Dear Etiquetteer:
With everyone concerned - or at least with a lot of people concerned - about spreading the coronavirus, do you think that gloves are set to make a comeback? I don’t mean disposable medical gloves or rubber gloves, but traditional old-fashioned white gloves. Maybe if everyone wore gloves we could shake hands safely again. Does this seem likely?
Dear Loving Gloves:
One might think that gloves would protect against anything, since that’s their purpose. But with a matter of health, it’s best to consult one’s doctor first. And right now the medical community says that wearing gloves does not protect against the coronavirus. You read that correctly, does not. This helpful piece from Good Housekeeping explains that “COVID-19 doesn't transmit through skin contact on your hand, but rather when bacteria enters your system through mucous membranes on your body or via respiratory droplets in close proximity.” So, if you’ve touched something with your gloved hand, and then end up touching your face, that defeats the purpose of wearing gloves as protection. Here’s the Center for Disease Control’s official page on when to wear gloves.
The article goes on to report that gloves, especially woven gloves (read: cotton, silk, nylon), help move the coronavirus around to other surfaces, such as your phone, your keys, your wallet . . . or someone else’s gloved hand. So Etiquetteer cannot support the Return of the Handshake, even with gloves. And most Etiquetteer readers favor substituting a simple nod of the head for the handshake right now anyway.
When do gloves help? Good Housekeeping says they help if they remind you not to touch your face. Etiquetteer would add that a Perfectly Proper pair of kid gloves, in white or any color, help if they improve your mood. For ladies there’s almost no more elegant accessory than a pair of white gloves. But aside from the CDC’s recommendation that gloves be disposed of after each wearing*, white gloves would look out of place with jeans or shorts, don’t you think? A pair of gloves could elevate the tone of pair of leggings. See an example from the ballet world below.
Gloves were not just elegant; they were hard work, too. Believe it or not, they had to be cleaned with gasoline! “For cleaning gloves, gasoline, benzine, naphtha, and soap used with either milk or water, fuller's earth, with or without powdered alum, cream of tartar, pipe clay, French chalk, bread crumbs, and corn meal are all recommended.” Deborah Mitford, Duchess of Devonshire, remembered being given a pair of her mother’s long white kid evening gloves during her debutante year, and that they had to be shipped off to Pullar’s of Perth to be cleaned after every wearing**.
While we think of white as the most Perfectly Proper color, other colors have also been stylish. If Fréderic Chopin’s gloves were not white, they were lilac, one of his favorite colors. In the 19th-century yellow gloves were part of a gentleman’s required wardrobe for formal calls. Etiquetteer vaguely remembers reading about the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen being laughed out of the room by friends when he appeared for the first time wearing yellow gloves - much too formal for all those bohemians! Remember, it’s a greater sin to be overdressed than underdressed. You’ll find an interesting history of gloves at Encyclopedia Brittanica. And here’s a lot more at Vintage Dancer.
But thinking just in terms of personal style, a pair of gloves can make an outfit. Final costume preparations for the Ballets Russes’ new ballet Les Biches took an unexpected turn when Serge Diaghilev Himself picked up the scissors and cut away most of the velvet frock coat being worn by Vera Nemtchinova, almost completely exposing her legs. At the time, that was not yet the norm for ballerinas. “I feel naked!” cried Nemtchinova, who Diaghilev promptly told to “go buy yourself some white gloves!” “The celebrated white gloves became almost a part of the choreography,” recorded Diaghilev’s biographer Richard Buckle.***
Vera Nemtchinova in costume for Les Biches. She made the gloves an essential part of her performance.
So Etiquetteer will not be adopting gloves this summer, but will certainly continue to wear a mask in public when it’s necessary to go out.
*Queen Mary famously never wore the same pair of gloves twice, but she could afford it. She could also afford to wear that many diamonds before 5:00 PM and get away with it . . .
**From her wonderful memoir Wait for Me!
***From Diaghilev (1979), page 420.