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Terminology: the Olivia cap / Olivia bonnet

The silver screen has  been launching fashions for almost as long as it has been around.  50,000 copies of Adrian’s  ruffled-sleeved Letty Lynton dress were sold  in 1932, and  in 1939 Gone with the Wind launched innumerable  green-sashed dress replicas.  Annie Hall made oversized androgyny tres chic.    Closer to the present,  yellow is predicted to be the frock  colour du jour of 2017, thanks to La La Land and Beauty & the Beast.

Before the screen launched fashions, the stage did the same job.  While not as many people could see a stage performance as a film, the costumes in notable London & New York productions were described in great detail in newspaper articles around the world, and images of the actors in their roles were widely disseminated as collectable trading cards.  The costume enthusiasts amongst you are probably familiar with Merry Widow hats and Dolly Varden frocks.

Less famous today is the Olivia cap, or Olivia bonnet, popularised by Ellen Terry’s turn as Olivia in 1878’s  Olivia  at the Court Theatre, a play based on The Vicar of Wakefield.

Ellen Terry as Olivia in ‘Olivia’, based on the Vikar of Wakefield (1878) from luna.folger.edu

Like Dolly Varden, Olivia was set in the 18th century, and the costumes were an 1870s take on 18th century fashions,  fitting in with the Georgian influence that was already a major inspiration in 1870s fashion.

Olivia was a success in London, and cemented Ellen’s reputation as  a theatre star.  A well received tour of the play throughout ‘the provinces’, with her husband Charles Kelly playing the role of the Vicar, made her face known throughout England.  Ironically, the tour was only launched as a sop to Kelly, who was miffed that he had  not been given the lead role in London, and it failed to solve Kelly & Terry’s marital woes, and they were divorced soon after..

Images of Ellen  in her distinctive ’18th century’ costumes were disseminated around the world, published in newspapers, and traded as cards.  Her outfit as a whole was widely admired, but her lace cap and ruffled fichu came in for particular notice.

The Olivia cap, or Olivia bonnet, as it became known, was originally a bonnet with  ruffled lace flounces, high cap and close side brim fit with a central peak, with a ribbon tied  in an elaborate bow right at the peak.  Later the name applied to any hat with the distinctive peaked brim shape.

Sea-Side Costume With Sash ; Sea-Side Costume With Paletot Waist. The Season, vol. IV, Aug. 1885, NYPL 804547

Ellen’s onstage  Olivia cap was  based on 18th century caps depicted in artworks such as Fragonard’s The Love Letter –  which was probably the primary source of inspiration for the cap.

The set design for 1878s Olivia was done by Marcus Stone (known for his romanticised historical paintings), and while Ellen Terry was often  responsible for designing and sourcing her own costumes, it’s almost certain that he created  Olivia’s 18th century look for the 1878 staging.

Stone’s  artworks include an image of Olivia, wearing the distinctive cap under her hat:

Olivia, Marcus Stone, 1880

Ellen Terry’s daughter, Edith Craig, who appeared in small roles in the 1878 Olivia as a nine years old, remembers being enormously proud of seeing Olivia hats modelled after her mothers on-stage cape for sale in store windows. This pride partly made up for the disappointment of being continually dressed in aesthetic-inspired cotton Liberty frocks and aprons, when she longed for a conventional silk dress, like other little girls wore.

While Ellen’s own choice of dress for herself and her daughter was distinctly un-conventional (Ellen, was known, among other things, for wearing her hair quite short – just at the shoulders –  loose and tousled; a look that was copied  by her more daring fans) , Olivia headwear was widely adopted by conventional society.

The first mentions of Olivia caps and bonnets appeared in 1879, and the link the the play is always explicitly mentioned.  By 1883 mentions of the style appear in fashion columns all over the world, in innumerable variations, with  bases made of straw,  or plush (as in this 1883 example),  The general style of the hat was seen both in outside wear, as the Olivia bonnet or hat and as an indoor cap, as the Olivia cap.

The Olivia Bonnet of myrtle-green satin, with pale yellow bird on the left side, The Peterson Magazine, Volumes 83-84 Sept 1883

 

#4 Olivia Bonnet for Mourning, of black lace with black gauze ribbon, white rose-sprays and black jet and feather aigrette, London and Paris Magazine of Fashion, May 1885

Olivia bonnets, associated as they were with the young, innocent Olivia of The Vicar of Wakefield, were seen as being suitable for young girls, and young married women.  It was recommended for women with oval faces.  Some fashion magazines were less than enthusiastic about them though, warning ‘the Olivia Bonnet requires very careful choosing, and suits but few English faces’.

Olivia hats might have faded out of fashion in the mid 1880s, were it not for an 1885 revival of Olivia at the Lyceum Theatre, with Ellen reprising her role, and Henry Irving as the Vicar of Wakefield.  This staging was even more of a success than the first.  Marcus Stone was again involved, designing Ellen’s costumes, including a red silk dress with ‘Watteau pleats’.

The plays revival kept  the Olivia bonnet firmly at the centre of fashion, so that in 1886 fashion papers described bonnet shapes based on either the Olivia or the Princess shape as being most popular.

The peaked look soon began to influence other hats.  The November 1888 Women’s World credits the Olivia cap and bonnet with inspiring the peaked brim now seen in toques.  The Olivia bonnet, however, had done its fashion dues, and by the early 1890s was out of favour as a style.

Flannel Morning gown with Olivia inspired hat, Harper’s Bazaar, 1889

Sources:

Barwick, Sandra.  A Century of Style.  London: George Allen & Unwin.  1984.

Cassell’s Family Magazine, Cassell, 1885

Lewandowski, Elizabeth J, The Complete Costume Dictionary. Plymouth UK: Scarecrow Press. 2011

O’Hara, Georgina, The Encyclopedia of Fashion: From 1840 to the 1980s. London: Thames and Hudson Ltd. 1986

Rachlin, Anne, Edy was a Lady.  Troubadour Publishing Ltd.  2011

Thomas, Edward, Mrs (ed).  The London & Paris Ladies Magazine of Fashion, May 1885

The Domestic Monthly: An Illustrated Magazine of Fashion, Literature, and the Domestic Arts, Volume 23, Domestic Sewing Machine Company, 1885

Costume College 2017 – I’m teaching!

I’m very excited to be going to Costume College again this year – and to be teaching again!

I’ll be teaching three classes, one each on Friday, Saturday & Sunday.  I’m being quite brave teaching three classes (and sadly, it means I’ll miss lots of other peoples classes – the huge drawback to teaching), but I was so excited about these three topics I couldn’t decide which to pass on, so offered all three as choices.

The first is my favourite rant:

Beyond the Fringe: Unravelling the Myth of the 1920s Flapper

Imagine a flapper. The popular concept is of mid-1920s young women, with fringed dresses, sequined and feathered headbands, sleek bobbed hair, and few inhibitions. This class will explore the historical truth behind the flapper myth, from the British origins of the ‘flapper’ in the 1900s, to the rise in popularity of the term in the 1910s, and the way it evolved into the feminist movement of the 1920s, and was then re-invented over the course of the 20th century. We’ll look at where the iconography of the look came from, as well as the alternatives to flapper-ism in the period.

Friday: 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM

The second relates to my main research topic for the last two years:

The Great War Wardrobe

Clothing for a Fortnight in 1916, thedreamstress.com

 

An in-depth exploration of WWI-era homefront fashion. Massive societal changes caused by WWI brought major changes to fashion (new types of undergarments, new fabrics, higher hemlines, and a radically changing silhouette), which caused further societal changes in turn. Leimomi will look at how WWI affected fashion by examining both high-fashion designs, and how they were interpreted in daily wear by home seamstresses. In addition, Leimomi will also provide a detailed guide for building your own WWI era wardrobe, drawing from period accounts of average wardrobes and her own experiences in attempting to live as though it were 1916.

Saturday: 1:30 PM – 3:30 PM

And the third is something close to my heart:

Tapa Cloth & Tiki Attire: The Pacific Influence on Fashion

The Hawaiian Royal Party at the theatre

The Pacific holds a special place in the public imagination: encapsulating everything that is glamorous and exotic, it literally epitomize paradise. Learn how this fascination has influenced Western fashion, from the two known examples of 18th century garments made from Tahitian tapa cloth, to the 1820s fashion for turbans ‘a la Hawaiien’, through the Victorian fad for kiwi-feather muffs, and culminating in the mid-20th century obsession with the Pacific, as seen in Aloha shirts, and Tiki fashions by designers like Shaheen.

Sunday: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

 

If you’re coming to Costume College I do hope you’ll be able to make one of my classes!

Rate the Dress: yellow chinoiserie of the 1780s

Last week’s Rate the Dress was a cherry-bedecked Worth gown, and while it got a lot of love, the general consensus was that the cherry pattern  wasn’t quite balanced properly across the dress, and the pigeon breast wasn’t entirely working, even if one was a fan of pigeon breasts.  Plus, the sleeves had so clearly seen better days that it was hard to envision exactly what those better days looked like.  So, all these pulled the dress down to a nice-but-not-fabulous 8.1 out of 10.

This week’s Rate the Dress is 110 years earlier than last week’s, an entirely different colour, and an entirely different style of dress, and yet to me there is  an aesthetic resonance between the two.  Something in the back pleats, the very round flowers, and the puffed cuffs its shown with in the fully dressed version make me think of the two dresses together, and so showing you this one this week just makes sense:

The Met describes this close-backed 1780s dress of floral silk as a Robe à la Polonaise, and while there is considerable discussion in the historical costuming world if that is the correct term for all dresses with picked up skirts, I’ve left the descriptor as the museum has applied it in this case.

The dress features vivid yellow silk, of the shade often described as Imperial Yellow, ornamented with even rows of pink flowers (probably peonies), around which flutter moths and butterflies.  The silk was almost certainly hand-painted in China, and imported into the West.  In Chinese iconography, the combination of peonies and moths symbolises the attraction between men and women, which would certainly give the dress a very flirtatious appeal!

The petticoat and front edges of the overskirt are ornamented with self fabric trim with rounded pinked upper edges, and vandyke pinked lower edges, all pressed into crips pleats.

The Met has paired it with an elaborately embroidered fichu, mushroom hat, puffed cuffs, dress cane, and green shoes.  What do you think of the overall style, and the museums styling?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10