Time Traveling in Costume: March 2022

Last weekend felt like a breath of fresh air. We had our first costume outing of 2022, a fashion show at the Riverside (CA) Dickens Festival, which hadn’t been held in person for two years. As seen in my last post, I made an 1838 dark purple dress for this event. It was partially sewn so when I made the decision of what to wear, it was the easiest choice. The hard part was matching the theme for this year’s fashion show, “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”. We were supposed to come up with something that reflected different European influences on Victorian clothes and fabrics. When I looked at the designs on my purple fabric, my first thought was Persian. But the more I thought about it, the less that worked. It actually looked more like trellises in a garden. So, I had to be creative. I stretched it to more printed cottons coming from India, and named it the Indian Gardens. Heh, it worked. And I'd been wanting to make this dress for years.

As I continued thinking about my accessories, I was also going to include a day cap made of some cotton voile that I had bought from India. But when I dug through my stash, I didn’t have any wide enough left to cut out my pattern pieces on the bias. Even my locally bought voiles were just mere scraps. But this cap is still on my project list. I recently bought a couple yards of a really fine voile from Renaissance Fabrics.

What I ended up doing instead was to just wear my wig with my black ribbon hair loops pinned in them. I didn’t plan on walking outside in my dress, so I thought this would be fine. I already have one bonnet I can wear with it in the future but probably without the black ribbons.

My other planned accessory, which no one would have seen, was a pleated “bustle” to go under the back of my skirt to give it more roundness. However, I ended up with no time to make that, and just used my previous quilted cheater petticoat, topped with a multi-tiered petticoat to smooth out the top. It gave me a nice round fullness. I still plan to make one at some point, especially since it seemed so easy, and I have the twill denim fabric for it.

I had decided to make myself a pouch-shaped reticule out of the same dark purple silk taffeta that I’d made my belt from, and use a vintage crewel needle sample I’d bought years ago. I used the reticule pattern from La Mode Bagatelle’s Regency Wardrobe, and planned to stitch a dark purple braid around the edges of the needlework, but my local JoAnn’s store had absolutely nothing I could use. And I totally forgot to find some ribbon to do the drawstrings. Again, I had no time to find something online and have it shipped. So, for the time being, I had to settle for a plain black narrow braid, and basted it on so I can remove and replace it later when I find something better. I decided to wear it hanging from my belt, like this fashion plate.

Another accessory I was making awhile back was a cotton pelerine/collar but after finishing it, it seemed too large & heavy for my dress. Back to the drawing board. So at this point, I was considering using one of my other lace ones I had.

But what ended up making my outfit complete was a pelerine I bought from an etsy seller in England. It had the right shape for this time period that was perfect for my dress. I found photos of extant ones with a similar shape, and listed in my book of “White-embroidered costume accessories; the 1790s-1840s”, by Heather Toomer.

These are from the Tasha Tudor Collection (sold by Augusta Auctions) and some others held in the V&A Museum.

From the moment I draped the pelerine over my dress, my mind just blew up with joy. It made my dress! With the help of a friend, she was able to identify the lace style as Belgian net lace with muslin appliques. This was perfect, because it gave me another tie-in to the European influence we wanted for our theme. This ended up as a Valentine’s gift from my hubby.

With everything ready to go, I was able to relax a bit, but two days before our show, I slipped off the side of a small ottoman stool, and landed on the side of my knee, which already has its issues from being injured. It caused my knee to swell up and I could barely walk. After a day of icing, heating, elevating it, and a good night’s sleep, the swelling went down enough so I could bend my knee and walk on it without too much pain. But it did limit my walking. Cindy & my plans for the day at Dickens was to show up, do the show, change out, and then stroll a couple antique shops in town, before heading home. We were both going through withdrawals of antique shopping after two years.

The fashion show was in a new location this year, in the Life Arts Building, two blocks away from the main festival. It was a large nicely lit room from lots of windows, and the stage was only one step up, thank goodness. But I even needed help stepping up and down from that.

All the models were seated in a chronological line-up off to the side, and I was first one up with my early dress. After I had done my twirl, and returned to my seat, I pulled out my camera and started taking photos of the other models. Of course I hadn’t been fast enough to think of handing it to someone to take one of me. But I found a couple that someone else had taken.

Afterwards when we all went on-stage for group photos and letting people come up for closer looks, I handed my camera to Laurel, our stage director, who took photos of us, and a couple by someone in the audience. Our Queen Victoria, Janet Clark, came up to stage first to thank us all for attending this year, and complimented each of us. I had one lady tell me she had been hesitant on making an 1830s dress herself, as she thought the sleeves would look strange, and had no idea how to keep them puffy. After seeing mine, and how I explained different methods to work with them, I think she’s now confident to give it a shot. I love it when you can help inspire others.