All posts filed under: 18th Century

Rate the Dress: Madame Bergeret with bergere

Last week Elizabeth Hawes’ striped 1930s ‘Alimony’ dress elicited VERY strong reactions from almost all of you. Most of you loved it (and when I say loved, I mean LOVED – I don’t think I’ve ever posted a dress that’s received as many hits and forwards and new commenters), and a few of you really, really hated it (no, 0 is not an acceptable rating. It’s a scale of 1 to 10!). I was a bit surprised by some of the comments, particularly about the colour, and wondered if some of you have really really strange colour calibrations on your computer screens! The massive outpouring of love and the few strong reactions of loathing balanced out at 8.2 out of 10. I (in case you haven’t guessed), LOVE the dress. It’s what my 1930s alter ego wore to the gay gypsy bar mitzvah for the disabled in 1938 Berlin. This week I leave the obvious visual intellectualism of stripes behind for a visual intellectualism that is both far more subtle in its visible clues (at …

Striped and pleated petticoat details

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve already shown you all the glamour shots of my new subtly-striped 1780s petticoat, but I thought some of you might be interested in the construction details. For the overall look of my petticoat I was inspired by fashion plates like this one from 1778: Obviously my petticoat doesn’t match my pet-en-l’aire, and I’ve made my ruffle a little narrower – less than 1/3 of the petticoat length, rather than almost 1/2 of the length, but I’m comfortable with the overall look. The skirt is made from three 36″ long widths of 45″ wide cotton muslin with a subtle self-stripe in bamboo. The widths are sewn together with a 10″ long gap for the skirt opening left unstitched at the top of one seam. Sewn together, I had 132″ of skirt to gather in to my waistband. This is a little too much width for an 18th century petticoat – most examples that I can find are no more than 112″ wide, and if I did it again I’d probably omit that extra 20″. To …

Terminology: What is ‘brown’ linen (and osnaburg)?

Published by The Dreamstress

Brown linen is the term used to describe unbleached linen in the 18th and 19th century. ‘Brown’ linen could either be finely woven, high quality linen that would be bleached before being sold, or rough, coarse linen that would be sold brown. Rather than pre-bleaching the linen yarn, cloth was usually woven brown, then sold to bleachers, the price based on the quality of the thread and weave, and then on-sold to fabric merchants and customers. Heavy and course linen would probably remain brown for use in cheaper clothes, as bags and for rough use (in 1803 Merriweather Lewis purchased from Richard Weavill, a Philadelphia upholsterer, 107 yards of brown linen to be made into 8 tents for his cross-continental exploration with William Clark), finer linen cloth would be bleached white. The Impact of the Domestic Linen Industry describes the how the town of Banbridge in the county of Down had grown up from a cluster of houses in 1718 to a prosperous market town 20 years later entirely around the sale of unbleached linen, …