Tatterdemalion (pronounced tat-er-di-meyl-yuhn
or tat-er-di-mal-yuhn)
(1) A person in tattered clothing; a shabby person.
(2) Ragged; unkempt or dilapidated.
(3) In fashion, (typically as “a tatterdemalion dress”
etc), garments styled deliberately frayed or with constructed tears etc (also
described as “distressed” or “destroyed”).
(4) A beggar (archaic).
1600–1610: The original spelling was tatter-de-mallian (the
“demalion” rhymed with “Italian” in
English pronunciation), the construct thus tatter + -demalion, of uncertain origin although the nineteenth century
English lexicographer Ebenezer Cobham Brewer (1810-1897) (remembered still for
his marvelous Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable (1894) suggested it might be from de
maillot (shirt) which does seem compelling. Rather than the source, tatter is thought to
have been a back-formation from tattered, from the Middle English tatered & tatird, from the Old Norse tǫturr. Originally, it was derived from the noun, but
it was later re-analysed as a past participle (the construct being tatter + -ed) and from this came the verb. As a noun a tatter was "a shred of torn
cloth or an individual item of torn and ragged clothing" while the verb
implied both (as a transitive) "to destroy an article of clothing by
shredding" & (as an intransitive) "to
fall into tatters".
In parallel,
there was also the parallel "tat", borrowed under the Raj from the
Hindi टाट (ṭāṭ) (thick canvas) and in English it assumed a variety of
meanings including as a clipping of tattoo, as an onomatopoeia referencing the
sound made by dice when rolled on a table (and came to be used especially of a
loaded die) and as an expression of disapprobation meaning “cheap and vulgar”,
either in the context of low-quality goods or sleazy conduct. The link with "tatty" in the sense
of “shabby or ragged clothing” however apparently comes from tat as a clipping
of the tatty, a woven mat or screen of gunny cloth made from the fibre of the
Corchorus olitorius (jute plant) and noted for it loose, scruffy-looking weave. Tatterdemalion is a noun & adjective; the
noun plural is tatterdemalions. The historic synonyms were shoddy, battered, broken,
dilapidated, frayed, frazzled, moth-eaten, ragged, raggedy, ripped, ramshackle,
rugged, scraggy, seedy, shabby, shaggy, threadbare, torn & unkempt and in
the context of the modern fashion industry, distressed & destroyed. An individual could also be described as a
tramp, a ragamuffin, a vagabond, a vagrant, a gypsy or even a slum, some of
those term reflecting class and ethnic prejudice or stereotypes. Historically, tatterdemalion was also a name
for a beggar.
A similar word in Yiddish was שמאַטע (shmate or shmatte and spelled variously as schmatte, schmata, schmatta, schmate, schmutter & shmatta), from the Polish szmata, of uncertain origin but possibly from szmat (a fair amount). In the Yiddish (and as adopted in Yinglish) it meant (1) a rag, (2) a piece of old clothing & (3) in the slang of the clothing trade, any item of clothing. That was much more specific than the Polish szmata which meant literally "rag or old, ripped piece of cloth" but was used also figuratively to mean "publication of low journalistic standard" (ie analogous the English slang use of "rag") and in slang to refer to a woman of loose virtue (used as skank, slut et al might be used in English), a sense which transferred to colloquial use in sport to mean "simple shot", "easy goal" etc.
Designer distress: Lindsay Lohan illustrates the look.
Tatterdemalion is certainly a spectrum condition (the comparative
“more tatterdemalion”; the superlative “most tatterdemalion”) and this is well
illustrated by the adoption of the concept by fashionistas, modern capitalism
soon there to supply the demand. In the
fashion business, tatterdemalion needs to walk a fine line because tattiness was
historically associated with poverty while designers need to provide garments
which convey a message wealth. The general
terms for such garments is “distressed” although “destroyed” is (rather misleadingly) also used.
Highly
qualified porn star Busty Buffy (b 1996) in “cut-off” denim shorts with leather
braces while beltless.The ancestor of designer tatterdemalion
was a pair of “cut off” denim shorts, improvised not as a fashion statement but
as a form of economy, gaining a little more life from a pair of jeans which had
deteriorated beyond the point where mending was viable. Until the counter-culture movements of the
1960s (which really began the previous decade but didn’t until the 1960s assume
an expression in mass-market fashion trends), wearing cut-off jeans or clothing
obviously patched and repaired generally was a marker of poverty although
common in rural areas and among the industrial working class where it was just
part of life. It was only in the 1960s
when an anti-consumerist, anti materialist vibe attracted the large cohort of
youth created by the post-war “baby boom” that obviously frayed or torn clothing
came to be an expression of disregard or even disdain for the prevailing
standards of neatness (although paradoxically they were the richest “young
generation” ever). It was the punk movement
in the 1970s which took this to whatever extremes seemed possible, the
distinctive look of garments with rips and tears secured with safety pins so
emblematic of (often confected) rebellion that in certain circles it remains to
this day part of the “uniform”. The
fashion industry of course noted the trend and what would later be called “distressed”
denim appeared in the lines of many mainstream manufacturers as early as the
1980s, often paired with the acid-washing and stone-washing which previously had
been used to make a pair of jeans appear “older”, sometimes a desired look.
Dolce & Gabbana Distressed Jeans (part number
FTCGGDG8ET8S9001), US$1150.
That it started with denim makes sense because it's the ultimate "classless" fabric in that it's worn by those both rich and poor and while that has advantages for manufacturers, it does mean some are compelled to find ways to ensure buyers are able (blatantly or with some subtlety) to advertise what they are wearing is expensive; while no fashion house seems yet to have put the RRP (recommended retail price) on a leather patch, it may be only a matter of time. The marketing of jeans which even when new
gave the appearance of having been “broken in” by the wearer was by the 1970s a define niche, the quasi-vintage
look of “fade & age” achieved with processes such as stone washing, enzyme
washing, acid washing, sandblasting, emerizing, and micro-sanding but this was just to create an effect, the
fabrics not ripped or torn. Distressed
jeans represented the next step in the normal process of wear, fraying hems and
seams, irregular fading and rips & tears now part of the aesthetic. As an industrial process that’s not all that
difficult to do but if done in the wrong way it won’t resemble exactly a pair
of jeans subject to gradual degradation because
different legs would have worn the denim at different places. In the 2010s, the look spread to T-shirts and
(predictably) hoodies, some manufactures going beyond mere verisimilitude to actual
authenticity, achieving the desired decorative by shooting shirts with bullets, managing
a look which presumably the usual tricks of “nibbling & slashing” couldn’t
quite emulate. Warming to the idea, the
Japanese label Zoo released jeans made from material torn by lions and tigers,
the company anxious to mention the big cats in Tokyo Zoo seemed to "enjoy the fun" and to anyone who has seen a kitten with a skein of wool, that will sound plausible. Others emulated the working-class look, the “caked-on
muddy coating” and “oil and grease smears” another look although apparently short-lived; appearing dirty apparently not a fashionable choice. All these looks had of course been
seen for centuries, worn mostly by the poor with little choice but to eke a little
more wear from their shabby clothes but in the late twentieth century, as wealth overtook Western
society, the look was adopted by many with disposable income; firstly the
bohemians, hippies and other anti-materialists before the punk
movement which needed motifs with some capacity to shock, something harder to
achieve than had once been the case.
Distressed top and bottom. Gigi Hadid (b 1995) in distressed T-shirt and "boyfriend" jeans.
For poets and punks, improvising the look from the stocks
of thrift shops, that was fine but for designer labels selling scruffy-looking
jeans for four-figure sums, it was more of a challenge, especially as the
social media generation had discovered that above all they liked authenticity
and faux authenticity would not do, nobody wanting to look it to look they were
trying too hard. The might have seemed a
problem, given the look was inherently fake but the aesthetic didn’t matter for
its own sake, all that had to be denoted was “conspicuous consumption” (the excessive
spending on wasteful goods as proof of wealth) and the juxtaposition of
thousand dollar distressed jeans with the odd expensive accessory, achieved
that and more, the discontinuities offering irony as a look. The labels, the prominence of which remained
a focus was enough for the message to work although one does wonder if any of
the majors have been tempted to print a QR code on the back pocket, linked to
the RRP because, what people are really trying to say is “My
jeans cost US$1200”.
1962 AC Shelby Cobra (CSX 2000), interior detail, 2016.
The
value of selective scruffiness is well known in other fields. When selling a car, usually a tatty interior greatly will depress the price (sometimes by more even than the cost of
rectification). However, if the tattiness is of some historic significance, it
can add to car’s value, the best example being if the deterioration is part of
a vehicle's provenance and proof of originality, a prized attribute to the segment
of the collector market known as the “originally police”. In 2016, whet is recognized as the very first Shelby American AC Cobra (CSX
2000) sold for US$13.75 million, becoming the highest price realized at auction for what is classified as "American car". Built in 1962, it was
shipped to California as an AC Ace (without an engine although it apparently wasn't AC's original "proof-of-concept" test bed which was fitted with one of the short-lived 221 cubic inch (3.6 litre) versions of Ford's new "thin-wall" Windsor V8) where the Shelby operation
installed a 260 cubic inch (4.2 litre) Windsor and the rest is history. The
tatterdemalion state of the interior was advertised as one of the features of
the car, confirming its status as “an untouched survivor”. Among Cobra collectors, wear caused by Carroll Shelby's (1923–2012) butt is a most valuable tatterdemalion.
Also recommended to be
repaired before sale are dents, anything battered unlikely to attract a
premium. However, if a dent was put there
by a Formula One world champion, it becomes a historic artefact. In 1954, Mercedes-Benz astounded all when their
new grand prix car (the W196R) appeared with all-enveloping bodywork, allowed
because of a since closed loophole in the rule-book. The sensuous shape made the rest of the field
look antiquated although underneath it was a curious mix of old and new, the
fuel-injection and desmodromic valve train representing cutting edge technology
while the swing axles and drum brakes spoke to the past and present, the
engineers’ beloved straight-eight configuration definitely the end of an
era. On fast tracks like Monza, the aerodynamic
bodywork delivered great speed and stability but the limitations were exposed
when the team ran the Stromlinienwagen at tighter circuits and in the 1954 British Grand
Prix at Silverstone, Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995; winner of five Formula One world-championship driver's titles) managed to clout a couple of oil-drums (those and bails of hay how track safety
was then done) because it was so much harder to determine the extremities
without being able to see the front wheels.
Quickly, the factory concocted a functional (though visually unremarkable)
open-wheel version and the sleek original was thereafter used only on the circuits where the highest speeds were achieved. In
1954, the factory wasn’t concerned with maintaining originality and repaired
the tatterdemalion W196R so an artefact of the era was lost. That apart, as used cars the W196s have held their value well, an open-wheel version selling at auction in 2013 for US$29.7 million while in 2025 a Stromlinienwagen realized US$53.9 million.
1966 Ferrari 330 GTC (1966-1968) restored by Bell Sport & Classic. Many restored Ferraris of the pre-1973 era
are finished to a much higher standard than when they left the showroom. Despite this, genuine, original
"survivors" (warts and all) are much-sought in some circles.
In the collector car industry, tatterdemalion definitely is a spectrum condition and for decades the matter of patina versus perfection has
been debated. There was once the idea
that in Europe the preference was for a vehicle to appear naturally aged (well-maintained
but showing the wear of decades of use) while the US market leaned towards cars
restored to the point of being as good (or better) than they were on the
showroom floor. Social anthropologists might
have some fun exploring that perception of difference and it was certainly never a universal rule
but the debate continues, as does the argument about “improving” on the
original. Some of the most fancied
machinery of the 1950s and 1960s (notably Jaguars, Ferraris and Maseratis) is
now a staple of the restoration business but, although when new the machines
looked gorgeous, it wasn’t necessary to dig too deep to find often shoddy
standards of finish, the practice at the time something like sweeping the dirt “under
the rug”. When "restored", many of these cars are re-built to a higher standard, what was often left rough because it sat unseen somewhere now
smoothed to perfection. That’s what some
customers want and the best restoration shops can do either though there are
questions about whether what might be described as “fake patina” is quite the
done thing. Mechanics and engineers who were part of building Ferraris in the 1960s, upon looking at some immaculately “restored” cars have been known wryly to remark: “that wasn't how we built them then.”
Gucci offered Distressed Tights at US$190 (for a pair so quite good value). Rapidly, they sold-out.
The fake patina
business however goes back quite a way. Among antique dealers, it’s now a definite niche but from the point at
which the industrial revolution began to create a new moneyed class of mine and
factory owners, there was a subset of the new money (and there are cynics who
suggest it was mostly at the prodding of their wives) who wished to seem more like old money and a
trend began to seek out “aged” furniture with which a man might deck out his (newly
acquired) house to look as if things had been in the family for
generations. The
notoriously snobbish (and amusing) diarist Alan Clark (1928–1999) once referred
to someone as looking like “they had to buy their own chairs”, prompting
one aristocrat to respond: “That’s a bit much from someone whose father
(the art historian and life peer Kenneth Clark (1903–1983)) had to buy his
own castle.” The old money were of
course snooty about the such folk and David Lloyd George (1863–1945; UK prime-minister 1916-1922) would lament many of the “jumped-up grocers” in his Liberal Party were more troublesome and less sympathetic to the troubles of the downtrodden than the gentry in their inherited mansions.
