Fashion Historian & Historical Costume Maker
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has added a new “Image Library,” which allows you to view and download super high resolution images of items from their collection — including many costume items!
There is some serious costume porn going on in there!
For example, check out this c. 1765 robe a la francaise. Whoa!
[Side note: you are all heathens for not being excited about that Gainsborough portrait!]
So the thing I keep meaning to post about, but then get distracted by how busy life is these days, is… I’M GOING TO PARIS IN MAY! EEP! SUPER exciting! I’ll be visiting Lisa, who lives in Paris, for a week and a half.
Beyond wanting to visit Lisa, and who DOESN’T want to go to Paris? The thing that is getting this nervous flyer on a plane by herself is…
I’m going to be going to Vaux-le-Vicomte! Which is the French chateau that was the inspiration for Versailles. Specifically, to the Grand Bal Costume — a 17th/18th century (required! yay!) costume ball, with dinner beforehand. The ball will be in the Grand Salon, which sounds very promising; and will have a Baroque musical group, and period dancing. (Side note: I am amused that the ball goes from 11pm-3am, which is so VERY European!). There will be fireworks in the garden. I may die of happiness!
This is the room the ball will be in:
And then on Sunday, I’ll be going to the Journee Grand Siecle, which is a 17th/18th century costumed afternoon at Vaux where attendees are encouraged to bring picnics, plus there are various demonstrations/activities.
I am BEYOND excited! I hope to meet/re-meet many European costumers I’ve chatted with online. And and…TWO COSTUME EVENTS IN NOT JUST PERIOD BUILDINGS, BUT OVER-THE-TOP FABULOUSLY PERIOD BUILDINGS!!! Where history happened!
Of course, there will be other adventures — I plan to spend as much of a day as I can stomach at the Louvre. And there’s other costume stuff… but I’ll save that for the next post!
Oh, input desired! I am going to wear my 1780 polonaise for the picnic day. Which francaise should I wear to the ball — the peach or the black? I am purposely NOT stressing myself by trying to make something new for this!
I have tons to post about, but I gotta parse it out to keep things interesting! So here’s #1:
Christie’s has announced a sale of items from Cowdray Park in West Sussex. Among the items will be this Gainsborough portrait that hasn’t been seen for 50 years:
Unfortunately the Christie’s site hasn’t been updated yet with details on all the individual items, but I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled! Here’s an article about the sale from the Daily Mail, and the press release.
Valencia, specifically. So, I am forcing myself to Stay On Target and am starting the Maja dress! What, you may be asking, is this? Oh, only a costume that I’ve been saying I’m going to make for about three years.
To recap: it’s a mid-1770s (c. 1773? 1775? I’ve seen conflicting dates, gotta look into that more) portrait of the Marquese de Llano wearing a masquerade costume of a Maja. Majas/Majos were working class people who lived in Madrid in the late 18th and 19th centuries. They spoke “pure” Castilian, wore elaborate outfits, and had a general swagger and bravado that captured the imagination of Spain. In time, their clothing became adopted as the national traditional dress of Spain.
So in doing all this research on the style, I found a ton of cool resources, and then stumbled across Las Fallas, which is a big annual festival held in Valencia. Why is this exciting? Because they wear E-LAB-ORATE “traditional Spanish dress”… which is based on late 18th century Maja costumes. Of course, it’s morphed over time, but it is totally gorgeous. To wit:
I mean seriously, where do I sign up??? The hair! The jewelry! The fabrics! The 18th c. silhouette! Aiee!!!
There is, of course, a whole industry in Valencia around these costumes… but a whole lot of searching later, and it looks like not much of it is online. Bah – I had gotten all excited about buying some shoes, like these (and I think Trystan needs these!).
Some fabulous new resources for tracking down extant costume info/pictures online have been added to the Digital Collections of Extant Costume directory:
Europeana — cross-museum search; art from various European museums. I recommend searching both in English and in other European languages. So far, not too impressed by their “narrow by date” options — I recommend instead searching by century, and then again do it in various languages (example: 18th; 18e; settecento; XVIII; etc.).
Esbirky — Czech cross-museum search. Click here to specifically to see the historical costume items in the database. Thanks so much to Hana Marmota for not only finding this, but figuring out how to use it!
Museo San Telmo Museoa in Spain — a few costumes in their collection highlights.
Texmedin — Spanish cross-museum textiles & apparel database. New items still being added, so check back on this one periodically.
Indiana State Museum — thanks very much to The Dreamstress for finding this one!