TALLINN - Corsets, brassieres, frilly underskirts and lacy knickers - when my dusty 8th grade history teacher taught us about the early 20th-century, he must have skipped this part. If he hadn't, I would have paid more attention in class.
Fortunately, the Tallinn City Museum is a little bolder in presenting the century to its visitors. The temporary exhibition currently underway on the museum's third floor is simply titled "Gossamer" in English. Its Estonian name, "Tender as a spider's web," is a far more poetic description for an exhibit that covers (or rather uncovers) women's undergarments from 1890 to 1960.
Guys, before you start fantasizing that this is a 3-D substitute for Fashion TV's Bouncing Skimpy Hour, I should tell you that very little of what's here could remotely be considered erotic. In fact, when examining a mannequin dressed in the Soviet-period's worst, I was reminded that the USSR designed many products to have a dual civilian/military function. When the enemy was invading, a woman could run out, flash her baggy, powder blue, knee-length underpants, and any foreign soldier with a glimmer of fashion sense would run away screaming. Barring that, she could simply stab him to death with her pointy 1950s bra.
The exhibit in fact covers three fashion periods: 1890 - 1919 (the end of the corset era), 1920 - 1945 (including flat figures, suspender belts and the development of the bra), and 1950 - 1960 (only four colors available and still hard to find in shops).
On second thought it may be wrong to call these "fashion periods," since a closer look shows how closely the changes were connected with important historic events. Did you know that World War I, for instance, hastened the death of the corset, when women gave up their valuable corset metal and switched to a new invention called a brassiere? "It was a patriotic act," said the exhibit's curator, Urve Mankin, the textile and clothing expert for the museum.
Mankin also explained that after the Second World War, when Tallinn's women couldn't get stockings, they would actually paint seams on their legs to make it look like they had them. And nylon was a rare commodity throughout Soviet times. Foreign workers constructing the Viru Hotel in the early 1970s brought it in to use as currency. Geopolitics, it turns out, can have a profound effect on what's next to people's skin.
In the exhibit, texts in English tell us other interesting tidbits, like the fact that when women's underpants arrived on the scene in the 16th century, only actresses, dancers and prostitutes wore them. A respectable woman would never have dreamed of wearing a pair.
The star of the show is, of course, the underwear itself, dozens of items of all sizes and descriptions. Most, including the oldest samples, have been collected by the museum since it was founded in 1937, while the newer contributions were brought in by Mankin's colleagues and friends.
Just as original as the subject itself is the clever presentation, arranged by professional designer Krista Lepland. The more valuable items are kept behind a wooden divider full of small holes through which visitors have to peer like voyeurs. Most of the frilly whites are closer to the public, hanging from clotheslines as if someone has put them out to dry. These you're allowed to touch, to feel the course fabric or elasticity.
"Gossamer" runs through the end of October, so you still have plenty of time to drop in to sneak a peek. Don't leap to too many conclusions from what you see here though. As I was marveling over the size of a velvet corset that looked like it was designed for a large marine mammal, another museum guide pointed out that a lot of what's in the collection are the sizes that didn't sell. I was somewhat relieved.
Tallinn City Museum
Open 10:30 - 18:00.
Closed Tuesdays.
www.linnamuuseum.ee
Admission 35kr.
