Quite a few years ago I went shopping at Pennsic with my friend Crys. I mostly held stuff for folks as I was a poor college student without any money. However, my friend had a marketable skill and managed to barter quite a few good deals at the War and is currently finishing her certification in Massage Therapy. Anyway, she got this very nice blue fabric of uncertain origin and content and proceeded to make an Italian style dress and excessively bead the bodice with plastic pearls. I have always really liked this dress and while I was in Boston a week ago I borrowed it to wear for an in-garb Sheva Bracha (yes, really, kosher period food and all). The dress ended up coming back to California with me where I will make a few adjustments to make it fit me better and add some sleeves
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| Dress as it is now with no alterations | A close up of the material and beading |
The reason I am specifying Northern Italian instead of Florentine is because I'd like to combine design aspects of both Florentine dress and some from around Venice
Florentine: |
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| Daughter of Matteo Sofferoni, 1530-1532, Bronzino | Portrait of a Lady, Bronzino | |
Venetian: |
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| Portrait of a Lady in a Green Dress, 1530, Veneto | Portrait of a Lady, 1533, Licinio |
I am going to combine some of the aspects of these portraits that I like best into one gown. I particularily like the waistline of the red Licinio gown and the three large puffs of the sleeves in the Portait of a Lady. As in my sketch at the top of the page I am also intending to add some guards to the bodice and skirt, similar to the portait by Bronzino of Matteo Sofferoni's Daughter, and geometrically slash the lower sleeves similar to the Veneto protrait. The plan for the sleeves is somewhat contingent on getting Crys to dig out the sleeves she started to cut out for this dress and hope that there will be enough material for what I want to do. The guarding and lower sleeves will be made of black or dark blue cotton velveteen. Probably black since I have some of that hanging around. Other than the dress I really want to make a balzo or two to complete the whole look!
This dress is of a somewhat lower priority than the doublet dress, bustle gown and tudor ensemble (and for that matter the thesis) so it may be infrequently updated.
For once I am not referring to procrastination on a costuming project. Nope, I am referring to my thesis. The dress is now complete although it has undergone some design changes. Oh, and for those paying attention to the list in the last post, the doublet dress is done, I never even started the bustle dress even though I have all the patterns and material, and the tudor idea got cancelled when some folks moved away and others became royalty.
The big difference is that I decided to base the dress on a different portrait. La Bella by Titian, date , and Venetian.
It has what appears to be slashes on the bodice, as well as poufs on the sleeves. I don't think those are a different layers but rather are faux puffs. One of the reasons for this design change is that when I started to cut the bodice for some serious reshaping many of the fake pearls that had been sewn on started to come off. I still liked the idea of having some sort of ornamentation on the bodice but since I couldn't find any documentation for pearls used in that way (and I didn't want to sew them all back on) I thought it would be nice to go with the slashes and bows. Since this was meant to be a quick de-stressing project I also decided to forgo the embroidery, besides the fabric has a nice pattern. I ended up using some black velveteen since I had that lying around. I purchased some gold organza ribbon for the bows and some super spiffy shot silk for the lower sleeves - so I spent about $7 in new materials and about $15 in old materials (linen lining, duck lining, hemp, velveteen) that I had around.
This style of dress looks to be when structured support garments seem to start to be used, the front of the bodice is very smooth, unlike slightly earlier paintings where there is definitely a rounded shape. However, I thought it would be nice to have a slightly rounder shape so I decided to bone the bodice with hemp since that worked well as support in my 1480s dress and makes one less layer of clothing. Here's a picture of the lining - made of a layer of duck cloth and linen and with thin hemp sticking out.
Although there was some support this ended up giving me a weird double roll looking chest and was very unflattering. I have therefore decided that I will have to wear some flat fronted cable tie boned stays with the dress since that sorted out the problem.
Since I didn't have any extra fabric I cut some off the skirt width in order to make the upper sleeves, which were made of strips of the dress fabric and the black velveteen. These were interlinned with a few feet each of tulle and lined with linen. The tulle worked well to make the sleeves puffy but still light weight. I had tried before to make similar sleeves using cotton batting but those ended up being super heavy and deformed easily.
I do think that some of these types of dresses, particularily slightly earlier ones, may have had a kirtle underneath and the kirtle sleeves are what we see as the lower sleeves. However, I think by this time that the lower sleeves were part of the main dress because in many portraits they are the same color and that even in this case where they are a different color they are attached to the main dress and not a separate garment. The lower sleeves of my dress were made of a shot silk tafetta, with fake poufs of white silk sewn in and lined with linen.
I fully lined the skirt with linen and box pleated it to the bodice. From portaits there seem to be more skirts gathered to bodices from this period although there are certainly enough to justify this pleating choice. Especially since I can never seem to make the gathering come out evenly without sewing it by hand (remember, short stress-free project). The most hand sewing this dress involved was in attaching all the various bits of the sleeves together and hand sewing the hem. In all it really just took a few days of intensive work over Thanksgiving and a few more hours in the evening of the week before.
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| Dress finished | Close up of the lower sleeve |
If I have time I'm planning on making a balzo to go with the gown, probably out of the leftover silk. I'm also hoping to get some better pictures with the gown actually on!
The dress is officially finished and worn to 12th night. I didn't get around to finishing a balzo because I couldn't find my glue gun but I'm definitely going to make one. I didn't see anyone at 12th night wearing one so I'm also inspired to make one of those super huge ones with some sort of internal framework. Here are some pictures.
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| Dress from the front | Dress from the back |
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| Another pic of the full dress | Closer pic of the bodice |
© Sahrye Cohen, 2005
Updated on January 12,2006.