from the mid to late 1800s encouraged many more ordinary people to don ‘fancy dress’ and pose for the camera. Adults might visit their local studio in elaborate costumes that they had themselves devised for a ball or other event, or changed into fanciful dress items kept by some photographers for their clients’ amusement. Popular Victorian and Edwardian themes included European regional folk costumes, ‘gypsy’ skirts, scarves and shawls and Japanese kimonos, obi sashes and headdresses. Some studios specialised in ‘artistic’- or ‘historical’-themed costume photographs, while others in major tourist locations kept ‘local’ or ‘traditional’ costumes representing their region, such as ‘Highland’ Dress, or the distinctive garb of Newhaven fisher women, for visitors to Scotland.

Postcards
Postcard photographs, picturing people from all walks of life between the early 1900s and c.1950, were perfect for amusing ‘dressing-up’ images. Between the wars in larger cities various exotic studios flourished, providing imaginary settings and appropriate clothes and props, in which clients indulged their fantasies, dressing up as cowboys and Indians, gypsies or pierrots in black and white ‘clown’ costumes. One of the most frequented in London was the Fancy Dress Studio, located at 37 Oxford Street. Although visitors could use an array of studio items, equally they could bring along their own fancy dress for the portrait, especially if they had recently created a spectacular costume for a competition, fete or ball.

Young children were often photographed wearing historical costumes, the picturesque effect of their small frames decked out in miniature uniforms or famous ensembles appealing to contemporary taste. Heroic figures such as Napoleon or King Charles I were perennial favourites, the First World War spawning many juvenile Kaisers, diminutive Land Army girls and touchingly tiny soldiers standing to attention in military caps and trench coats.

Dressing up in fancy costumes may not be to everyone’s taste, but some today still find it entertaining to temporarily change our appearance and assume different personas, continuing a long-established tradition.