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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: Clothing

Tuning Frocks

02 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Living History, Making Things, Reenacting

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Tags

18th century clothes, 18th century clothing, authenticity, Clothing, fitting, interpretation, living history, Making Things, sewing

You’ve washed, mended, ironed, darned, and sorted.

Now what? Now, my friend, the hard truths: the assessments and upgrades.

The hard stuff. Winter is a good time to frankly assess what you have, what you need, and what you already have needs. Could that sleeve be re-set? Stroke gathers re-done on an apron waistband? When you’re finally not planning and packing every few weeks, you have the time to really think about what you have and what you want.

There are two primary areas to assess, fit and appropriateness.

Still needs work....
Still needs work….
and the bonnet's too big.
and the bonnet’s too big.

Fit:

How well do your clothes fit you? Are your skirts long enough? Short enough? Are your breeches tight enough? Cut correctly? Waistcoats long enough? Getting dressed and taking a good look at your clothes can be enlightening. I find that photographs help me figure out issues with fit. As Drunk Tailor and I work, we take photos (especially of backs) so that whoever is being fitted can see what the fitter sees. This has proven more useful than attempting to turn around to see one’s own back like a cat chasing its tail. I’ve also used mirrors and selfies to achieve similar results, but even a non-sewing friend can take a picture of your back.

Now I can see what works
Now I can see what works
and what to work on.
and what to work on.

Period-correct clothes fit differently than modern off-the-rack clothes (you know this), so looking at period images will help you figure out what you need to change. Typically, I find that sleeves are too loose, backs too wide, or bodices too long. Making the changes you need to make can be intimidating, but even 20th-century guides can help you get where you need to go. (The Bishop Method book is super useful if you want to sew vintage clothes, or just get better at sewing clothes in general.) More online sources for 18th-century techniques include the Early Modern Dress & Textiles Research Network , and Burnley and Trowbridge’s videos.

Appropriateness:

Purveying ideas and goods as a milliner is a lot like being a curator.
Purveying ideas and goods as a milliner is a lot like being a curator.
New York and Maryland
New York and Maryland

Do you have the right gear for your impression? Are the fabrics correct? Do you have the accessories you need? You know I’m not going to tell you what you need: that’s for you to figure out, but there are some good methods for figuring how what to wear and carry. (Soldiers have it easier: the sergeant tells them, and there are manuals.) For the rest of us in the 18th century, runaway ads are helpful and can be a good source of inspiration for ensembles.

2015
2015
2016
2016

For other centuries, fashion plates and portraits can provide guidance and inspiration, and eventually, there are even pattern books and sewing guides. Small upgrades can make a big difference: in the course of a year, I improved my shoes, upgraded the scarf, and made both a cap a new and better bonnet. It took two more years, but eventually, I really upgraded everything. Sometimes it takes a while to get things right, and that’s okay.

It takes research, and there are some pitfalls (like confirmation bias) but Drunk Tailor lays out some avenues to pursue.  What you choose depends on who you are, so that’s always the place to start: who are you, where do you live, and what do you do? With those questions in mind, you can embark on making the changes to perfect your impressions.

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Saturday Afternoon in the Park with Kitty

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Events, Living History, Reenacting

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Tags

18th century, 18th century clothes, 18th century clothing, Clothing, living history, Making Things, millinery, Museums, Van Cortlandt House Museum

The strawberries and cream hat, with pinballs and pincushions

Last Saturday, I enjoyed a beautiful late summer afternoon on the lawn at Van Cortlandt House Museum in the Bronx. Built in 1748 for Frederick Van Cortlandt and his family, the house served as Washington’s headquarters in 1776, and again in 1783.

was  The Van Cortlandt House, dating from 1748, is the oldest building in the Bronx.CreditTony Cenicola/The New York Times

It’s an idyllic site, and waking up to the sound of cricket bats and Canada geese, a visitor could be fooled into thinking you were not in the Bronx at all. Mist rose above the cricket pitch when I woke up, a large flock of geese picking at the grass. It was Netherland come to life, men beating bats on their cleats and laughing. I’m really grateful to Mrs M. for the place to sleep and chance for adventure.

This trip was a remarkable cultural experience for me, and one I really needed. Growing up on the north side of Chicago, I was used to urban density and scale, so after two years in Northern Virginia suburbs, a dose of urban life was welcome. It was all the more welcome because instead of spending my time judged by cats, I got to play with dogs (and earned a sore bicep for all the stick and giraffe throwing I did for one). The trip to Stew Leonard’s was remarkable, after the tame mercantile experiences of tiny Rhode Island, and even Wegman’s paled in comparison. It was a good set up for thinking about mercantile enterprises, impulse purchases, and the ways merchants (including milliners) and shop owners needed to keep customers coming back, tempting them with new goods. (Or, in the case of Stew Leonard’s, singing cows and/or milk cartons.)

More bonnets, most of which are available on Etsy

I managed, somehow, to finish a red silk satin quilted petticoat in time (lined with red “stuff” from Burley and Trowbridge, it was not too bed-covering like until the late afternoon) to dress up the Nancy Dawson dress. I didn’t manage to locate my sleeve ruffles in time ( stitched on a garment ) but in other regards, I was pleased with how this turned out.

Bathroom selfie, but you can see that sweet silk petticoat

Dressing my clothes up– that is, moving them up the social ladder– can be a challenge, but good accessories make a big difference. Eventually I will get a finer apron made, one with a ruffle, but for now, that has to wait.

With Lark, perhaps the sweetest little rescue pup I’ve ever met.

I have a trip to Philadelphia to make, bottles to label, and receipts to write. Elizabeth Weed returns to Carpenters Hall this weekend as part of the Occupied Philadelphia programming.

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Turn Me Round

14 Friday Dec 2018

Posted by kittycalash in material culture, Research

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

1950s, Augusta Auctions, Clothing, party clothes, red dress, Research, style, vintage clothing

Gattinoni red brocade party dress, Rome, 1950s Augusta Auctions Lot: 155 October 24, 2018.

One of the best things about auction sites (when compared to museum sites) is that you get far more images of the objects, and often from unusual but helpful angles. This is true for furniture– good auction sites will post photographs of the undersides of sofas and desks, a level of detail museums simply lack the time for. For clothing, construction details aren’t always noted in the record, so we rely on images. This is where the auction sites can really be a boon: turn me round, baby.

Interior, showing black mesh boned corset w/ attached black petticoat. Gattinoni red brocade party dress, Rome, 1950s Augusta Auctions Lot: 155 October 24, 2018

I don’t know if I’d go as far as “boned corset” (well, I wouldn’t) but the boned bodice provides a lot of interior structure to this gown. The box pleats give the brocade skirt structure and fullness, but rely on the petticoat for the full silhouette. The interior structure probably didn’t provide enough support to allow the dress to be worn without additional undergarments– bra, panty girdle, even another petticoat– though it’s hard to say without knowing the original owner and feeling the dress. (Think of the boned bodices in late 19th century bodices: we know those weren’t enough to create the proper silhouette.)

It’s a wonderful look at the interior of a vintage dress, though, and one that makes replicating this garment (and look) so much easier.

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Dresstory: The Turnabout Skirt

12 Wednesday Dec 2018

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, Dresstory, personal

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Clothing, Dresstory, memoir, personal, vintage clothing

Two first dates, at least, and almost always with boots: the Pendleton plaid reversible pleated “Turnabout” skirt. I bought it in a long-gone shop on Thayer Street in Providence in 1989 or 1990 with money I earned working in the inter-library loan department at the Brown Science Library, the ugliest building on College Hill, until the apartments went in on Brook Street across from the Wheeler School. It would not have been cheap; that is, it probably cost enough to make me think twice, but it was a Pendleton, it was warm, heavy wool, and it fit. The knife pleats opened slightly when I walked, revealing a contrasting color. How could I resist? Practical and pretty, in a fabric more durable than the soles of my shoes, this skirt was made for walking.

The heavy wool was useful in the chilly frame triple-decker flats where I lived and kept the heat low for money’s sake. This would prove useful again, when I moved back west to Saint Louis, and had even less money as a graduate student than an entry-level library employee. Saint Louis had been home before, and the source of much of my vintage wardrobe, though I lost many pieces in a very bad breakup before I had the Green Eyed Lady dress. By the time I started my second round of graduate school, my wardrobe was a melange of slightly professional pieces, vintage clothing, well-worn jeans, and sweaters stolen from my father’s closet. Sometimes I think I must have looked like a walking laundry pile from a disgruntled teenager’s floor, but there I was, 24, and ready to take on anything in my eclectic armor.

IMG_6271
IMG_6273

I wasn’t wearing the Turnabout the night I met the man who really broke my heart, but I wore it on our first date the following Saturday when we went for a walk in Tower Grove Park. He was a photographer, living in a second-floor flat on a street named for a river on the near South Side of Saint Louis. I’d known him in college, or known who he was, as he had known who I was. Photography and sculpture were in the same studio building, and even among a group known for being obnoxious, I stood out.

A trip to Colorado

When I met him again late on a November Wednesday, in a partially-converted brewery, I was bored with an art opening, trying to decide whether to get a drink or go home. He stopped in the doorway to survey the gallery, a hazy golden light behind him like a Renaissance painting, so unlike the bruise-blue sky above the bony trees that waved outside my windows. A neon blue line, like the colored lines in a Thiebaud painting, wavered around him.

He talked me into a date that Saturday afternoon, picking me up at the studio so we could take his sandy-haired dog, Cooper, to the park. Cooper, distinguished as the only dog to survive eating both a Hasselblad and a Harris tweed jacket sleeve, kicked up brown leaves as he ran ahead of us. The late autumn light in Saint Louis made anything red more red, highlighting what leaves remained on trees, the painted pavilions, and the folds of my skirt.

His camera malfunctioned on what became a trip through irony

Over the months we dated and eventually lived together, Cooper went on many walks with us, and with me and my dog. I took in strays; my cat had kittens, adding half a dozen more to the three cats we already had. It was lively, and sad, and I proved too much for the photographer, who asked me leave just a few days after giving me a red Trek mountain bike for my birthday. I sold the bike, kept the cats and kittens and the skirt, and moved into my own pre-war flat on a street named for the river I now live near.

We kept being together and not together, so hard to quit seeing each other, like a bad cover of a Gun Club song. But we moved on, encountering each other in the grocery stores of the South Side for years, until I moved back to Providence. Two years later, I read his obituary in the alumni newsletter. I kept the skirt–it still fits, though more snugly than before I had a child. Twenty five years after my date with the photographer, I wore the skirt again on a rainy afternoon date with Drunk Tailor, walking the shore of Narragansett Bay in Colt State Park.

Note: The images of us are poor because they are taken from 35mm color negatives made in 1991, some of which were double exposed when the camera malfunctioned, and not printed until 2008. In the intervening decades, they acquired the dust which appears in the prints and subsequent scans.

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True Confessions of the Frivolously Fashion Obsessed

19 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, Making Things

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

19th century, 19th century clothing, Clothing, fashion, Federal style, morning dress, museum collections, patterns, sewing

Skeptical cat is skeptical

I promised you something, didn’t I, the last time I wrote?

Well, set your skepticism aside for the cat, because here’s the scoop on the messy process of getting from page to pattern to garment.

I started with the pattern from the book, which furrowed my brow a few times until I became accustomed to the style. Everyone drafts and scales patterns a little differently; it’s like getting used to local idioms. (It’s a bubbla, here, not a water fountain and not a drinking fountain. Go figure.)

But I digress. It seemed pretty simple, especially since I have some experience scaling things up, both from Sharon Burston on taking a pattern from an original garment (plot your points like an archaeologist) and from architecture school (redraw Le Corbusier’s maison from these two tiny drawings, draft an axonometric, and make a model). With Corbu behind me, you’d think this would be a piece o’ cake.

Delightfully, you would be wrong. Creative swearing, brow furrowing, and endless distractions (yes, some 28mm 17th century soldiers will be wearing Timberlands) provided the usual soundtrack and experience. Challenging, not easy, which means I hope I might actually have learned something.

Kind of a mess, right? Here’s what I did: I scaled up the pattern in the book once I’d figured out that the measurements were, incredibly, just about what I make my Federal-era dress pieces. I used the newsprint ads that come in the mail because they are abundant and free. That’s more challenging than gridded or plain paper, but free is free. With a ruler and a pencil, you can make your own grid.

After the paper patterns were drafted, I checked them against the drawings in the book, and made free hand corrections. I’ve learned that my eye is sometimes better than my math whether I am hanging paintings or making patterns.

From the tweaked newsprint pieces, I cut muslins to stitch up and try on over my stays. You MUST fit over the proper undergarments, or the exercise is pointless. These resulted in some additional tweaks and alterations accomplished at first with pins, a Sharpie, and Drunk Tailor’s patient assistance.

What then? Another round with some adjusted pieces to yield another muslin. It’s from that final fitting muslin that I transfer changes to the newsprint and then, finally, to craft paper. I was ably assisted once again by the Most Dangerous Cat in the World.

That’s what you’re left with: scraps, a muslin that’s true, and the pieces to make it. But have I made real progress on real fabric? Of course! But that’s another post.

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