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Kitty Calash

~ Confessions of a Known Bonnet-Wearer

Kitty Calash

Tag Archives: friends

Frivolous Friday: Fashion Flashback

18 Friday Nov 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Frivolous Friday, History, Making Things, personal, Research, Thanks

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

18th century clothing, authenticity, Costume, cotton print, East India trade, fashion, friends, party clothes, sewing, thanks

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I don’t know about you, but the past ten days or so have been surreal in a way that I haven’t experienced in a dozen years or so. Numerous creative folks I know are working hard to find new, engrossing projects and sharing what they find with others. As always, Satchel Paige has excellent advice: Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.

What project shall I take up again, to distract myself from the shorter days and colder temperatures?

This is actually making reasonable progress, and might even be done by early December.
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It’s satisfying work, pleating and stitching this lightweight cotton, tiny stitches in white linen thread. I’ve made some modifications to the pattern, but not many, aiming for a 1780-1782 style. Judicious cutting and generous friends will, fingers crossed, even yield a matching petticoat, which is very exciting indeed– and an unusual fashion statement chez Calash. Here, we focus on clash, but the fabric itself takes care of that for me.

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Now, if only I had bright red morocco leather shoes to wear with this, that would be a sight indeed.

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Making up Monday

16 Monday May 2016

Posted by kittycalash in Clothing, History, Making Things, Research, Thanks

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

18th century, 18th century clothing, 19th century clothing, authenticity, common dress, Costume, dress, fashion, friends, sewing, style, thanks

From Jaipur, darling.

From Jaipur, darling.

Sometimes you’re a jerk without meaning to be, usually because you can’t see past your own limited self. I was that jerk on Friday, when my obsession with a missing package led to unfortunate words with both a supplier and worse, my sweetheart, about an unexpected length of fabric lately arrived from India. Would that my brain would work faster, for by the time I’d figured out what to make of it, the conversation had turned, and an additional 300 miles lay between me and the recipient of my confusion and dismay.

Despite my best intentions and resolve, I am a sentimentalist. This instinct sometimes conflicts with a devotion to honesty, for kindness often lies in elision. Confused? Short story: I don’t wear yellow, but a package arrived Friday with a dress length of printed Indian cotton, red and green flowers on a yellow ground.

“But Kitty,” you say, “Don’t you crave the hideous, the clashing, and the correct? You applaud Our Girl History’s choice of 1770s fashionable pink, though she prefers blue. Yellow is the haute couleur of the 18th century, fashionable everywhere, even in North America. You should leap at the chance to wear it.” (I was not thinking fast at all on Friday evening.) What made me bend my resolve– what will always makes me bend my resolve?

Petticoat fragment. Note yellow, with crudely printed lining. Wintherthur Museum 1959.0118.004

Petticoat fragment. Note the bright yellow, with crudely printed lining. Wintherthur Museum 1959.0118.004

Sentiment, of course, backed by research.

April, that cruel month, brought obsessive searches for Indian cotton print appropriate for the 18th century, as I looked at sample books and extant garments, searching for material to create frankly annoying clothing. Orange and green check with clashing Spencer and bonnet lining isn’t enough: I want to push my representation of the fashion sense of the past closer to truth. People in the past weren’t as matchy-matchy as we are, and their ideas of stylish, attractive, and fashionable were very different from ours. Loud was ladylike, and that’s a style statement I can get behind. Along the way, I ordered fabric in a pink and green (a departure itself) floral print on white ground, yardage now long overdue.

Textile Sample Book, British, 1780. MMA156.41 P34

Textile Sample Book, British, 1780. MMA156.41 P34

A friend has been dabbling in these same waters, and made up a new gown for Mount Vernon, satisfyingly loud and clashing with our modern sensibilities about the past. Our mutual friend, also at Mount Vernon, assisted her in choosing a dress length for me, and reader, I was confused and lacking when it arrived. But like any good curator in a social history museum, it was the story that got me. How can I resist a gift from a fellow enthusiast in a pattern chosen by my sweetheart, on the grounds that I don’t wear the color? Reader, I cannot.

Think of Cranford, of lengths of dress muslin requested and never received, and the sentiment embodied in that fabric. Think of women in Providence craving an India print gown, of lovers, husbands, sons, ordering dress lengths at trading ports thousands of miles and long months from home. Think of the affection and thoughtfulness embodied in textiles brought back months after they were requested. Complex meaning is woven into that cotton, giving this dress length interpretive meaning before it is even a garment.

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Now what? Now I have to decide which century/event this gets made up for: 1812-1817, 1778, 1804, 1768. There are many choices, but with the meaning embedded in the fabric, I’m most inclined to make something I’d wear often– not that this is particularly housekeeper-appropriate.

And about the research you ask? Yes, small floral print on colored ground is documentable to the 18th century. While early and European, here’s an example of an Indian motif translated by Dutch makers for printing in Sweden. Rhode Island merchants traded in the Baltic, so given the early date of this fabric sample, its arrival in North America could predate 1788 and John Brown’s first ship to China and the far east trade. Possible? Yes. Probable? We can have a lively discussion, in which I will point out the Brown’s love of all things French and French translations of bright, small motif print patterns. The printing factories in Sweden ran until 1771 and produced at least two relevant prints. Would my successful Presbyterian farmer have bought something like this for me in New York or Philadelphia? Would I have worn something so bright and loud? Am I overthinking this? Perhaps, but yellow is a new thought for me.

With especially fond thanks to Miss N and Drunk Tailor, to whom I also owe an apology.

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That Glint in Your Eye…

14 Thursday May 2015

Posted by kittycalash in personal

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

children, friends, living history, personal, play

Winslow Homer, Snap the Whip. oil on canvas, 1872. Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Christian A. Zabriskie, 1950, 50.41

Have you ever wondered what your friends would have been like to play with as kids? Mr S likes to, but he does have long hours on the commuter trains to fill, and I think by now he’s counted all the Bigfoot shelters along the route twice.

Sometimes we imagine one of our friends as the dirty, shirtless boy who plays hard until dark, until he realized he’s actually cut you with the stick sword, and you have to go home to get the blood cleaned up.

Another one might really be into building, but likes the process more than the result. Expect frank critiques, and lots of small parts, which ends in satisfaction and cookies. Sadly, when you come back, the creation is disassembled into neatly sorted constituent parts.

There’s the one who you partner with on a science fair project: you do the three-fold display with little samples of something, captioned. Too bad that when you win second prize and ask to take the display you designed and created home, you get hit under the eye with a lunch box for your trouble.

The Children of Nathan Starr. Oil on canvas by Ambrose Andrews, 1835. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1987.404

Some friends are a little wilier: I don’t know how you get talked into licking something weird, but it can happen when you’re under ten. It’s not poisonous, but it is nasty. Sorry about that. Have some milk.

The bookish types aren’t all that safe either! Suddenly, on a windy day, you’re falling downstairs because Mary Poppins was far too convincing, and now Dad’s umbrella is ruined. Two strikes, and now your friend hears her mom calling her home? Pro tip: don’t play Wuthering Heights, Mill on the Floss, or Tess of the d’Urbervilles. Bonus note, and just trust me here: just leave the Brontes to Orson Welles.

Girl Skipping Rope. Tempera on board by Ben Shahn, 1943. MFA Boston,  1971.702

Girl Skipping Rope. Tempera on board by Ben Shahn, 1943. MFA Boston, 1971.702

Don’t get me wrong: I enjoyed all the games and stories we made up and played when I was kid with all kinds of friends, and I enjoy everything my friends and I do today. But sometimes I see the glint in a friend’s eye, and I know we are in for something I might wish my mom wouldn’t let me do.

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