AN 1890s FASHION SHOW FOR A NEW EVENT IN OCEANSIDE, CA

A couple months ago, one of my friends, Shelley Peters, of the Kansas Mercantile, contacted me about being in a fashion show for a new event in Oceanside. This would be the Grand Spanish-American War Reenactment and focused on the return of the soldiers in the 1890s. This would be its first year and with it being in close proximity to me (ok, an hour away), it was workable. And after I saw the location at the Oceanside Heritage Village Park, I was even more interested. AND I would get to wear one of my 1890s dresses, since we have so few chances to do that.

This is the description of the event from the site: The reenactment will consist of a military parade, volunteers such as the Rough Riders, Buffalo Soldiers, and the "1898" Mayor of Oceanside, will be there along with music horse-drawn carriage rides, and tours of the historical buildings. The Ice Cream Parlor will be open, and other food vendors will be present. The event would be held on September 30-31, 2017.  

The Village is in a small park with a collection of old buildings, many looking like shops and stores. In the center of the “town center”, surrounded by grass, is a beautiful white gazebo that bands play in. This was to be the “stage” for our fashion show, and we would walk around the pavement among the attendees.

According to the daily schedule, they would have an Exhibition of a Soldier’s Life, and military camps; a model train exhibit, a parade, a US Marine Corp Band, dignitaries and speachifications, and of course, a fashion show. That’s us! 

I missed seeing most of the event due to being extremely late in arriving to change into my costume for the fashion show. It wasn’t because I had the wrong location, due to the wrong street name being on the event page (because I’d already figured that out) but because I missed taking my exit.  If anyone is familiar with I-5 and Oceanside, if you miss your exit, you have to continue 14 miles passing Camp Pendelton, before you get to another exit to turn around. And I was almost driving on an empty gas tank by then. So after quickly gassing up, I managed to get to the event, sneaked into a back gate to unload, and get inside to change. During this time, friends drove my car up to the parking lot so it wouldn’t continue making that poor horse behind the carriage nervous who I had parked behind. I hoofed it out to the “town center” with five minutes to spare.

Our time period for the fashion show was the 1890s, of course. I had a couple options to wear, but chose my 1894 blue and white striped seaside dress because we were at the seaside. And it was much cooler to wear.

I’m extremely grateful to Nancy & Russell Smith, and Paige Patterson, for generously allowing me to use their photos for my blog, as we really want to help promote this event for next year. So please enjoy all these photos they took.

Shelley, who ran the fashion show, was also able to set up her Kansas Mercantile shop inside one of the buildings, and it was the perfect décor for all her goods. She was quite happy in there. 

Our fashion show was outdoors, with Shelley narrating from the gazebo. We walked out onto the pathway and around the courtyard with the audience seated around us, while Shelley read descriptions of our outfits, and details of the style of the 90s.

Our dress styles ranged from daytime, to leisure activities, to evening dress, and we even had three men join us. 

As I mentioned, I wore a dress I already had but got to bring my recently recovered parasol, and show it off. I also interacted with the audience, who asked questions.

I did have one minor foobah with my boater hat earlier, as the antique blue ribbon around the crown had started to shatter, so I tacked on some vintage flowers to cover that up. 

Hopefully next year the word will get out more about this event, and we’ll certainly come back. We plan on letting a lot of our costume and reenactor friends know about it. Shelley already told me she wants me to take over the fashion show so she can focus on her Mercantile shop.

You can visit their website here. http://visitoceanside.org/travel-tips/heritage-park-village-museum/

Or check out their Facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Heritage-Village-Park/143109015722406

                                                            ~~Val~~

1890s Seaside Dress for Sunday Tea

Here was my original idea for a seaside gown for the Sunday Fantasy Tea at Costume College on Aug 4. The theme is “The Pirates of Penzance; A Victorian Seaside Romp”. I don’t do pirate so a seaside gown was the winner. I had a blue & white striped shirt-weight cotton I’d purchased in the Garment District about 6 years ago and it had finally ripened enough to decide what it wanted to be.

My original plan was the boater hat, a two-tone collar, a navy blue belt and short sleeves. But the more I dug on the internet, the more ideas I came up with. This was the look I decided I would go for.

 But I kept seeing more. I liked the large buttons on the jacket front of this first dress, & then saw the group of three buttons on this theatrical photo, and another on a catalog photo. A couple photos had dark bowties or ties on them too. 

Other thoughts were: do a belt under the jacket with a blouse? Tuck the jacket in with a belt on the outside? Shorten the sleeves?  It’s not an easy process giving birth to something like this.

Hat ideas: So many pretty hat ideas!

Besides the ones on the previous photos, these photos gave me a couple ideas; I love the bunny ear loops of ribbons; piling stuff on top of the hat; and possibly a veil. So I purchased some white hat veiling from JoAnn’s Fabrics for it. BTW, they hide it behind the cutting table so you have to ask for it. I think it was $4.95 yd. It's not very wide so it won't go under your chin like these pictures. 

  

And then there was this cool looking catalog from the Millinery Department catalog.

 The one photo above in aqua also gave me an idea of using some dark trim on the front of the bodice for contrast. More on that later.

So here is my hat, a vintage English boater I bought on etsy, and some vintage blue silk ribbon purchased at The Johnson House in Old Town San Diego. The earrings were purchased from the Kansas Mercantile. They’re going to give me a pop of color.  

 

When I finally took a break from sewing on my gown, I worked on the hat. The vintage ribbon is kind of dry and crisp when you bend it lengthwise so any portion of that would break or open up. Fortunately folding it crosswise was fine. Instead of taking off the existing pink ribbon on the boater, I left it on to give a base to sew my new ribbon onto it instead of the hat The hat was also is a little crisp and I had to use some clear glue to repair a crack in the brim at one place. I folded up about 1/4^th inch along the length of the ribbon since it was a little wider than the crown and took tiny basting stitches to attach it around the crown. I made a big bow just by folding the two ends under to the middle of a length of the ribbon, did a gathering stitch across it, pulled it in, and voila! You have a bow. Then I added the white veiling which was a bear to put on. I’d never done this before and didn’t have a clue. I stitched little tack stitches along the edge to the bottom of the crown and curved it around to the back as I went. I ended up with some bunching on the back but it just looked like I’d pulled it up. I left it loose enough in the front to bring down over my eyes. It wasn’t wide enough to go under my chin. Oh well, I can’t eat at the tea with that over my mouth.

  

It actually looks cute just like this. I have some off white vintage berries I may attach later, but for now, let’s call it done and move on to the dress.

I looked at a couple patterns that would have the collar I wanted but once again, Truly Victorian has the closest style to it: the TV 496 (1896) Ripple Jacket, and TV 291 (1898) Walking Skirt. I also looked at their TV 498 (1898) Eton Jacket but it didn’t have the jacket shape I wanted. And the Ripple jacket had the belts in front that I could replace with a faux vest.

 

For more inspiration I found these videos of ladies wearing ripple jackets on youtube by Carl Stormer and his detective camera, “Streets of Oslo” in the 1890s. Hmmm…from the land of my Grandma.

 Video clip 1 of 3 

 Video clip 2 of 3

Video clip 3 of 3 

In the middle of all this planning, I decided to try my hand at waist holders, also called waist belts or stay tape belts. Some of my bodices like to bunch up from my waist, and this was how they prevented that. I dug up a few photos of extant gowns for them, and did some figuring. They’re made of twill tape or grosgrain, attach to either the back seams, center back seam, or side seams, depending on what you have. They’re just attached at those points and then brought to the front where a hook & eye close them.

I pulled out a couple of my own problematic bodices and put them in, and I can say they really did work. Not once did I have to pull my bodice down. I know some of them also had hooks on the bodice to attach to an eye on the skirt but this helps keep its shape to the body also. This research turned into a blog entry of its own. Stay Tape Belts

The jacket was pretty easy to sew, as was the skirt. I altered the collar width so it didn’t hang quite so far over my shoulders, and even though I was nervous about the big poofy sleeves, they weren’t bad at all, and don’t require turning sideways to go through a door. I flatlined the bodice with a white lightweight cotton twill to give it some body.  Instead of doing the collar and facing both out of the striped fabric, I used white cotton on the outside. The back peplum was really cute. I thought I did something wrong when none of the “pleats” would fold under but turns out they’re supposed to be “ripply”. Get it, The Ripple Jacket.

 I used my favorite method of finishing by binding the edges with bias tape. Sometimes I make my own but mostly I buy the store bought stuff.

The pattern shows three bands connecting the front of the jacket but instead of that I made a square insert of navy blue cotton by sewing them right sides together with a light twill fabric sandwiched inbetween, turned it right side out, stitched the end closed, and handsewed it to one side. On the other side I sewed hooks and bars.

 

OOPS! Do we see a mistake here? How did those hooks line up at the bottom instead of to the vest? Where’s that seam ripper? For the life of me, I can’t figure out how I did that, but will blame it on the rush before Costume College. I made my own buttons by covering some large plastic ones, purchased in the Garment District of course, and covered them with the navy blue cotton. I also sewed two on each cuff.

I had good intentions of making a plain white cotton blouse using Truly Victorian’s (#491) 1893 blouse waist pattern to go with this. Those poofy sleeves would also give some support to my jacket sleeves. But with only four days to go, I decided not to stress myself further, and just pulled a lacey blouse out I had purchased from Recollections years ago. Later I learned from my friend Tonya that I could have bought a more period looking one from them. But I will get that blouse made.

So here we have the completed outfit being worn at Costume College. The first photo was taken by Jennifer R. of Historical Sewing. I wore my little gold watch pin and watch on the lapel. It bothered me that my white blouse was so limp and didn’t have a high neck, but I was so happy with this dress, I didn’t care. The second photo is by Jerry Abuan. And guess what? Ask me how I goofed. I was putting the jacket on at Costume College and noticed I’d forgotten to put boning in it. And hey, guess what? Earlier I had noticed I’d forgotten to EVER put the boning in my 1885 mourning bodice that I’d worn the previous day there. I made that almost a year ago, and I just now noticed. 

When I first walked out of my hotel room and was wandering the halls my friend stopped me to take photos and asked what was hanging out the back of my jacket. I looked and realized I'd forgotten I'd put a stay belt in it and hadn't hooked it up. Another lady stepped in and said I can fix this. She put her arms around me under my jacket and hooked me up in front. LOL! Of course my friend had to take that photo. And we still don't know who that lady was.