How were costumes designed before Planches influence became widespread?
There were two main sources for costume design: tradition and individual taste. A. Traditional costumes associated certain types of clothing with certain types of roles. For instance, an aging fop in a comedy or farce was likely to be dressed as if he had come directly from the 1750s or so, in knee breeches, powdered wig, and so forth, even though no one dressed like that in contemporary England. Ingenues had to be in pink and white, regardless of the season of the story or the setting of the action, and most of the time, female romantic leads were in prom dresses, again regardless of action. (This is shown, for instance, when in “The Vampire” a young Scottish heiress is out hunting–in a ball gown with bracelets, hair ornaments, and so forth.) Traditional costume was particularly demanding in the classics. For instance, in Shakepseare’s “Hamlet,” the title character always had one stocking (never two) carefully rolled down about the mid-calf, showing it was “down-gyved.” The clue was