When I was in university my tutor gave me some photocopies of 19th century fashion plates as she knows I like them. They've just been sitting in a folder for a year but I recently got them out and decided to start colouring them in so that I could frame them. Here is the first one I've done which is a French fashion plate from 1888:
And here is my coloured in version:
For each of the gowns I looked up images to use as a reference for
the colour schemes. So working from left to right, images used as a reference for the white and burgundy dress:
Evening dress by Mme Dellac, c.1878, Met Museum
(fig 1) Gown, 1885, Museu del Disseny de Barcelona, Item MTIB 146255-0
La Revue de la Mode, dated August 30, 1885
La Revue de la Mode, dated May 17, 1885
Not all of these are the right date area but the overall effect of the white offset with deep burgundy/maroon is lovely so that was the colour combo I chose for that dress. And onto the yellow gown.
fashion plate c.1880s
Fashion Plate 1876, The Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine
(fig 2) Fashion Plate, 1885
(fig 3)Fashion Plate 1888
Note the 3D adornment in fig 2 which matches my fashion plate. Initially I thought the spots were just printed spots but the shading on them is off set so I think they're meant to be interpreted as a 3D embellishment similar to this much clearer fashion plate. I made a much stronger contrast for my image, which was just personal preference. As it was one of the last dresses I coloured in I didn't want too many very pale dresses and so leave the purple gown looking out of place for being so dark. Now the blue dress:
Fashion Plate, c.1880s
Fashion Plate , 1886
(fig 4) Dress c.1870–1880, Collections of the de Young and Legion of Honor museums of San Francisco, CA. Accession Number: 52.12.1a-b
Afternoon Dress, 1875, House of Worth, Met Museum
I don't have many direct references for the colour palate for this gown, however looking at other blue dresses gave me some ideas of what direction I wanted to go. Purple gown:
House of Worth Gown, 1880
No information
1884 Gown (fig 5)
Gown, c 1885, Museum of Arts and Crafts Zagreb
There were a lot of interesting shades of purple in this time period, and I decided to contrast it with a pale grey for the trimmings. And now the final cream dress:
Gown, 1882, Sigal Museum
Fashion Plate, c.1870s
(fig 6) Fashion Plate 015, 1885, Met Museum
(fig 7) American Dress 1880s, Met Museum Accession Number C.I.38.58.2a, b
This cream dress was the one I struggled with working out the trim colouring for. I just kept changing my mind as I saw how something looked and couldn't make my mind up. Eventually I settled on pale blue and pink trim with pink flowers but it was the most frustrating gown to colour.
Overall, this gave a useful starting point into understanding later Victorian fashions as it's not a period I've ever studied in great detail. Creating colour palates for an outfit is something I'm not very good at and so I always try to pay attention to how colours are put together in any time period. Through the 1880s you have an interesting mix of analogous colour palates (so colours next to each other in the colour wheel eg red, orange, and yellow)
or a very highly contrasting colour palate. Which is interesting to see in the same time period as it's a very different approach to colour in clothing. This is possibly influenced by the continued development of synthetic dyes in this time period which began a few decades earlier, so a much wider variety of colours are available to create interesting colour palates with.
I learnt a lot from looking at these fashion plates and original gowns and while the result is a nice pretty picture I can frame for my work area, the main reason for doing it was to learn more about the 1880s which I definitely have!
I recently was able to do a photoshoot with my degree work and am super happy with how the photos turned out! One of two costumes I made for my final year was an Italian Renaissance gown from 1531 which is based on this portrait of Margherita Paleologo which I visited at Buckingham Palace:
I made a few differences in my recreation the main one being that I did not apply the braid pattern to the skirt as for one person the workload would have been impossible. As I had to rush taking my final photos to finish my degree I wanted to have a proper photoshoot at a later date. And so my model recently came to visit me so we staged a photoshoot at Norwich Cathedral in the Cloisters and here are the results:
My friend Isabel also took photos of her Tudor kirtle:
Last year my friend Isabel and I were having a conversation about how much we love the book Little Women, as you do, and we thought it’d be fun to make up clothing from that era so we could dress up and have a bit of fun. As we’re both costumers it seemed like something plausible, however at the time I was still in university and therefore unable to work on the project. But now it’s a year later, I have graduated and she has a job, and so let the work begin! Also since then, our other friend has joined in on the idea so we now have three of us doing this. We had a proper chat about it and decided that we wouldn’t pick a sister and go full on dressing up as the March Sisters but that we’d just have a kind of theme of that era and idea. So time to research 1850s-60s dresses, as my logic is that the family are poor so the clothes may be a bit outdated and this also gives me a bit more freedom in finding something I like to reconstruct.
As writing up all of my research and progress when making costumes has been drilled into my head (thanks university) I thought I might try and start a blog up and follow this and whatever other projects I choose to work on and see how this goes. Isabel also has a blog which can be found here https://thehistoricalseamstress.blogspot.com/and she’ll be updating as she works!
Research:
Research for me began with looking through my rather large collection of historical dress books and bookmarking anything that vaguely interested me and/or had patterns that I would be able to make use of. I also have a very extensive collection of pins showing clothing from the 1400s to the mid 1900s so went through those and collected the 1860s and 1850s dresses that I thought I’d look nice in.
(fig 2) Unidentified CDV of a teenage girl, (n.d.)
(fig 1) Afternoon dress,
(fig 3) Evening dress,
Mme. Olympe
I discovered an interesting thought with the fact that 1860s day dresses have very high necklines which is something I rather dislike wearing personally as the sensation is slightly claustrophobic for me. So I started looking at possibly doing a softer shirt which I thought might bother me less to wear:
(fig 4) Garibaldi Blouse
(fig 5) Unidentified CDV
(fig 6)
I liked this idea and so this is what I’m going to do, and I may come back and make a more structured bodice/jacket later on.
Undergarments
Undergarments required for 1860s: Chemise, Drawers, Corset, Crinoline, Petticoat (at least one but more likely two) and also potentially a corset cover as I am planning on just doing a shirt and I can’t have my corset be visible because that’s just too scandalous. Some historical undergarments that I will base my reconstruction around:
Making Victorian Costumes for Women - Heather Audin
I will make a note of which patterns I end up using and where to find them. So for now, I’ll end this first post here and update when I have made progress with the undergarments. I may also put up some of my final year of university work so that there are more regular updates!
