The Dreamstress

The Historical Sew Monthly 2018 is well underway now, and it’s my duty and honour to write the inspiration post for our fifth challenge of the year: Specific to a Time (of Day or Year).

I was slightly panicked when I realised this theme would fall to me.  I’m not at all an expert at pre-1700s fashions, and this is a challenge that’s particularly tricky before the 19th century (ish), when specific garments for different times of day became common.  But with help from my awesome co-moderators, I’ve found examples from a range of eras – enjoy!

In chronological order:

This ca. 1400 cycle of frescos of the months from the Castello del Buonconsiglio in Trento, Italy, provides a wonderful look at late Medieval fashions by season, with warm layers for winter snowfights:

Flowing garments for spring romance (note the love-knots on the gentleman’s tunic):

And sunhats and light shirts (and sandals!) for harvest labours.  The sunhats do double duty for this challenge, being both daytime, and summer, specific:

Elizabethan costume plates also show wonderful examples of sunhats, like this charming bowl-shaped number.

Portraits are so formal it’s tricky to identify seasonal and time changes, but I’ll guess that heavy fur lined cloaks like the one sported by the Earl of Pembroke were far more popular in winter than summer:

And, while fans are a popular accessory for ladies in late 16th and early 17th century portraits, I can’t help but to suspect that they were even more common in the warmer months than at other times of years:

Going back to winter, we have the wonderful fur-lined jackets that appear in many Dutch interior scenes of the mid-17th century.  This one gives the central figure a place to warm her hands, while also refusing to take the gentleman’s missive.

The advent of fashion plates in the late 17th century makes identifying seasonal specific fashions much easier.  This elegant lady’s soft quilted hood, cozy quilted petticoat, and warm muff all seem perfect for winter, but the caption leaves no doubt at all about the seasonal-appropriateness of her dress:

Her informal summertime counterpart, on the other hand, wears much lighter dress, and carries a fan.  Although they are half a century later, the frequency in which fans appear in 17th century summer-themed fashion plates, and their infrequency in winter plates, makes it likely that the same seasonal shift appeared (or was at least starting to appear) earlier in the century.

If the 18th century is your thing, you could make a bergere, suitable for summer, daytime wear from the 1750s onwards:

(pictorial evidence suggests that chemise a la reine were primarily daytime wear, but I’ve found a few images that suggest they were also worn to nighttime events, so you’d need to make an argument for them being specific to a time of day if you wanted to make one for this challenge).

While chemise a la reine aren’t clearly for one time of day or other, and dresses like this could be worn to formal events at any time of day or year, masked balls were, as much as I can determine, purely nighttime events, so a masque would be a suitable item:

Riding habits were daytime dress:

And fur line cloaks, and muffs of all description, were clearly cold-season accessories:

As were quilted petticoats:

Leaving the 18th century behind, and moving into the 19th, the distinction between daytime and nighttime dress, and thus things that qualify for this challenge, becomes much clearer.

Short sleeved dresses were primarily evening appropriate in the early 19th century:

And long sleeves were daywear, as were, generally speaking, chemisettes and other neck fillers:

While top hats were worn year round for men, there are some summer-specific versions in straw:

Straw as a summer specific material is a common thread throughout this theme, from the medieval examples we started with, all the way through the 19th, and into the 20th century.

Winter hats, in contrast, came in dark colours, and furs and fabric:

While the 18th century primarily had formal or informal clothes, rather than day and evening clothes, as the 19th century progressed the break between the two became quite rigid, though some robe a transformation dresses came with both low-cut, sleeveless evening bodices, and long sleeved, high necked, daytime bodices:

The growing power of the Industrial Revolution also made seasonal clothing distinctions even clearer.  No longer was seasonality just about fabrics that were warm vs. fabrics that were cool, it also took in colours.

Coal powered machinery made industrial cities very dirty, and light clothes impractical.  The advent of rail travel made getting away from cities easy – especially for the well off.  They signalled their summer escape from hot, dirty cities by donning white clothes, and then put back on dark ones when they returned in the autumn, leading to sayings like ‘no white after labour day’.

One of my favourite time/seasonal distinctions is when the same garment (by name) would be specific to  very different times of day or season, depending on the design, and what it was made of.

So, for pyjamas, we have beach pyjamas (daytime, summer)

Evening pyjamas (nighttime, summer or winter):

And lounging pyjamas (day to evening, usually winter), and pyjama pyjamas (nighttime, sleeping):

Can’t wait to see what you make this is  Specific to a Time!

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