Bjørn Sverre Hol Haugen: Is There Such a Thing as Being Beyond or Above Fashion? The Fashion Perspective of the Norwegian Bunad
Cultural Historian
Freelance, p.t. at The National Counsil for Folk Costumes
May 17th in Norway is a strange sight for most foreigners. We celebrate our National Day, not with military processions showing the might of the nation, but with the nations’s most precious resource, our children, marching and waving flags, led by their school bands. Both the children and the grownups are dressed in their best clothes, and on May 17th this is very often our variety of national costumes, called bunads. They are, in popular opinion, timeless classic examples of historical dress showing how our forefathers were dressed, without the disturbing influences of fashion and other newfangled ideas. Ask any Norwegian why they have a bunad and they will answer that tradition is important to them.
What if we look at this phenomenon with the eyes of a cultural historian? By comparing bunads and fashion in clothing during the 20th Century, I will try to show that each period has had its own aesthetic preferences, even when it comes to such “timeless” clothing as bunads.
I will present bunads in chronological order starting with the first national costume, originating from Hardanger on the west coast and used all over the country around 1900. It was regarded as representing the past, being picturesque and different. In my opinion it also represented the Jugend style in dress. The next bunad to be commonly used was from Hallingdal. It conveniently matched the new ideas of the reform dress movement, and later on the fashion of the 1920s. By comparing the silhuette made from dresses in the 1930s with bunads from the same period, we will show that the feminine look of the time also influenced the bunads. After World War Two, the New Look influenced both clothing fashions and bunads in Norway. From the 1960s onwards there is a special focus on skirt length in bunads. From short skirts to the maxi lengths in the 1970s. Colors have varied through the decades, too. In the 1980s, Chrystle Carrington’s blue was very popular, along with a stronger focus on matching colors. One of today’s bunad trends is to look as tall and thin as possible, even when wearing a costume representing the rococo style. Bunads are influenced by fashion, and aesthetic ideals vary from time to time, even when it comes to this supposedly timeless piece of clothing.
Through this, I will attempt to show the penetrating power of changing aesthetic ideals, even when it comes to something supposedly not influenced by fashion, like bunads.