Vintage Circus Glamour

The Internet is a buzz about the new tour of the newly slimmed down Britney Spears. Her theme based on “Circus” – a throw back to vintage circuses pre-1960. Those who have had a glance of the new music video describe it rather like a fetish scene. Britney is dressed up as a fetish Ring Master, or should we say Ring Mistress. The look features tight outfits, bare midriff and of course, the best thing, the top hat with the feather. Of course there are performers dressed as Circus animals – a throw back to the “Cats” Musical. If you really want to see the look you can find a photograph here.

Of course top hats are sexy. They were worn with style by men in the 19th Century, in Victorian times. Female performers have borrowed the top hat as an accessory from male clothing, similar to the oversize men’s shirt. Reportedly men find this sexy, and Lesbians are also intrigued. Well so they say. Marlene Dietrich was famous for her Top Hat routine in the movie “Morocco” - it was considered to be very sexually ambiguous.

Yahoo recently published a great picture of three women in Top Hats - Britney Spears, Madonna and Heidi Klum. All three looked great! We can look forward I think to a whole lot of top hat influenced designs coming out of this “Vintage Circus Glam”. I do not remember the vintage circus that way. I found it boring and the Ring Master particularly pretentious. The clowns were a waste of space. It was supposed to be a treat to take a kid to the Circus. For me it was worse than a trip to the dentist. That’s saying something – my dentist at that time was an alcoholic and I had to go there since he was a customer of my parent’s store. Crates of empty liquor boxes were piled outside his surgery. Well the Circus was more painful than that to me. I have not seen this video yet but, other than the top hat I am likely to be unimpressed.

Incidentally there is a blog with a Circus theme – Pickled Pink - that looks at the influence of the Circus on fashion, music and movies. It will be a busy place. We need to look at it to see how this affects fashion – if at all. I love top hats and I am certainly rooting for them.

There was a little blurb about the Britney Spears Circus Hat today in Canada’s National Paper The Globe and Mail . It referred to high capitalism (evil landlord) and the “Monopoly” guy as exponents of the art of top hat wearing. Well I paraphrased the article a little bit. A few weeks ago I posted in “Hat Nostalgia” a very amusing Edwardian Postcard that featured a fun little guy driving a vintage automobile. His passengers were not as classy? Here it is again for your amusement.