All posts filed under: Textiles & Costume

Terminology: What is marquisette?

Marquisette is a sheer, lightweight mesh or net fabric with a leno weave. It can be made from almost any fibre: silk, cotton, wool, rayon, nylon, polyester and a blend of any of the above. It is used for dresses, curtains, and mosquito netting. It is very similar to grenadine, but with a slightly more open weave. Marquisette can look quite different depending on the fibres used and variants and finished applied to the weave. Finding images of antique dresses made of marquisette is problematic as few museums and garment sellers look at the fabric closely enough (you need to inspect it under a very strong magnifying glass to see the weave) to correctly label marquisette. Many extent 19teens gowns probably include marquisette, but are not labelled as such. The earliest mention I can find for marquisette is an ad for wool and silk ‘box robes’ in 1907, but the term is in quotation marks, indicating that it is still a new and novel word. This must be one of the earliest usages of the …

Terminology: What is a sabot sleeve?

Published by The Dreamstress

My last two terminology posts were so popular that I’ve decided to make them a regular feature, so you can now look forward to them every Thursday or Friday. I even got all excited and (maybe just a bit overly ambitious) and started a grandly titled Great Historical Fashion and Textile Glossary, so that you can see them all in one place (including anything I’ve written in the past that defines and describes a historical costume and textile term nicely). As it develops I’ll do fancy things like allowing you to skip to the letter you want and all that. The last two terminology posts I did were about 19th century fashion, and I’ve done a lot of fabric terms in the past, so thought it was high time I posted an 18th century definition. So I started researching the sabot sleeve, a term I am familiar with from 18thc fashion plates (but as it turns out, was probably mistaken as to what it meant), and as I did I found the term was also …

More terminology: What is a pardessus?

Published by The Dreamstress

Continuing on from my post about guimpes, I’ve been noticing all sorts of costuming words that I see, and can guess what they mean, but never properly research. My latest word is pardessus. V&E posted a gorgeous 1874 pardessus pattern that started my research. Pardessus, unglamorously enough, just means ‘overcoat’, from the French ‘passed over’. We can see the term, or variants of it, used in early French fashion magazines. The notes for this fashion magazine from 1814 described the garments as 1. Robe de Levantine et fichu-canezou garni en broderie. Chapeau en Gros de Naples garni dune ruche de gaze. 2. Canezou de velours. Jape de reps garnie en rouleaux. Chapeau en velours epingle garni de plumes d’Autruche. 3. Par-dessus four-6 en merinos garni de chinchilla. Toque de velours plein garni de roses. The term pardessus gained popularity in English in the 1840s as a term to describe a mantle, along with pelisses, paletots, camails, and crespins. Mentions of pardessus are most common in English fashion magazines in the ’40s & ’50s, and American …