Tag Archives: bonnets

Capote de Velour garnis en satin

27 Tuesday Nov 2018

Posted by in Clothing, Making Things

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , ,

Costumes Parisiens, 1807

This plate has stuck with me for years: those mailbox shapes, in velour! In 1807, velour was not what we think of today (and I don’t mean Zapp Branigan). Valerie Cumming’s Dictionary of Fashion defines velour as “Wool or wool mixture cloth, soft and smooth with a closely-cut pile or nap resembling velvet.” Not having access to wool velour in the scrap bins at work, or in the fashion aisles at the local fabric store, I opted for velvet; the scrap bin provided pink silk taffeta, which I thought made a nice contrast to the texture and finish of the velvet. It is true that “velure” dates to the 17th century, and describes imitation velvet. The wool velour I’m familiar with from upholstery is too dense and heavy to drape well over a bonnet (it’s really made for sofas and armchairs), so erring on the hand of the fabric seemed a reasonable choice. Wool velour with silk satin would be an amazing textural contrast, but with this color combination, almost any fabrics will give a pleasant optical shock.

French 19th Century, Les Invisibles en tête-à-tête (Tête-à-Tête with Poke Bonnets), c. 1805, etching with publisher’s hand coloring in watercolor on pale green laid paper, Katharine Shepard Fund 2015.49.4

Shaping the brim was an exercise in paper and pasteboard, winging it a bit until I achieved a length and width that was mailbox-like but not too drainage tunnel. The cartoons of the period make clear that these are deep brimmed bonnets. I do like that the bonnet on the left is trimmed so like the ones in the fashion plate; the one at right is probably corded or reeded, judging by the ridges.

The trickiest bit was shaping the silk to the compound curve of the brim. Three patternings got me there– until I realized the silk needed body to hold up to binding, and took a short cut. Ask not of the sin of fusible interfacing, for I have learned my lesson. Yes, the silk piece shrank and no longer curved evenly from the front edge. Thank goodness Drunk Tailor was watching The Pacific, so any foul language I may have used was disguised by movie dialogue. The binding is bias-cut silk, easy enough. After the debacle of the Vandyke trim, I opted not to cut and bind the leaf shapes, but rather to cut the ovals with pinking shears and attach them along a silk band. Would I do it differently another time? Possibly, if only because I like to imagine the different ways an American milliner might interpret a French fashion plate.

Once I settled on making the bonnet, I decided it was time to finish a pink wool petticoat I started in 2015 after a trip to Mood. It’s a tropical weight Australian wool, according to its selvedge, and has a high-waisted bodice with a drawstring closure. I covered the bottom drawstring (and added some bling) with a black velvet belt closed with a period paste buckle. (Every now and then someone doesn’t know what they’ve got, and lets it go for a price I can afford.) On top, the gathered back cotton velveteen canezou/Spencer made for my first trip to Genesee. Having a wardrobe extensive enough to mix-and-match almost the way I do from my modern closet is pretty satisfying, if a little crowded.

This isn’t a bonnet for wearing while crossing a busy street, though it will successfully shelter the wearer and a cat from any sudden downpours, and one is unlikely to get sunburned wearing this. I didn’t find it distracting to wear– but I didn’t go far, and I had a companion. But what price fashion?

I Want [peppermint] Candy

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by in Clothing, Living History, Making Things, material culture

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , ,

A friend regularly sends me bonnet descriptions from the inventories she’s researching; one description was of a white silk bonnet with a red cherry silk lining from Rowan County, N.C. in the 1770s. Hot stuff, right? Less hot if you made it in white linen, but even North Carolina has winter sometimes. I made two, of course, in sightly different shapes.

Bonnet Number One

Strawberry shortcake? Whipped cream and cherries? You tell me, but I always maintain that bonnets are the cupcakes of costuming: pretty, fluffy, low-calorie and quick to make. 

Once she’d sent me the description, I got hung up on finally finishing my wrapping gown. 

There are enough events where I sleep over that a wrapper for the morning is a useful thing. My characters don’t rate the silk of the one I made for Potts Grove Manor, but I used the same pattern with a reproduction cotton print from Burnley & Trowbridge. I love it– but I do feel a bit like a candy cane. 

Bonnet Number Two, Lampshade Style

Because I’ve seen so many instances of sun shade bonnet (herein known as “lampshade,” making one up in that form seemed like a good idea– and the crowning glory to the red and white striped wrapper. 

Now I really need a cherry red silk quilted petticoat to wear with this ensemble. Some other autumn, when I have more space and time perhaps. 

Black and Blue

21 Tuesday Aug 2018

Posted by in Clothing, Events, History, Making Things

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , ,

Unlike some of my earlier posts, this Black and Blue refers to a different kind of historical effect: the purely aesthetic. (Yes, it is a departure for me. Moving below the Mason-Dixon line has been curious, as my encounters at the bank regularly make me wonder if I have stumbled into the Invasion of the Body Snatchers or Pleasantville. Surely real humans aren’t this nice! I thought the people of Rhode Island were just fine, but maybe my standards were warped by growing up in a Major Midwestern City.) In any case, times change and so do people. Onward, to the aesthetic!

First, there was the new waistcoat. That should be enough to refresh an outfit, right?
Wrong.

The armscye sits way back over the shoulder blades

The set of the armscye didn’t coordinate with the white gown I made two summers ago, so a new item would be in order. I thought this would be the case in the muslin, but when I basted up the blue silk (selected because I had enough material to make a waistcoat and a cap), it was clear something new would have to go underneath.

The original waistcoat’s date of ca. 1797 helped narrow down my choices, and a 1799 fashion plate helped as well. Blue over white: pretty snazzy. I sketched up the plan for the white wrap-front gown, re-imagined that when I got batiste after asking for voile, and figured I’d be fine. A blue silk cap trimmed in black wool lace or gold silk cord still seemed like a good solution.


But the fashion plate showed a black hat or bonnet, and whilst trolling Etsy with a Manhattan in hand, searching for an 1830s-appropriate buckle, I took a look at one of my favorite shops, just to see.

Reader, I saw.

The “overly honest milliner” confessed that this style would not flatter everyone. Challenge accepted! In truth, though, I have a small head, and having cut my hair short for the summer, can (must) wear a slightly different kind of headware. I’ve also tried on enough of Anna’s millinery to know what will and won’t work for me, so I was pretty certain this bonnet would suit me well.

I trimmed it with some blue silk double-faced satin ribbon recovered from a failed bonnet attempt of several years ago, and then cast about for something else. Something different. Wednesday found me steaming feathers– as you do– while Drunk Tailor pulled KP duty. I hid the feather quills (more or less) with a ribbon rosette, and the considered fastening. Many early-nineteenth century bonnets don’t tie under the chin, and in any case, I didn’t have enough ribbon left to pull that off.

Parking lot selfie, with sweat, curls, and feathers. I like the way the feathers contrast with the curls.

The solution? Another rosette. On the feather side, I stitched the straight tail of the ribbon to the bonnet. The second rosette attached to the ribbon, which I then ran under my chin and pinned. Bonnet secured, more or less, though the feathers necessitate caution when exiting a vehicle.

Reap what you Sew

12 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by in Clothing, History, Living History, Making Things, material culture, Reenacting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , ,

Too big!

Lampshade: She’s been the Holy Grail of bonnet making.

There were several failures in the winter of 2016, and some revisiting of the Whale-Safe Bonnet as I tried to figure out the brim and the caul. My first efforts made a caul that was waaaaay too small. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I’ve made plenty of too-big bonnets. (Too small did not make the move from RI to VA, but trust me: too small a caul was far too small.)

Reapers 1785 George Stubbs 1724-1806 Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, the Art Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and subscribers 1977 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T02257
Haymakers 1785 George Stubbs 1724-1806 Purchased with assistance from the Friends of the Tate Gallery, the Art Fund, the Pilgrim Trust and subscribers 1977 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/T02256

This morning, I took another look at George Stubbs’ paintings of working women. I know the lampshade-like bonnet is pre-1770, but where are we at the end of the Revolutionary War period? Well, BIG was in, obviously. (We can have a healthy debate about the likelihood of these gowned women depicting actual working women, but for now, let’s stick to bonnet brim shapes.)  They’re a little cone-like, aren’t they? With generous (yuuuge) cauls, though.

Now, I have gone about this all a bit backwards, which is to admit that I picked up the shellacked brim of yesteryear that did make the move down to VA, and decided to make it up as a bonnet yesterday. The brim is easy– trace and cut with a seam allowance– but the caul? I winged it, using a selvage edge for the inside of the back drawstring (I like my headwear to be adjustable and pack flat) and economized on fabric to leave plenty of taffeta left over. So there’s nothing particularly well-researched about this, except for all the years of looking and thinking and drawing and making that came before the moment I threw this all together yesterday afternoon watching North by Northwest and drinking a Manhattan.*

Part I like best?
The way it hides my face!

Making this up raises more questions: how individually fitted were bonnets to wearers? Did caul and brim size vary depending on wearer? What’s the class line below which a woman doesn’t have a bonnet, but only a hat? How quickly did styles change? The sort-of-conical black bonnet is seen on “older” women in paintings well past the height of the style. But as I’ve asked before, what do we really understand about the portrayal of age in art? Are we really reading the symbols correctly? How well do we grasp the semiotics of the 18th century? All of those questions are present when we try to replicate the past using only visual sources. Yes, there is an extant 18th century black silk bonnet at Colonial Williamsburg, and we can use that in conjunction with images to make the things we wear. But pondering all of these questions makes me think it’s time for another troll through collections in Great Britain, just in case new cataloging has put old bonnets online.

*See my other blog, TipsyMilliner, for more.

Milliner’s Shop Redux: A big, visual project

10 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Clothing, History, Living History, Museums, Reenacting

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, , , , , , , ,

The complete ensemble, under supervision.

When I first moved to Providence, I lived in Fox Point, a slightly fringy-dingy neighborhood of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants and their descendants that was cheap enough for students (and even today remains imperfectly gentrified: Providence, I love you dearly). As my then-boyfriend and I walked my dog, we passed a man whom I later came to know as the Block Captain, who remarked to my boyfriend, “Beeg wooman.” Any project I take on is, therefore, big, since I am nearly six feet tall.

Although I have schemes for a Big New Century Project (a complete 1585 ensemble), I’ll take a shortcut instead to my current enthusiasm and write about last weekend and the 1811 fashion plate reconstruction, which happily includes one of my favorite visual sources, early 19th century fashion plates — thanks to Scene in the Past’s albums and Ackemann’s Repository on the Internet Archive.

Display window
and counter

I’ve written about the canezou plate before, but not since I (mostly) completed it on the trip up to Salem. This 1811 plate appealed to me first because of the bonnet (checks!) and the necklace (lapis!), but then realized that the canezou and its petticoat were within my ability to complete.

The ensemble also seemed suitable for a summer day in Salem, which, while usually more humid than hot, calls for cool, lightweight, clothing that can withstand a potentially sweat-drenched day without melting.

Gentlemen lounging on the street

From start to finish was three weeks: canezou, bodiced petticoat, necklace, bonnet, and shoe trims, all a vernacular rendition of a high-fashion image, adapted to the materials at hand– though I did have to order bonnet taffeta from India, which arrived just in time– much faster than I could have expected in 1811 Salem!

Setting up the shop for the fourth time was as much fun as the first time, and a little easier, given the practice I’ve had. I shared the shop with a tailor, Mr. B, of hat-making renown which made for a nice contrast interpreting men’s and women’s fashions and purchasing habits.

Packing up hat stands, bonnets, accessories, and furniture and driving them 470 miles is a kind of madness, but interpreting women in business and early shopping is one of my favorite historical enterprises.