Victorian Artistic Dress - but make it useable!

[00:00:00]Hello and welcome to the Petticoated Swashbuckler.

[00:00:03]My name is Maren and today we are talking about some fairy tale fashions again.

[00:00:11]>> [music] >> In my last video we talked about fantasy as a genre. We talked about the kind of aesthetic of fantasy and about making like modern clothes with a fantasy inspiration.

[00:00:32]Today we're going to talk about something related but different. We're going to talk about how you can make historical clothing that is inspired by fantasy and fairy tales and which was inspired by fantasy and fairy tales in history but also to how to make it so that you can wear it as modern day summer wear.

[00:00:55]>> [laughter] >> So, let's get into it. This week's or this video's theme is what's sometimes called the artistic dress movement or the aesthetic dress movement. I I touched upon it last in my last video just a little but it really before we get started with with art and with fairy tales we really have to go back to some mid-19th century Western feminists.

[00:01:28]Because by the mid-18 hundreds women's fashion was very like very narrow bodies with very wide skirts.

[00:01:41]And you had the beginning of what's called tight lacing which is not something every Victorian woman did by any stretch of the imagination.

[00:01:49]That would be the same as to say that everyone does a Brazilian butt lift because Uh, Kim Kardashian has had a Brazilian butt lift. Maybe. I know very little about Kim Kardashian, but um tightlacing is when you tighten your corsets very, very tightly, and you wear them for a very, very, very large portion of the day.

[00:02:11]So, some women uh would tighten their corsets and wear them like even sleeping them, only take them off for 1 hour every day to to to wash themselves.

[00:02:21]Um and you would have a regime of of like tightening by so and so much, and within a certain number of months you would switch to a smaller corset, and then you would keep tightening it. And this was very much a thing wealthy women did.

[00:02:38]Uh but it was And And some women found it fun. Some women really enjoyed it. Uh almost like a competition element of it of who of us can have the smallest waist. Um but it was also met with a lot of criticism.

[00:02:52]Uh and tightlacing really wasn't a thing before that, because you thought to achieve proper tightlacing, you need two things >> [snorts] >> in addition to the willingness to tightlace. You need steel boning in your corsets, and you need metal grommets.

[00:03:08]Uh if you're only using whalebones or reeds, and you make your lacing holes by hand, it's very hard to get it solid enough that you can actually just So, this is why this became a thing in the mid-18th century No, mid-19th century, because that's when these things came into use.

[00:03:30]So, you have tightlacing uh and corsets, and then you have the crinolines, the big, big, round skirts that up until that point had been created by layers and layers and layers of starched petticoats, uh but now could be achieved with a crinoline, which was uh a relief to women, really.

[00:03:48]Uh but it was also something that was met with criticism criticism for being an in a way.

[00:03:57]So in the mid-19th century you had what was called the reform dress movement or sometimes it's called the rational dress movement.

[00:04:06]And they basically wanted to fight for women this is connected to the temperance movement for one thing and it's connected to the fight for women's right to vote women's right to an education and women's freedom both a sort of freedom in society but also a physical freedom. So instead of having to you know wear very constricted garments and and be very unfree.

[00:04:39]They they wanted women to be able to move and to be freer.

[00:04:43]And this does not mean that all women who agreed with this kind of went out and burned their corsets and never looked back. Most women really didn't. The corsets it was it wasn't the corsets that was the problem it was the tight lacing. So most women still kept wearing some sort of corset or stays or jumps of some sort.

[00:05:04]Um you also see the the rise of of the health corset which is sometimes made of wool for example sometimes made with with little like air holes in it.

[00:05:16]So corsets were definitely still a part of of everyday dress for women especially in England.

[00:05:23]It's a bit different in Norway where a lot of women did have a corset but you didn't really wear it up then on like Sundays and feast days.

[00:05:32]Um but they did try to invent clothes that would make it easier for women to to be active. So like the bloomer suit for example named after a postmistress Amelia Bloomer uh, with those big bloomy trousers and a shorter dress on top of it. Now, this movement in fashion was not massively popular and the women who espoused it were made fun of. They were the butt of a joke.

[00:06:04]They people made um what is it called? Satirical drawings of them.

[00:06:12]Uh, and and made fun of them. And it was this kind of led to some people trying to bridge the gap between like we still want our clothing to be comfortable and and liberating but we still want it to be pretty and socially acceptable.

[00:06:37]And what I'm talking about here is the reform dress movement was like through most of Western Europe and Central Europe and Japan.

[00:06:45]Interestingly enough.

[00:06:47]But what I'm describing here now is mostly from an English setting.

[00:06:53]Um because by the 1870s you had a movement that was seeking to to sort of enhance and and celebrate the natural shape of a woman. So, you would still wear corsets but but they you wouldn't wear corsets and and the big bustle for example. And of course, as some of you who've followed me for a bit know, towards the end of the 1870s you get the natural form era in fashion. So, this idea kind of spread a little and became a bit mainstream.

[00:07:25]Now, the natural form era isn't that natural. There's still corsets and petticoats and padding.

[00:07:32]But it's not those big sort of elliptical hoop skirts or the the bustles.

[00:07:39]To find inspiration for this fashion that was going to enhance and celebrate the natural womanly form.

[00:07:48]Um they looked to history to find a time when women did not wear modern corsets and when life was purer and and people were nicer and all of that. And uh they landed on the medieval and Renaissance periods.

[00:08:08]And at the same time, this exact same thing happened in art because you in the mid-19th century something was founded, very loosely founded, that was called the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. And I think I mentioned them in my last video because when it comes to this sort of aesthetic, they are super important.

[00:08:29]And they were a group of English painters and poets and artists and art critics.

[00:08:34]Um and I for me the most famous member is Dante Gabriel Rossetti, but his brother was also a member.

[00:08:44]William Holman Hunt was a member.

[00:08:47]I think William Morris of of the wallpaper fame was was into this movement for a while at least.

[00:08:55]Um and they they wanted to return to the art of the Italian 15th century.

[00:09:02]Basically anything before Raphael and Michelangelo because they believed that art after Raphael and Michelangelo was too mechanistic and and dark and boring and they wanted luxurious, lush colors, lots and lots of details.

[00:09:20]Hand in hand with this followed a rejection of everything that they considered negative about modernity such as unnatural silhouettes, chemical dyes, machine-made trims. William Morris would later go on to form the Arts and Crafts movement which was all about rejecting mass production and and embracing traditional handicrafts, really. The art movement really met the sort of dress reform movement in believing that modern fashion was ugly, but also unnatural and kind of dishonest or immoral because you were sort of faking how you No women have a bustly butt naturally.

[00:10:05]So, it was morality was definitely part of this as well. And they looked to the Middle Ages and they looked to the Renaissance.

[00:10:12]And this was very much romanticized past.

[00:10:16]So, there was a lot of like puffed sleeves, trumpet sleeves, um long trains, vegetable dyes, hand embroidery, uh you know, natural, almost a bit sort of messy hair on the women, elasticized waist. And like we we often find these dresses pretty modest nowadays. It's often high necks and long sleeves and uh they're very you know, they look almost a bit sort of prudish to us. Uh but this was very much the anti-fashion of its day. So, comparable to punks in the 1980s or like teddy or greasers in in the 1950s.

[00:10:55]These were almost like to some people a bit scary, a bit sort of ooh, what's next? What's what's the country coming to? So, from here, the style diversified in different directions.

[00:11:06]Uh some women like went all the way into what's called rational dress. They wore the bloomer suits.

[00:11:14]Uh they wore next to no corset. Some wore like classical modern clothes, but like with a touch of the artistic. Like you would still wear a corset and a modern dress, but you would try to make it look a little bit artistic dress movement-y. Most women were probably somewhere in the middle like people who were espousing this idea, they were mostly in the middle where they tried to have more natural silhouettes, where they tried to have less sort of mass-produced or machine-produced clothing.

[00:11:46]But they would still wear corsets and they would still wear long dresses. The artistic or the it's sometimes called the aesthetic dress movement, had some very famous defenders. The most famous probably was Oscar Wilde and his wife Constance.

[00:11:59]They would wear artistic dress themselves. They would go out and and do lectures on it. They would you know, they were kind of poster boy and poster girl of this whole thing. And it's also worth noting that a lot of like our modern ideas of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance come from this movement.

[00:12:19]So that the the Pre-Raphaelite artists and the artistic movement that happened at this time, they they happened at the exact same time as the the literary movement that's called romanticism. And all of this really that the dress, the art, the literature, this sort of harking back to a purer, simpler past was all a reaction to industrialism, the industrialization of cities, of the countryside, of of you know, furniture making, clothes making. It was This was very much a reaction to the world becoming like the beginning of our modern world really, our modern industrialized world.

[00:13:04]So it's it's very important to see this as a reaction to that as well. And a lot of people they look try to look back to like a pre-industrial past, you know, a purer time, a more honest time.

[00:13:17]They they began retranslating, republishing old fairy tales and poems and sagas and myths. And they were all published with these Pre-Raphaelite illustrations. Which again, like I talked about in my last video, propelled the sort of fantasy aesthetic, really. A fairy tale and fantasy aesthetic. And for me, as a medieval historian, this era and the movement is both very interesting and a bit frustrating because so much about what modern people think they know about the Middle Ages that I meet in my like life.

[00:13:50]>> [laughter] >> The myths I have to crush, they come from this period. Like, you know, what what people think they know about the Middle Ages is really this romanticized version, Victorian version of the Middle Ages. And and the Victorians this is this is this is Victorian idea of the past that never really existed. The Victorians took their own, you know, morals and their own ideologies, their own ideas of of gender and religion and class and dressed them in in vaguely medievalish clothes.

[00:14:23]And I I still meet people who think that this is how the Middle Ages were. The the that sort of hyper polite knight in shining armor or or the the distressed damsel, they not they have much more to do with Victorian ideals than with the reality of the Middle Ages.

[00:14:45]Um so this I find this era really really really fascinating. It's a Victorian idea of the past.

[00:14:52]Uh which we still cling to in many ways.

[00:14:54]The Victorians were really good at rewriting history. One day I'm going to talk about how the Victorians rewrote Jane Austen, but that's another story for another day. Now, for myself, I I'm going to make a sort of in the middle type outfit. So, not the bloomer suit and not you know, mostly modern but with a hint of embroidery. I'm going to go for somewhere in the middle. I'm going to make something that's definitely artistic dress in in like style and color and cut um and maybe trim.

[00:15:28]Not not really. Um but this will be worn with a corset. It will be worn with some waist definition. I want mine to be suitable for the 1890s. So there will definitely be some big sleeves involved.

[00:15:41]However, in an effort to make more stuff that I can wear on a daily basis and also to pad out my summer wardrobe.

[00:15:46]Today's nice. It's a nice warm like I tried to film yesterday evening and it was so light and warm.

[00:15:54]There were like even at like half past 10:00 in the evening, there were people on every veranda chatting and I couldn't film which I'm not salty about. I'm just excited. We have 90% of the year is like woolly jumper weather and then for the last 10% it's this. It's warm and light all the all around the 24 hours is lovely. But yeah, I am trying to pad out my summer wardrobe and I'm trying to make clothes that I can wear on a daily basis. So I will try to make the outfit in such a way that it's several components that I can sort of take apart and wear in isolation. We'll see how that goes in a minute.

[00:16:34]But let's get on with the making.

[00:16:36]Now a lot of artistic dress has like a short puff like short sleeve puffed sleeve dress on with a square neckline laid on top of like a long sleeve sleeved and high neck shirt or dress.

[00:16:51]And so I'll begin with the under dress.

[00:16:54]I will make it in blue linen and I will make it sort of mid-calf length because it feels very 1890s. I'll make it with like button a back button closure. So after washing my linen, I cut one front, two backs, two long wide sleeves, two cuffs, a collar and circles enough to cover six buttons.

[00:17:55]>> I over locked all the pieces and stitched the chest and the shoulder darts.

[00:18:22]I then stitched the shoulders and the mid back leaving the back open to about like 15 cm from the top.

[00:18:40]I made gathering stitches on the top and cuff ends of the sleeves.

[00:18:50]And attached the sleeves gathering the sleeve head to fit.

[00:18:56]I set in pockets in the side seams.

[00:19:02]Leaving the bottom 10 cm of the sleeves unstitch I stitched all around the dress from the sleeves up into the under arm down the sides around the pockets all the way to the hem on both sides.

[00:19:16]I hemmed the slits in the side seam back.

[00:19:22]I then gathered the sleeves to fit the cuffs and attached those.

[00:19:37]I also attached the collar opting to stitch it down on the inside by hand.

[00:19:56]I covered the buttons with the linen.

[00:20:10]Using some fairly wide self-fabric bias tape as a facing, I evened out the hem and hemmed it.

[00:20:26]And finally, I attached one button to each cuff and four to the mid-back opening and made thread loops to match.

[00:20:52]With the underdress done, it's time to move on to the overdress. And this one will be in a deeper blue cotton satin with shorter poofy sleeves and a square neckline and a ruffle towards the hem. and as the fake artistic movement person that I am, I will also machine embroider some trim >> [music] >> for this dress.

[00:21:18]So, I cut one front, two backs, [music] two wide sleeves, two inner sleeves, a ruffle, and some bindings for the sleeves and the neckline.

[00:21:34]>> [music] [music] [music] >> After overlocking all pieces and stitching the darts, I stitched the dress together, adding pockets [music] to the side seams.

[00:22:05]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> I tried it on over the linen dress and marked out my neckline opening.

[00:23:07]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> The outer sleeves will have visible [music] seams, so I stitched those together using a French seam and then hemmed them.

[00:23:45]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> And to [music] provide a little more support, I basted some strips of stiff tulle to the sleeve heads before uh making gathering stitches.

[00:24:59]The inner sleeve is stitched up and hemmed, too.

[00:25:02]And gathering to fit, I stitch the outer sleeve to the inner sleeve.

[00:25:07]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Okay, so I'm done with the sleeves and they're really luxurious and lovely and I love them.

[00:28:02]Uh it's pulling a bit weirdly here, but I think they'll be all right once I get my my um my trim.

[00:28:14]So, there will be a sort of yoke going here and I might even like enforce that a little bit. But, one thing I realized now is that the dress is that like the sleeves a bit I'm wearing a very silly dress underneath it, but uh the dress itself is really nice.

[00:28:35]I like it. It is lovely.

[00:28:37]Uh the sleeves I like as well. They're very big, they're very voluminous and funny. Um but, I feel like compared to the sleeves the dress is a bit too narrow.

[00:28:51]I'm going to see if I can Oh, it's not easy. My sewing room is not big enough. Can you see it's kind of Like it's a little It's just a little narrow.

[00:29:06]It's a little It's not tight like But it feels too narrow for the time period.

[00:29:16]So, what I'm thinking now is I'm going to remove myself from my original plan cuz I have made these that meant to be a ruffle going around the hem.

[00:29:30]However, I think I will forego the ruffle cuz this I don't really have any fabric left.

[00:29:37]I can go out and buy more fabric but I kind of don't want to.

[00:29:40]Um I want to see how far I can get with what I have. And I have these beautiful long strips of the the same fabric. And what I'm thinking now is I have kind of just enough to reach from from here to the floor and from back here to the floor.

[00:30:03]I think I'll open the back. I'll cut open the front and I will stitch two and So, this is folded four times now. I'll stitch two and two together and stitch them in to the mid front and the mid back of the dress. And on the mid front I will make like a big box pleat cuz I've seen that on a lot of ancient garments.

[00:30:29]And on the back I'll make like an an inverted box pleat.

[00:30:34]Um And that will give me something along the line of like 60 cm more overall.

[00:30:46]It will also make the dress feel more sort of loose and um artistic, I suppose.

[00:30:57]So, I think that is my plan.

[00:31:03]This might be a disaster. We'll see.

[00:31:08]Ta-da!

[00:31:10]So, this is the front now. It's got the little extra.

[00:31:15]Uh and the back has got the little extra.

[00:31:19]And I think it it makes all the difference cuz all of a sudden this is not like I mean, in a in an ideal world, I would have liked even more width at like the hem of the dress.

[00:31:32]But this feels much more like the fit of the dress feels so much more proportionate to the sleeves now. Uh and I also think if I like I'm going to be wearing it with uh a belt when it's historical and I think it'll be so much easier to get that sort of almost Edwardian look uh with this width in front.

[00:31:57]Uh I also think it's really cute.

[00:31:59]This bit is really cute.

[00:32:01]And this bit is really cute. And the little bit of extra weight has also made it easier for the sleeves to not pull everything down. So, that's nice.

[00:32:09]>> [gasps] >> The next thing I'm going to do now is Hang on.

[00:32:20]I have these. I have two of these.

[00:32:22]Um I'm going to fold them and press them a little bit.

[00:32:29]And then I'm going to uh trim them with embroidery with machine embroidery.

[00:32:35]Cuz I'm a fake artistic dress person and also time um and I'm going to place them you know like so and I think that'll be quite nice and then top stitch that so this edge will be down really it should be something like this instead makes some nice mitered corners I just like top stitch that in place I think I have enough to also like cover these um these with embroidery but I'm not sure that I'll bother actually cuz >> [clears throat] >> no one's going to see them so yeah I'm not sure maybe I'll maybe I'll do it as a little like a hidden little some interest in here as well but I'm not sure I'll bother cuz to be honest these sleeves no one's going to see it no one's going to see it so yeah neckline hemming and then the dress is done with all of that done I hemmed my dress using a bias tape and some of my machine embroidery >> [music] >> I machine embroidered the ribbons for the yoke.

[00:34:34]>> [music] [music] >> I also [music] machine embroidered the hems of the sleeves. I was planning on machine embroidering the the actual sleeves like the a ribbon for the sleeves as well and then attaching those around the bits that I'd gathered, but no one's ever going to see that bit. So, I just inside decided to to make a little embroidery on the on the very >> [music] >> like hem of the cuffs and sleeves.

[00:35:28]The yoke I stitched on by hand.

[00:35:31]>> [music] [music] >> And finally, with the overdress and the underdress done, I just wanted the balance.

[00:35:45]>> [music] >> Using the Truly Victorian pattern for a dip waist belt, I cut out the fabric from a black cotton velvet scrap, a lining from a black cotton satin scrap, >> [music] >> and an interlining from a very stiff cotton canvas I had.

[00:36:12]>> [music] >> I stitched the interlining together [music] by lapping the two mid edges over each other and adding two boning channels at the mid front. You were inserted two pieces of synthetic whalebone.

[00:36:30]Uh using scrap of fabric, I also made two boning channels and one lacing channels on each side of the mid back and both those.

[00:36:40]>> [music] >> I then wrapped the fabric over the interlining, [music] basting it in place.

[00:36:56]>> [music] [music] [music] >> I folded the seam allowances [music] of the lining in and pinned that to the fabric at the edges of the belt.

[00:37:26]I hand stitched the lining to the velvet [music] all around the belt.

[00:37:34]>> [music] [music] >> And using some grommets that I had laying about, I made a few lacing holes in the back between the boning and laced that up.

[00:37:58]>> [music] [music] [music] >> And with that, I was ready to go and do something artsy.

[00:38:21]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Oh.

[00:40:27]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] [music] >> So, I intended to wear this to an event which sadly I had to drop out of cuz I fell ill, but I am so proud of this and I hope I will get to wear it to a different event in not too long time.

[00:41:43]And in the meantime, I'm super happy with like the individual pieces. I think I'll get a lot to wear out of them. The belt is really flattering.

[00:41:52]The blue dress is super comfortable now that we've had a lot of heat.

[00:41:56]And and the that the linen dress and the overdress or princess dress, I'm not sure. I've I've kind of lived in it at home cuz it's just so airy and so comfortable.

[00:42:11]So, yeah, I'm very with all of them.

[00:42:14]Uh next time we're going to take it back to some of my first like the race on that of this channel when it first opened. But until that point, I hope you have a lovely summer. Take care, and bye.