Tag Archives: dress

Dresses and Evidence

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

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Sandby: Sara Hough, YCBA

Here is Sara Hough, Mrs. T. P. Sandby’s Nursery Maid drawn by Paul Sandby ca. 1805, from the Yale Center for British art. She’s rather lovely, and though I’d tend to put her date earlier than 1805 based on the clothing, I don’t know enough (anything) about the Sandbys, and it may be that the dates of Sara’s employment fixed the date of the drawing. But doesn’t that robe and train look distinctly 1790s?

What I like about it is that here is a maid wearing an open robe and train–how impractical, especially in a nursery–so the drawing makes a third kind of evidence in addition to fashion plates and extant examples.

1794, V&A

1794, V&A

1795, MMA

1795, MMA

1794 and 1795 fashion plates from the V&A and the Met show similar robes, though the V&A is described as a walking dress, and the Met’s plate shows evening dress. Extant examples include the Kyoto chintz gown, and this chintz gown at the V&A.

1795-1800, V&A

1795-1800, V&A

1780s, KCI

1780s, KCI

I like how art once again blows up my expectations and makes me think more about the time frame when styles can be worn, and why: maids lag mistresses in style? Comfort and personal taste? or is the assigned date just not right? It’s an evasive “circa,” which can wiggle 5 to 10 years either way, depending on the collection’s standards. The drawing could be 1795, and it’s not later than 1809, when Sandby died.

Aside from the questions and quibbles over the date, the image gives us great information about how to wear an open robe with an apron, how to carry scissors, what watering cans looked like around 1800, the profile of shoes and caps, and how hair might be styled.

Smibert Smitten

19 Wednesday Dec 2012

Posted by in History, Museums

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John Smibert made me laugh. He’s been dead since 1751, so it wasn’t easy.

The day I went to the MFA and walked into the gallery with Mrs Tyng on wall, I laughed, and said, “I know her!” while my son died a small interior death. Then I pulled up the record and image for Mrs Browne, and showed him how I knew Mrs Tyng.

Follow Smibert’s pictorial advice if you’re reenacting an American woman of means between 1729 and 1732, and you’re wearing blue silk. You may have a red silk wrapper/shawl. Your shift will show at the center front and sleeves to show off your fine linen. You look like you might be a little cold, but perhaps that explains the “I store oranges in my bodice” look.

See for yourself:

MMA, Mrs Brinley & her son

MFA, Mrs MacSparran

RIHS, Mrs Browne

MFA, Mrs Tyng

MFA, Mrs Dudley

Smith College- Mrs Erving

Smith College- Mrs Erving

 

Yale- The Bermuda Group

Yale- The Bermuda Group

After a while, you start to wonder if there was only one woman in the colonies in 1730… And then you wonder how she got into every painting…

I know, style and conventions helped create these portraits as much as Smibert’s skill. And the portraits only get weird when you do the thing that was never supposed to happen. We were never meant to see all of these portraits all together, all at once, anywhere.

h2_2010.148-1 So, what’s she wearing? Probably this dress. No, not this exact dress, though if it was same woman in all those paintings, maybe the Met does have her actual dress. (Sometimes I have these weird museum-y ideas, and that’s generally when I need a vacation or come up with a new program idea.)

The robe volante shows up in paintings of women dressing, and in informal scenes, as below. She’s clearly wearing stays, which is helpful to know, because while I knew the women in the Smibert paintings ought to be wearing stays, and they had conical torsos, the orange-smuggling look was confusing.

Galerie Dreyfus- Scène galante dans un parc, ca 1725

Galerie Dreyfus- Scène galante dans un parc, ca 1725

In fact, it confuses me still.

Seriously, the 18th century was a pretty sexy place, if you like oranges and silk.

Yale- Mrs Tyng

Yale- Mrs Tyng

Look, there’s Mrs Tyng again! She’s left the MFA and taken a chair at Yale.

Night Lights and a Book

14 Friday Dec 2012

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DSCN3605Last night, I went to a meeting downtown for my boss, and chose to walk instead of drive. I took some blurry photos along the way as evening became night and the city became more and more like Busy Town. The skill level of local drivers is not too different from Richard Scarry’s drivers…and the hills and the way the houses stack up, and the way we recognize or know each other here reminds me of Scarry’s books.

Walking back to the museum, I stopped at one of my favorite bookstores, where the selection runs from the perverse to the erudite.  I picked up many books and limited myself to three, including Very Vintage. (Did I mention Symposium’s remainder table pricing? Ah, yes: that’s why three books were possible.)
The text could have been edited a little more carefully and I am a fan of the endnote (not present here). But there are excellent photos I have not seen before and diagrams patterning garments. Now you see why I bought this: where else will I find diagrams of aTeddy Boy Jacket and a 1960s Bellville Sassoon-inspired evening dress?
dress2dress

Fashion Plates & Subject Headings

30 Friday Nov 2012

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Women_17901799_Plate_009Ah, the Met. You have to love them, so much wonderful material available online, and free. Collections of immeasurable depth and wealth, an incredible professional staff–this is the pinnacle, right? And yet…

They have a weakness. It’s a weakness shared by many places, but it is a major one, for the online user. It’s the lack of subject headings or dates assigned to their Library’s Digital Collections. They use OCLC’s ContentDM which has a pleasant enough interface, and fields that, in the Met’s Costume Institute Fashion Plate Collection, include Thumbnail, Title, Subject, Description, and Date.

They’re only putting data in Thumbnail (see image; I love that dress), Title, and Description. Description is what I would call Credit Line, and contains the donor name.

Title is a trifle vague. The image above is “Women 1790-1799, Plate 009.” No date, no subjects. The date is October, 1791, right there in the image, but not searchable, not sortable.

Women_17901799_Plate_049 Catalogers, I implore you: subject headings. If not subject headings, the date, please, when it is on the item. That makes the collections not only sortable, but searchable.

Enough with my lunch-too-late commentary! I’ve been immensely grateful to have a new digital plaything while waiting for the lunch room to clear, and this plate is delightful: April 1797, which was certainly blustery, if not cruel.

Mens_Wear_17901829_Plate_002And, since we’ve been on the topic of men’s wear, here’s a well-dressed gentleman and his lady in Morning Walking Dress for April 1807.

This weekend, I am off to the Farm for the Christmas Sale. Not such a pretty dress as these, but one I am pleased with nonetheless, and which (with wool petticoat, stockings, and cloak) should keep me warm–I do expect to be quite busy.

The Line of Beauty

29 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Clothing, History

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In considering menswear, I found this suit at the Met. Incredibly plain, it reminds me of classic Balenciaga: all about fabric and drape. It also reminded me of Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty, and the serpentine line.

You could also call it the Ogee curve, and it’s found in the serpentine legs of 18th century tables, and does not come from, “Oh gee, that soldier’s got nice legs.”

In this variation on the theme, the contrasting lining emphasizes the lapel line, but the overall effect is less elegant. It’s about materials, too, not just cut. There’s so much to learn just by looking, really looking, at clothes and paintings from the past. There are subtleties we miss as we rush past, and miss because we haven’t read enough to understand what we’re being told.

So much hides in plain sight, because we don’t see the world the way the tailors and painters and engravers saw it. I don’t pretend to have the key to that world, but it’s worth looking for, mostly just by looking.