Historybounding: A Blast from the (Sartorial) Past

Vintage style with modern values.

My partner is a spectacular person in a lot of ways. She’s pretty, talented, smart, and witty, among other things. One of the things that she’s good at is sewing. She doesn’t like to admit it, but she’s got a knack for making things, and costume pieces are one of her talents.

Don’t get me wrong, she’s not at the level of a fashionista. Sewing is one of her many hobbies, not necessarily a regular thing that she does. She’s the first to admit that she often gets bored of doing the same thing too much, which is why she’d be horrible at selling stuff on Etsy because she couldn’t stand making the same thing every day.

However, she’s a whiz when it comes to costumes for Halloween or conventions. I’ve spent many days and nights tracking her progress, sometimes up until the early morning before the convention. Many a costume has been finished at 3:00 a.m. on the Friday of the convention.

One of her favorite types of costuming is historical garments. Our wedding — before life went to hell — was meant to be an 1870s Victorian theme, with period garments for the two of us and the wedding party. The Victorian Bustle Eras (the early 1870s and early 1880s — there were two of them separated by the Natural Form era) is a particular favorite of ours.

Sadly, chronic pain inhibits her craftiness sometimes, so she doesn’t always get to sew things. However, she does enjoy living vicariously through various YouTube celebrities who make costumes, historical pieces, and the like. They are collectively called CosTube (or CosTubers), and the number and types of CosTubers have grown significantly in the past few years. You can find someone for any style, from Bernadette Banner, who does lots of historically faithful pieces on antique machines, to Rachel Maksey, who makes more costumey stuff and isn’t afraid of hot glue.

This has been coupled with a few different converging phenomena: the pandemic causing many people to take up crafts like sewing, and the sudden popularity of Bridgerton and period costume pieces. Suddenly, sewing historical and historical-inspired clothes were all the rage.

And, as such, we have had a rise in a few new aesthetics, led by historybounding. Historybounding is when one builds an outfit or aesthetic based on (but not necessarily faithful to) a particular period in history. This can include hand-made pieces, vintage clothes, modern clothing, or some combination thereof. The point is to emulate a particular historical style without going all-out historically accurate.

Because history has a range of styles across the world, this can be anything, although much (but not all) of the CosTube and historybounding community focuses on European, British, and American styles. That said, I am a sort-of secondary consumer of CosTube, so I may be incredibly wrong here. Regardless, historybounding can include anything from a modern kirtle from the middle ages to an Edwardian walking skirt and modern blouse to a 20s-era dock worker slacks-and-waistcoat combo.

Additionally, because historybounding is a tribute to historical fashion rather than a duplicate of it, modern touches can be kept. Anything from modern undergarments to polyester to computer technology can be included without shame. The point is not faithful recreation but rather the construction of an aesthetic.

Several similar aesthetics are often noted in the same breath as historybounding. These include things like Cottagecore, Ghiblicore, and Dark Academia, and often include historical-type elements or callbacks to “simpler times.”

Because of the hands-on crafty nature of this particular fashion trend, it has a significant number of women who are attracted to it. Sewing was traditionally considered a woman’s task, and in many ways still is, although cosplay is putting a dent in that preconception. There are also several prominent male CosTubers, including Zachary Pinsent and Dandy Wellington.

The “woman’s work” perception and glorification of the past often lead the casual observer to think of historybounders as “old-fashioned” or “born in the wrong era.” Most of them will be quick to tell you otherwise. As I said, many historybounders and CosTubers are female, and they are generally not keen on returning to an era where they are unable to vote, own property, or manage their own money.

(Interestingly, with the increasing attacks on women’s rights, Suffragettes are becoming an increasingly popular area of focus among historybounders and historical costumers.)

Another example is Dandy Wellington, a black man who focuses on vintage 20s-era clothing as part of his Jazz band. However, he has stated that he is quite glad to live in the 21st century, where he has equal rights under the law, and would not care to actually live in the 1920s.

Generally speaking, the common refrain among historical costumers, historybounders, and CosTubers is “vintage fashion, not vintage values.” These are modern people who are recreating styles from history, and history wasn’t always that great to women and BIPOC. As this particular note comes more to the fore, the CosTube and historical fashion/historybounding communities have been recently grappling with the often racist and exploitative nature of historical fashion.

While historybounding (and other aesthetics such as Cottagecore) often reference the past in their design, most practitioners understand that the past was not necessarily simpler nor better than the present. While they evoke a particular style or feeling in the people who historybound (or just like vintage clothes), modern values permeate the aesthetics.

It is because we have the freedom to choose what we wear that we can wear old-fashioned clothes. Many historybounders will just as soon wear shorts and a tank top as they will a long skirt or three-piece suit and hat, and quite frankly, we like it that way.

That’s not to say that more conservative people don’t gravitate to these aesthetics. The tradwife movement has more than a foothold in Cottagecore and historybounding, as the old-fashioned aesthetics tend to reflect the regressive nature of the movement. None of that even takes into account the premise that different people like different things, and no hobby has exclusively liberal or conservative practitioners.

All of that said, for most of us, the concept of historybounding is something fun we do to take our minds off the raging inferno that is the modern world. Our clothes are something that reflect our personalities, and since we generally have complete control over what we wear, why not wear something that you think is nice?

Historical fashion is cool. There is something neat about looking through Victorian fashion plates or medieval portraits or pictures from the wild west. The styles are all fascinating, different and foreign but also eye-catching and interesting.

Plus, getting dressed up is cool and fun. Lots of people like to imagine themselves in a flowy ball gown or white tie tailcoat ensemble but feel like they’ll never get a chance. Why not live a little piece of that? It doesn’t hurt anyone, it will make you feel good about yourself, and you can look awesome while you’re doing it.

We live in a world where people can wear just about whatever they want. Some of us wear graphic tees and torn jeans, others wear skirts and tank tops, and still others wear trench coats, fishnets, and boots. Why can’t someone wear a Regency-style dress or Victorian-inspired suit?

Besides, when I put on a historybounding ensemble, I feel pretty good about myself, and isn’t that what it’s all about?

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