At the very end of December, the Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild held a bustle-era tea at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco. The Palace is super fancy and dates from 1875 but was rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake — the restaurant where tea is served is what used to be where carriages would pull in and is just beautiful:
The tea was hosted by Mrs. Vanderbilt (Cynthia) and THE Mrs. Astor (Catherine), both tres chic in their bustle gowns:
Costumes ranged from the 1870s to the 1890s:
Teresa and Bridget were both super pregnant and super cute with their unbuttoned bodices:
There was lots of gorgeous beading and fabulous hats:
And a lovely lady wearing an actual antique late 1860s/early 1870s gown:
I wore my purple and white striped Gwendolen dress, this time without the lower hoops as I wasn’t in the mood to wrestle them on BART (our local commuter train). The bodice appears to have (ahem) shrunk, but luckily I saved scraps of the fabric and hit on the faaabulous idea of adding a V striped false waistcoat front — I’m so glad there are two runs of buttons on each side of the bodice opening!
Sadly the hat I made to go with the outfit just doesn’t want to work over 1870s hair. I could have jammed it on my head and not liked the effect, so I chose to go without (shocking!).
Tea was scrummy — I couldn’t even finish all of my sweets and had to take some home! And the hotel had lots of beautiful photo spots:
All in all, a lovely afternoon! You can see a few more photos in my Flickr set.
Hey, I finished something! Even better, this albatross!
Of course, I was up pretty late the nights before I wore this in order to get it done. I widened the center front and reattached the trim, only to realize that it was STILL too narrow. Ain’t nothing like doing it the hard way!
For lacing rings, I didn’t have time to get some real soldered rings, so I headed off to the hardware store and looked at random bits and bobs until I found some small-ish keyrings — hey, they worked!
I had one small issue when I put the gold ball trim on the CF, which is that I got to finish putting on the trim and realized I had about a half-ball-width hole, so I had to decide between a slight gap or trying to squeeze one more ball in. I ended up squeezing one more in, which meant that the trim in front ended up looking kind of wonky.
I ran out of time to do anything useful with the champagne label, so I had to safety pin it on. Looking back, I should have basted it on in the car, because it looks a little bit lame. But oh well!
Last thing, I didn’t want to wear my hat until we got to fair because it was raining, and I hadn’t really planned out my hair. So while I pictured wearing the hat on the top/side of my head, the only thing I could find to attach a hat pin too was way back/side — so I ended up looking pretty frowzy hat-wise, but everyone agreed that it was appropriate for a champagne bottle!
It’s not my best work, but it’s a whole lot better than the first try, and it was fun (and practical) to wear! I had a great time at the fair, running into all sorts of friends wearing fabulous costumes and having a lovely tea. Oh, and most everyone got the costume, which was a good thing!
Me and Tara, who went in a beautiful bee-themed fancy dress ensemble.
So what’s next? A whole lot of 18th century, but that’s another post!
Last night was the annual PEERS Vampire Ball, which is one the few balls I still get excited about! It’s in a great venue (an Elks lodge that has a beautiful look) that’s about 3 blocks from my house, plus people really go all out with the costumes — over the top historical, vampire/goth, scifi, fantasy, and hybrids of all of these. There’s so much eye candy, and that’s the best part! Plus there’s not only historical dancing but also a goth club with a DJ, so you can get the best of both worlds. Okay, and 2 bars.
For the past three years, Bella Donna has performed two 30 min. song sets at the ball, which is always lots of fun. We’ve rewritten all of our English songs so that they’re vampire focused (so, for example, “Sweet nymph come to thy lover” becomes “Sweet prey come to thy vampire”), and it’s fun to get to do something different than our usual Renaissance show… and we get to wear whatever costume we’re in the mood to wear!
This year I was thinking about wearing the Marie Antoinette dress, but it’s so huge that it would be hard to get into singing formation with the group and I certainly couldn’t do any historical dancing. So I decided to wear the Maja fancy dress costume, but I wanted to do something different with it. I came up with the idea of doing a Pierrot makeup, in line with the whole black and white theme.
To do the makeup, I used Kryolan Supracolor again, and made my illustrator husband do the black/detail work. Everything went swimmingly until I went to power the makeup, which you need to do to set it — I was using a brush and all the black smeared! So I had to do a bunch of repair work, which was super annoying… I’m not positive what the best way would be to powder when you’ve got more than one color going on, does anyone know? I ended up using a power puff and just pressing it, but it still smeared a bit.
Makeup pre-smearing
I wanted to do a new wig, and decided to try a 1760s tete-de-mouton just to do something different — something along the lines of this. I used a pretty ratty wig that I’d cut to be a hedgehog, so the hair in front/top/sides wasn’t quite as long as it should be to do full justice to the curls across the top of the head… and I ended up doing things a bit backwards, in styling the front before the back, so had to do some curls at the side/back top to pull things together. But it was interesting to try something new, and now I know what to do differently next time!
The clearest shot of the wig I've got, which isn't very clear; or, yes, aquanet is period!
I ended up recovering a mini-tricorn form and trimming it the vintage b&w ribbon I bought at Hyman Hendler in NYC.
Pierrot Maja
The ball was fun and I had a great time seeing new and old friends, although I didn’t do ANY historic dancing — bad me! Instead after our singing sets were over, I pretended to be goth with some of my Bella Donna friends in the club room and had fun doing swoopy dances and “catch the bat, release the bat.”
Pierrot MajaBella Donna performing at the Vampire Ball
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
So last year, I made a Victorian fancy dress costume — specifically, a c. 1886 “champagne” costume. You can read more about it here, if you’ve totally forgotten about it by now.
Last time we talked, I made some undies. Well, I also made a dress. I was really sick the week before wearing it, but pushed myself through finishing by telling myself, “It doesn’t have to be god’s gift to costuming.” Well, that prophecy came true, as it wasn’t! Didn’t help that I was still woozy and fever-y and sick on the night I wore it, but I had to go as my singing group (Bella Donna) was performing at the Vampire Ball.
So yeah. I never found the right trim for it, even after looking at gazillions of beaded trims and christmas ornaments, so maybe it’s the lack of trim that made me feel so meh about it that I never finished blogging? I don’t know! I also think maybe the sleeves (which were supposed to be more interesting, but lack of time made for a crappy pattern, so I had to ditch the original plan and go simple) should be A) more interesting and B) in the gold fabric? Or maybe a sheer, shiny gold tulle, and then echo that in a center front opening showing a faux underlayer in shiny gold tulle, as in the inspirational fashion plate? And the skirt hem could be shorter? Help me figure out why this costume is so unexciting, and maybe I can wrestle it into shape? Or at least do better the next time I attempt fancy dress! And for trim, go for shiny gold balls, or clear glass balls? Had a long debate with my husband about that one — I was picturing shiny gold balls, but he kept pointing out that champagne was clear…
A note on the photos — I had to photoshop the base skirt on photos #2 and 3, as the settings on Trystan’s camera were off and it turned my green skirt purple. So the color/shine is most accurate in picture #1.
