A Corset for Cleopatra

The third in my series about bodices made for famous women

Let’s start by dispelling a few misconceptions about Cleopatra.

First of all, despite being the Queen of Egypt she wasn’t actually Egyptian but came from a long line of Macedonian Greeks that had ruled Egypt for over 250 years by the time Cleopatra was born. Her ancestor Ptolemy I who began the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty over Egypt in 305 BCE was a General and a friend of Alexander the Great, the King of the Greek kingdom of Macedon.

She wasn’t the first or only queen of Egypt called Cleopatra and was actually the fourth, although undoubtedly the most famous as well as being the final ruler of the Ptolemaic dynasty. But this is where it all gets confusing because there were literally only three female names used during this era, Cleopatra, Arsinoe and Berenice. It was even worse for the men as they were pretty much all called Ptolemy without exception. We can see this at play with Cleopatra’s siblings; she had two sisters predictably called Berenice and Arsinoe and two brothers called Ptolemy and yes, you guessed it Ptolemy.

Perhaps the biggest myth of all is that she was stunningly beautiful which is not true. Sadly she was not the drop dead gorgeous woman portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor. I doubt that Mark Antony looked much like Richard Burton either but that is cinematic licence I guess. After her defeat and suicide, the Romans destroyed all contemporary images and statues of her and the only remaining image we have produced during her lifetime is on coins and as we can see she was no beauty.

However we also have to bear in mind that these were minted during wars with Rome when she wanted to be portrayed as a fierce and terrifying warrior not some stunning pin up girl so it might be that they are deliberately unflattering. According to Plutarch men were hypnotised not by her beauty but by her wit and charm. She doesn’t get a great press however and was also described as a cunning, wanton seductress as well as plain, shrew like and with a hooked nose although this may just be propaganda put around by her enemies. The Roman poet Horace called her a ‘fatale monstrum’ and I don’t think you need to speak Latin to get the gist of that. What we do know is that she was highly intelligent and charismatic. She spoke several languages including Latin, Greek and Egyptian which is remarkable as she was the first Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt to actually speak the native tongue. None of her ancestors deemed it necessary to speak the language of the country over which they ruled.

Born in 69 BCE the daughter of Ptolemy XII she was the lover of both Julius Caesar and Mark Antony. After the death of her father she jointly ruled Egypt with both her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, one after the other, marrying them both as was the custom, but that didn’t stop her ultimately getting rid of them either. The final years of her reign from 44 to 30 were jointly ruled with her son Ptolemy Caesar, assumed because of his name to be the son of Julius Caesar. After Julius Caesar’s death in 44 BCE, Mark Antony became the heir to Caesar’s authority in Rome, and he sent for Cleopatra. She arrived on a luxurious barge kitted out in the robes of Isis and Antony was totally captivated. Conveniently forgetting his wife Fulvia he returned to Alexandria with Cleopatra and in time she gave birth to his twins. After the Roman armies of Octavius defeated their combined forces, Cleopatra and Mark Anthony both committed suicide in 30 BCE. She was just 39 years old.

Continuing with my series of bodices for famous women, both real and fictional, I was inspired to make a corset for Cleopatra by the words of William Shakespeare

“Age does not wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety. Other women cloy the appetites they feed but she makes hungry where most she satisfies”

But let’s backtrack a little… Back in 2003 we had spent a few days in Egypt which was memorable for many reasons but most of all for Stewart proposing to me outside the Egyptian museum in central Cairo. As well as an engagement ring we also came home with a variety of unwanted souvenirs. One evening we went out to eat and got lost trying to find the restaurant, but a charming and very helpful local offered to show us the way to an alternative eatery. On the way we just happened to pass his ‘uncle’s’ shop. We eventually left the shop having been bamboozled into buying some pungent perfume, the original man nowhere in sight, but with still no idea where we would eat so we ended up back at our hotel.

The following day we felt wise to the trickery of these locals, certain we would never be so naïve and gullible again. So neither of us could explain how we then ended up chatting to the charming ‘doctor’ who directed us to his shop in the middle of nowhere where we were given tea and shown a wonderful array of goods that apparently he would give to us as a sign of friendship between our countries. Half an hour later we discovered that him giving us these gifts required us giving him a gift of £40 in what was obviously a mutual display of friendship, so considerably poorer we left with more perfume, papyrus pictures, glass bottles and beads. How did that happen? We also ended up having an unintentional ride on a camel while we were there. Neither of us actually recall agreeing to this nor getting up on the darn animals, but we did! Although we both vividly recall not being let off the creatures until we handed over yet another substantial financial ‘gift’ and then having to hot foot it over the sand to get back on our coach. I’m pretty adventurous but it was terrifying, however I digress.

Worth it for the photo opportunity? Although I’m not sure what Stewart had on his head!

The one thing I came home with that I did actually like were the handful of beads made from a painted turquoise stone, shaped liked little scarab beetles and it was the colour of these beads that gave me the colour of my finished bodice. My initial idea was to make something beautiful to portray the seductive qualities of Cleopatra. I dyed some raw silk a wonderful rich turquoise and used it to construct a fully boned corset with an intricate machine embroidered panel down the front featuring lotus flowers. I then presented this as one of my final projects for my City and Guilds diploma and it duly failed.

Note the uneven hemline caused by my lack of dressmaking skill

The reason given was that the boning wasn’t perfect. I did try to argue that as my C & G was in machine embroidery not dressmaking this shouldn’t really matter, but to no avail. It was definitely the right decision and later in my role as a C & G tutor making that decision to pass or fail students’ work I would have agreed because at diploma level the work has to perfect in all aspects. But at the time I was subjected to some unkind, humiliating and very public feedback from my then tutor, witnessed by my own students, which left me feeling very deflated and angry. I may have had a tantrum, sworn a lot (sorry Mum), thrown the wretched bodice across the room (this was not witnessed by my students I hasten to add) but ultimately I decided I would make something better… and I believe I did.

Playing with design ideas

I started from scratch and made a new corset from papyrus which I bonded with a material called lutradur. Everything was painted with bronze, gold and turquoise paint before being heavily machine stitched with a design of papyrus flowers. I was keen to use some of the original corset which I had deconstructed, so for the front panel of the new garment I managed to incorporate some of the original machine embroidered panel. I then distressed the whole corset with a heat gun which partially dissolved away the lutradur giving the aged, decaying but still beautiful effect I was seeking in order to illustrate those immortal words “Age does not wither her…”

To finish off I added a rag rug corsage that I made with strips of fabric cut and torn from the original bodice. Along each strip of fabric I machine embroidered the words from the Shakespeare quote although a couple of my students at the time rather wickedly suggested I had written “I hate *** (the name of the tutor who had failed me… if you know, you know!) but that was not the case. Ultimately the second version was much better than the original in concept and execution, so I had a lot to thank her for. She pushed me to do better, although she might have been a bit kinder.

I had also wanted to incorporate pearls into my design. There is a story that Cleopatra and Mark Antony had a wager to see who could host the most lavish and expensive dinner party. Obviously this was before the days of Elton John. Just as Antony thought he was going to win the bet, Cleopatra took one of two enormous and expensive pearls and dropped it into a cup of vinegar. The pearl dissolved and Cleopatra drank the dubious sounding pearl and vinegar cocktail, thereby winning the wager. Much as I love this story I could find no sensible way to incorporate pearls into the final design; however I added some jewelled adornment as the Egyptian style collar necklace made to be worn with the original corset worked equally well with the second version. And that is my story of Cleopatra’s corset.

If you missed them first time round and want to read the stories of how I came to make two previous corsets/bodices you can find them here:

A Bodice for Persephone

A Bodice for Anne Boleyn