This exhibition explores the sumptuous costume of British monarchs and their court during the 16th and 17th centuries through portraits in the Royal Collection. During this period fashion was central to court life and was an important way to display social status. Royalty and the elite were the tastemakers of the day, often directly influencing the styles of fashionable clothing.
In Fine Style follows the changing fashions of the period, demonstrates the spread of styles internationally and shows how clothing could convey important messages. Including works by Hans Holbein the Younger, Nicholas Hilliard, Van Dyck and Peter Lely, the exhibition brings together over 60 paintings, as well as drawings, garments, jewellery, accessories and armour.
A book related to the exhibit is forthcoming, written by the curator of paintings at the Royal Collection:
It looks like I may be in the UK this June, so I’m hoping to catch this exhibit while I’m there!
And busy work season, which combines to mean not too much sewing and not very much posting from me! But work is starting to calm down, so I thought I’d tell you about what I’ve been up to lately. I have been doing SOME sewing, but I have no pictures, so that will need to wait another day or two for a report.
Mostly it’s been Renaissance season, performing with my Venetian courtesan singing/acting group, Bella Donna. First on our list was Much Ado About Sebastopol, a new-ish Renaissance faire that is A) a benefit for local schools and B) trying to create a new version of a faire that is based on some attempt at focused historical accuracy. This year it expanded from one to two days, and it was a BLAST. The focus is on an English village with English villagers doing lots of crafts and activities — sewing, weaving, etc. — with a visit from the Queen and Court. Bella Donna is the only foreign group there, which means there’s a more cohesive village-y feel than you get at most faires. The crowd is fun and more history/family oriented than the barbarian crowd (not that there’s a problem with barbarians…). And again, they have craft demos and activities for kids… and a REAL BUILT STAGE, which we love to perform on, where we and the audience are in shade most of the day! (Nobody wants to watch a stage show when they’re sweltering in the direct sun on a day in the 80s/90s). Lots of fun and sillness ensued — at one point I sat in the Queen’s chair and tried to encourage customers to annex Russia for me, although it was hard to convince them.
Singing on stage | (C) Robert Eli BynumMore stage show action | (C) Laurie TavanOur ruffiano, Bastiano, gets vicious with Tullia | (C) Claudia LaughterHanging out in our pavilion | (C) Claudia Laughter
Then two weeks later was the San Francisco Italian Heritage Parade, an annual event that winds through North Beach, the Italian neighborhood of SF. Its a ton of fun, with queens and courts and marching bands and Italian-themed groups like us and totally non-Italian themed groups. The best part is the last 10 blocks or so are a complete street party, as restaurants move tables out onto the sidewalk and everyone eats and drinks wine and watches the parade. We were joined again by some friends from the German Guild of St. Max, and they — plus our Venetian boys — were the hit of the parade… or, I should say, their codpieces were! We do some singing when we can, when the parade slows down enough to let us breathe, and did a combination of singing and dancing for the judges at the end of the parade. Then we were off to the Colosseo and Mona Lisa restaurants, who were our sponsors this year, to sing for their customers and eat lunch (some SERIOUSLY good pizza, people!). My feet were killing me by the time we were racing to catch the ferry home, but I’d had so much fun that it was totally worth it!
Bella Donna plus friends from St. MaxIsabella hangs with a German landsknechtCaterina attempting to conjure the Mona LisaLucrezia in her pearly gloryPosing in the restaurant owner's vintage fiat, painted with the Mona Lisa
I have put off finishing this dress diary for literally months, simply because I am too lazy to put the dress on the dress form so I can take a picture of a particular construction element. Well, it obviously isn’t going to happen, so I’m letting that go!
The last thing I wanted to talk about was the skirt. For the first time, I decided to sew the skirt to the bodice — I wanted to see if having fewer layers around my waist was more slimming, plus I’ve now made two dresses with separate bodices and it isn’t THAT much of an advantage to have the skirt separate. However, I wanted to keep one theatrical element: the flat front of the skirt. It’s far more flattering, in my opinion, especially on a larger girl such as myself. However, it’s totally not historically accurate — what would be would be cartridge pleating all the way around, with a slit down the center front of the skirt and/or a CF skirt seam, so that you can get in and out of the gown.
Jenn has made a few of these trying different solutions. The one that sounded the most promising was that she gathered the CF of the skirt up on a drawstring. Sadly, she says that it doesn’t work in practice — no matter how tight you try to make the drawstring, the center front piece still sags and she had to do complicated hooks & bars to the underside of the bodice.
So I thought for a few days and then hit on making a fall front, with ties at the sides the way 18th c. skirts are closed. Of course, since the back 3/4 of the skirt is sewn to the bodice, you are only tying off the center front 1/4. I made a waistband for just that section and attached ties to each side. I had originally thought I would put my arms into the armholes of the bodice, tie the ties in back, and then lace up the center front — but I found it was too hard to get my hands under the bodice in back, so I cut really long ties that cross in back and come all the way around to tie in front.
So, that’s basically it! I still haven’t gotten around to the new partlet and ruff, but I will — at some point. The only other fiddly things I need are some velvet ribbon around the skirt hem to protect it from wear, and I need to tack down some more of the shell ornaments because they kept flipping up in back. Oh, and my girdle kept getting wonky — I think I’m going to to suck it up and do what (I think) Sarah does, which is baste the girdle to the waistline of the gown — which I can finally do, now that everything is one piece!
It was fun to finally have a new gown, and I like the blue, even if the colorway is a bit more muted than I usually go for. Oh, and my friend Janice named this “the Mermaid Dress,” which I totally love!
In May, I made a new Venetian Renaissance dress to wear to Bella Donna performances.
Oh, where has my desire to blog gone? I don’t know, but it has floated far, far away and hopefully a current will bring it back to me… I have been sewing up the wazoo, but no (okay, a teeny bit) desire to post about it! I shall reform — hopefully Costume College will reenergize me.
In the meantime, my Renaissance singing/acting group — Bella Donna — has put together a video showing what we do! Please check us out, and feel free to share it.
Let’s pretend that I haven’t spent the last month ignoring this here blog, and take up where we left off with my blue 1550s Venetian gown, eh?
One of the key elements of the portrait — why I love it — is the trim. I knew I wanted to try to reproduce those shell applique thingies, but clearly nothing premade was going to do it. I also loved the double row of trim around the edges of the bodice and sleeve.
Veronese - Woman Holding Gloves, 1550-60 (via Realm of Venus)
I bought a bunch of vintage 1/4″ wide flat gold braid on Ebay with the idea that I could couch the braid onto something. I originally thought just silk organza, but then felt it would look better with some kind of filler inside the various loops. I headed off to Lacis where I found two different gold nets — one was cheap and pretty widely spaced, the other was perfect but pricey… luckily, before I put the pricey stuff back, I did the math and realized I’d only need about 1/4-1/3 of a yard, which brought the price down to something reasonable!
It looks like there are two different sizes of shell — the larger is around her hip area and shoulder, the smaller are the three around the bodice center front. I futzed a bit and came up with a pattern, which I then traced onto silk organza using a water soluble marker. I cut one layer of silk organza with the pattern drawn onto it to serve as a guide, one layer of the gold netting, and one more layer of silk organza for a backing:
I tried making the first prototype entirely on the machine, but felt that it looked clunky:
So I did the rest of the shells with the couching done by hand — which went surprisingly quick. I first basted the netting to the drawn-on layer of silk organza, so I’d have a guide for the couching.
Then I sewed the couched piece to yet one more piece of silk organza, right sides together, trimmed off most of the excess, and turned it right side out.
Sadly, making all those appliques took more of the gold braid than I’d originally anticipated, so that meant doing something different for the gown trim. I ended up using the left over braid from my 18th c. riding habit waistcoat. I didn’t have enough for the double row of trim all the way around, so I futzed and ended up doing it just along the center fronts:
Another key element that I really wanted to try was the decorative “stomacher” (under kirtle? who knows, so I made it a stomacher). Many of them, including the one in my main inspiration portrait, look embroidered, but I’ve seen some that look like lace laid on a backing fabric:
This seemed a lot more do-able, so I stalked Ebay for a long time and finally found this beautiful metallic gold lace piece:
Vintage gold lace for a Venetian stomacher
I decided I didn’t want the high contrast of a white backing, plus some of the faires we perform at are pretty dusty, and I was worried about white getting dingy. So I ended up laying the gold lace on top of some gold silk taffeta, which I then backed with corset coutil for stiffness, and edged the top with a tiny gold metallic lace. The lovely thing about the stomacher approach is while you CAN baste it into your bodice, you don’t have to — the tension of the bodice and lacing, over the stiffness of a corset, keeps the stomacher perfectly in place.
Next up — a theatrical solution to a skirt issue, and final pictures of the gown!
