From Parnell's suit to Casement's closet: Masculinity, homosexuality and the fashioning of the Irish nation

Several prominent Irish political figures of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were known to have taken more than a passing interest in their appearance. The wardrobes of men such as C. S. Parnell, the first leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party at Westminster, or Roger Casement, the diplomat turned anti-imperialist and Irish revolutionary, offer unprecedented insight into the evolution of modernity in Ireland as explored through the politics of consumption. From the tweed suit to the saffron kilt, men's fashions played a key role in debates about national identity in the period. And further, dress as a visualization of normative and dissident masculinities, from Parnell to Casement, proved significant in the fashioning of an Irish nation that foreshadowed the end of empire and has to date been entirely overlooked.