Tags
Clothing, Costume, fashion, Reenacting, Research, servant girls, sewing, style
I started thinking about calico jackets, short gowns, and bed gowns because OSV is around the corner, and it will be hot. At Dighton, I took off my jacket and worked in my stays because it was cooler, and at OSV I may wish to do the same thing cooking or washing. And what better thing to make than a jacket or short- or bed gown which takes little fabric and not much time.
For short gown/bed gown patterns, I’d been looking at Duran Textiles’ Newsletter, even though it is European. The general principles are the same, and I need to tweak my pattern as I don’t like the fit over the petticoat in the back.
And then I looked at images of women in bed gowns, and the paintings by Chardin, (above, 1738, right, 1747) show women in short garments over petticoats. Lovely. The rich solid of the brown with madder and the print are both attractive and practical, and I have a madder petticoat and pink striped petticoat. I could easily be a Chardin.
To get more grounded, North American Colony-based ideas, I looked through my Vogue for the Lower Sorts, Wenches Wives and Servant Girls, and found a woman running away in a Dutch calico jacket or short gown. She is a Dutch bound servant, but Catharine Mum takes off in New York with “a callicoe short gown, a green camblet gown, two striped camblet petticoats, a Dutch chintz jacket, one white and some ozenbrig aprons, a black bonnet…” and is described in an ad in the New York Gazette, 17 January 1774 (WWSG, p. 69). In Pennsylvania, a Dutch servant girl takes off in a Dutch jacket and a striped lincey petticoat (Pennsylvania Gazette, 30 March 1774, WWSG, p. 74).
Dutch chintz? Interesting–could the white ground bed gown/short gown be made of Dutch chintz? Browsing the Snowshill Collection, I found this:
Place of origin? Holland.
Is this Dutch chintz? Snowshill calls this a caraco, 1780-1800. Is it? It is a jacket? Is it a gown that is short? Is the blue Dutch jacket blue chintz, or is the style Dutch?
What are the links between the 1747 Chardin, the woman running away in 1774 New York wearing Dutch chintz, and the ca. 1780 Snowshill garment? Maybe there aren’t any, but it seems like there is a thread of some kind, though it may be a twisted and evolving thread.
None of this answers or solves my very local working fashion dilemma, except that I feel more confident that a short, skirted garment made of patterned cotton is a reasonable garment to make. I chose some kalam kari fabric and we shall see what I can make.
But first, a muslin.
Kitty Calash 
Given the second runaway notice, I think the phrase “Dutch chintz jacket” means a Dutch jacket that is chintz, not a jacket made out of Dutch chintz.
I looked into the “reenactor’s caraco” a couple of months ago and came to the conclusion that the garment was a Northern European thing, but I couldn’t figure out what to call it. Thank you so much for posting those two notices, I’d bet just about anything that “Dutch jacket” is the right term.
The whole caraco question is a really interesting one. What the heck IS the thing? The fashion plates you posted do indeed look like they have a lot of pet en l’air and jackets in them–so is the term caraco about the outfit, or the jacket-like portion of the outfit? And are museums assuming that the things they call caracos are missing their petticoats? More transparency in cataloging might help.
From the research I did in English publications, I think “caraco” just refers to the jacket – at least in English. It might have just been understood with the fashion plates that you wear a matching petticoat.
I haven’t noticed a very strict pattern, but it seems like museums are more likely to call jackets “caracos” when they have a matching petticoat. Probably the biggest problem is that Janet Arnold patterned one, calling it a caraco and not giving(/knowing) the provenance or any explanation of the term, and then the pattern companies followed her lead.
Search on Hindeloopen,,,, Very Dutch and very gorgeous chintz.18th century!
You are aware I hope that in-period, “Dutch” could mean “German” (i.e. Deutsch)? So a Dutch servant might mean a person of German origins. And ditto for the jacket. The chintzes however do seem to have been actually Dutch. At any rate, I would encourage caution before concluding that we know which noun the word “Dutch” was modifying in these particular runaway ads, much less what it meant.
My response became a post when I added an image, but yes to the Dutch/Deutsch. That is a good reminder for all of us. The most concrete piece is the “Dutch chintz,” so fabric origin not style origin. The runaway ads are complicated, but they’re interesting to think about. Sometimes I wonder about gown/short gown/jacket and how pants/trousers/jeans/dungarees are used interchangeably by some people despite specific meaning for others.
I wouldn’t base a reenacting garment for myself on a runaway ad from NY, or a garment of vague origin at the Met, and I wouldn’t draw a conclusion from the little work and thinking I’ve done so far–I just have to keep looking and reading.
i would find this relevant being from an area in New York (former New Netherlands) that was able to hold on to their “Dutchness” well into the RevWar Era and being well connected to the Provisional Government under Governor George Clinton & Kingston NY.
i find it also curious that a “Dutch Jacket” would be a “curacao;” it would be appropriate since Curaçao was a holding of the Dutch West India Company in the Carribean. It is my understanding the Dutch of New Netherland especially the Hudson Valley region had holdings in both the Dutch West Indies & maintained trade btwn the Dutch holdings of the times.
The origin of the word “caraco” is by no means clear.
“Definition of caraco – Word finder – Amaze.FM
wordfinder.amaze.fm/term/caraco
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary. caraco noun -s. Etymology: French, perhaps from Turkish kerrake alpaca coat. a woman’s short coat or jacket …”
Also
“Etymological sources note the similarity between the French “caraco” and the Spanish “caracol.” Caracol means snail. Now, the French were certainly no strangers to creative garment naming practices (pet-en-l’air, Pierrot…), but I can’t see a tie between a short jacket and a snail. Interestingly, however, someone did–in early Spanish-speaking North America a caracol indicated a type of short garment worn at night. Could the caraco have taken its name from this garment? I unfortunately cannot find any additional information about what this garment looked like–Spanish and Latin American clothing is not my forte.
The only other closely related French word I can come up with is “caracoler” which means “to prance” or to maneuver a horse as in dressage competitions (and, interestingly, in the latter usage meaning to turn about, may be related to the snail reference again–the tight spiral of a snail shell). [And aside–say that out loud. Ca-ra-co-lay. Isn’t it a delightfully prancey onomatopoetic word?] Referring to clothing as “prancey” would certainly fall into French tongue-in-cheek clothing naming convention, so perhaps a caraco is a prancing jacket? ”
http://hyalineprosaic.blogspot.com/2014/08/what-is-caraco.html