A wonderful example of fashionable US Victorian day dress, composed of polonaise and trained skirt. Part 2 features the complete pattern.
I have the honor to own my great-grandmother’s 1875 wedding dress. The more I look closely at this heirloom, the more fascinating it is!
Lynn continues her series on Natural Form Era Victorian hairpieces by showing step-by-step how to create a curly hairpiece, pin curls and curly bangs.
How to make several must-have Victorian hairpieces from an inexpensive but lifelike synthetic hair. Let's start by making a switch.
An introduction to late 18th century frippery and furbelows - the items commonly used to complete feminine ensembles of the beau monde.
A wonderful example of fashionable Victorian day dress in America, composed of polonaise and trained skirt. Part 1: overview & skirt pattern.
Making sense of the vast array of shirts, breeches, trousers, waistcoats, jackets and coats, stocks, stockings, garters and cravats.
A close look at an authentic Victorian dress, with many photos, construction and sewing details, and fashion plates of the time.
Hecklinger's Ladies Garments, published in 1886, includes wonderful engravings of fashionable trimmings. We add the instructions!
Making sense of ladies' underwear 1876-82.
2: What to wear over the corset and under the dress, plus fabrics.
The underwear situation in the Natural Form Era was.... complicated! Ladies had an outfit for every situation and time of day, and underwear to go with it. To further add confusion, the "Dress Reform" movement was at its height: its main focus was on changing corsets and what was worn underneath them, all in the name of health.
So what did women wear under their dresses? It all depends on a variety of factors. I'll walk you through all the different layer options starting from the skin out, with variations in necklines and politics. Next month I'll complete the layers and show you how to combine them.
As a new costume enthusiast, you might be delighted with a particular Victorian pattern and sew it straight out of the envelope, just as it is. Experienced dressmakers might fall in love with an antique fashion plate, and recreate it to make something genuinely special.
But what if you want to make a gown that is not a direct copy of a fashion plate, or a pattern that dozens of people have already made? Suppose you want to design an original Victorian costume—something that no one's seen before, and yet which would be right at home on the pages of La Mode Illustrée, Godey's Home Journal, or Harper's Bazar?
If you've "been there, done that" and now want to make a truly original Victorian costume, read on!
When looking at sleeve patterns for 18th century dresses, there's a rather striking difference when compared to modern sleeves—they have corners.
This is because for much of the 18th century, sleeves were set differently than they are today. The sleeve was set in the lower half of the armscye, the dress was put on, and then the sleeve head was pleated to fit the wearer.
This is a very efficient method and prevents a lot of the stress often associated with setting sleeves... yet for a seamstress sewing for and by herself, it presents a problem. How exactly do you pleat a sleeve on yourself?
We've gone through our links, pored over the bookshelves and searched for the best in books to help you create a masterpiece for the Natural Form Era 1876-1882.
We've got an awesome trilogy of ladies' tailoring books by Charles Hecklinger and his equally amazing trilogy of men's tailoring books.
Having trouble getting a smooth fit to a cuirass bodice or Princess dress? We've found period fitting guides with step-by-step pictures to guide you through the process. Want to know what options women had for corsets and petticoats? Check out a mail order catalog from 1883. And that's just the free stuff, not from a bookstore!
Marion's got all the books and resources you need to create an amazing ensemble for the Revolutionary period:
The Must Have books and the Nice-to-Haves;
A 1785 French fashion magazine with men's and women's dress, hat and wig fashions; and much more!
This month on the Letters, Questions and Answers page we have:
Two requests for men's clothing articles (and the answer)
Regency pinafores as seen in Jane Austen films: did they really exist?
A free, globally available wealth of Regency fashion plates in full color
What does Dickens mean by a "comforter" in A Christmas Carol?
This early 1790s brocade bodice in Katherine's collection retains the straight front and structured lines of earlier dresses, but also hints at the later 1790s fashions with its higher waist line.
It also showcases a variety of different construction and seam finishing techniques, as each seam and edge is finished differently.
This month:
Trisha asks about creating a dress form for a French fashion doll and patterns for it.
Shawn inquires about the historically correct way to piece an 1880 chemise
Cathy explains about the DPP Corsets competition and FR
Knitted, embroidered, striped and painted: the Natural Form era had a diversity of stocking options for ladies.
Far beyond plain black or white, catalogs of the era carried fancy knitted stockings in gold, green and bright cardinal red zig zags, striped stockings in cardinal red, garnet, tan, grey and blue and embroidered cotton stockings in red, gold, black and white.
So get ready to shop for the perfect stockings, thread your embroidery needle or grab your knitting needles! We're diving into the realm of stockings and socks with fashion reports, catalogs from 1882, stocking embroidery diagrams and lots of knitting patterns for socks and stockings for all ages.
Now that we have had an introduction into the fashion of the Natural Form, it's time to proceed with choosing the details of your outfit. There are many options depending on the year that's taken your fancy.
I will start by focussing on the particulars of fashion by year, and covering the three types of dress: Day dress, Evening dress and Ball dress.
The period 1770-1789 was a time of transition in Europe and North America. It is this period that historians have long considered the dawn of the Modern Age.
Fashion often acts as a visual guide and barometer of social values and conditions, and within such a climate of change during the 1770s and 1780s, it was impossible that fashion would not be influenced.
"The ideal at present is the greatest possible flatness and straightness: a woman is a pencil covered with raiment" ~ October 23, 1875, Harper's Bazar.
We shall be wandering into that very peculiar era of fashion in the Victorian Era, known as the Natural Form with its Cuirass Bodice.
Since fashion is always intertwined with economics and war, I will take a summarized look at the socio-economic climate that occurred during this era.
Right back at the genesis of YWU I wrote an article about what I called "Holy Grails".
I'm willing to bet that most of us reading this have such projects in mind. There's a book on your shelf that naturally falls open at a certain photograph; there's a bookmark in your web browser. But we never get around to trying - it's too impractical, too expensive, too difficult, just too much all around.
This year I've actually done one of these huge projects, when I recreated a vastly decorated Edwardian Worth gown (follow this link for a FREE slideshow of museum images), and I've got so much out of it that I'm going to use this article to pull you a little bit closer to tackling your own Grail. I'm going to tell you why it's worth trying such intimidating projects, and then show you how.
Who can enter? What can I enter? What are the prizes? When's the closing date?
Here's everything you need to know to take part in our unique YWU Double Period Project and competition! And you are going to take part this year, aren't you?
You've got a full year from now until our deadline in February 2011, so there's no excuse not to get going and try for one of our fabulous prizes!
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