This Scottish-made neoclassical muslin gown (Figure 1) raises questions, such as the ‘why’ of whiteness. Whiteness in apparel was not a random absence of colour. It reflects cultural priorities, technologies and repeated interventions (like laundering) to realize its purpose. This gown, c. 1800, sums up generations of political and cultural prioritizing of whiteness, including white textiles, entangled with western politics of race.

The neoclassical style (1770s–1820s) was a craze inspired by study of classical archaeology and art. Neoclassicism was founded on Europe’s fascination with the classical past, a past viewed through the lens of racial politics and mass African enslavement. The celebration of whiteness that emerged shaped artistic hierarchies, including fashion; for fashion was also part of the western aesthetic movement and, as Charmaine Nelson states: “the practice of western art generally was colonial (88).”

Founding art historian, Johann Winckelmann (1717–1768), set paradigms, writing that: “a beautiful body will be all the more beautiful the whiter it is (194).”

This gown is among thousands in museums, rarely assessed in the context of racialized histories. These were worn across the Atlantic world, with some wearers styling themselves as Greek goddesses. Fashionable whiteness was their aim.

Figure 2, a watercolour from St. Kitts, 1798, depicts two seamstresses of African heritage modeling variants of the neoclassical mode, a rebuttal of political hierarchies. This rare visual evidence denotes the determined resistance of Black women, with skills enabling them to be fashion stylists for clients and themselves.

Material culture study opens doors for more questions about our racialized past.