Hey hey! Happy news!
Just in case you missed the notifications elsewhere, all downloadable PDF Scroop Patterns are 25% off this week!
The discount is applied automatically at checkout: no need to do anything!
The sale ends Monday 29 November, 11:59pm, NZ Time (remember that’s Sunday for most of the rest of the world).
Happy shopping, happy sewing!
Our historical weekend for 2021 is come and gone. This year we planned an exciting activity: fossil hunting, 1910s style!
Nina is a keen fossil hunter. She’s familiar with the places in New Zealand where you can go fossil hunting. She suggested we choose a holiday house within driving distance of one of them, and make a day of it.
What a splendid idea!
We planned our sporting chic outfits, with varying degrees of practicality in mind:
I’m wildly envious of Miss K’s jodhpurs, but couldn’t justify making another outfit this year, as I’ve made so many as Scroop Pattern samples.
So while everyone else was a khaki clad adventurer, I was the slightly-out-of-place city cousin in her perky day-at-the-seaside attire:
That was quite fine, as it turns out I’m not much of a fossil hunter. I hate the texture of dry clay soil, hate the dirt on my hands, and got bored of poking about in about 37 seconds.
Not a problem! I was quite happy to be the event photographer while everyone else scrambled over hillsides and got excited about 5 million year old bits of stone shells that looked an awful lot like the significantly newer shells down on the beach a few meters away. I was hoping for trilobites. Turns out I was only off by a few billion years…
I joked to my parents that I’m a bit of a genetic disappointment in my dislike of poking around in dry dirt as the daughter of farmers and the granddaughter of a noted (semi-noted?) archeologist. My mum said “Oh, you’re not a disappointment, farmers don’t like dry dirt either!”.
Luckily everyone else was having a fabulous time scrambling around on the clay cliffside, getting progressively higher up and giving me a delightful view of all the lace trimming on many an Ettie Petticoat.
There were many Etties and Kilbirnie Skirts and Selina Blouses in evidence (and Rilla Corsets, somewhat less in evidence, but there nonetheless). My friends have been very helpful pattern testers!
It wasn’t all Scroop Patterns though. Nina’s skirt is the Evelyn by Wearing History. Miss K’s jodhpurs are the Mrs Depew’s pattern (it is not for the faint hearted).
Once we’d had enough of fossil hunting, we retired to the beach for lunch.
We passed on lashing of gingerbeer in favour of tea.
And what do fossil hunters eat? Enormous pasties! (Mushroom and leek).
I couldn’t decide whether you should see the image where I look elegant and ladylike with my pastie, or the one where I am awkwardly chowing down on it. Enjoy them both!
A fabulous way to spend a day!
And I might get to make those jodhpurs after all. I’ve got ideas for next year’s retreat…
A huge thanks to Averil, who took all the photos featuring me, and the one featuring Nina fourth from the bottom.
This week’s rate the dress illustrates how widespread the global textile trade was in the mid-19th century, and how a dress worn in Europe or the Americas might be made from fabric woven in China. It also brings up an interesting discussion of how Asian fashion and textiles have been perceived, and pigeonholed, in the West.
It’s a discussion that deserves a bit of time, which is why this post took me so long to write!
Most of you loved, loved, loved the Jays Ltd evening dress (or at least loved everything about it except the sash), but the few who didn’t, really didn’t, pulling down the overall rating just a smidge…but not that much!
It’s down .2 from the week before, but still oh-so-good. I swear I’m not purposefully only picking things I think you’ll all love!
This week’s dress is an 1850s day dress made in Britain from silk imported from China.
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1
The bodice of this dress is quite interesting. The velvet collar wrapping down the front is slightly reminiscent of dressing gowns of this period, giving it an almost informal feel that is at odds with the lush fabric and fitted waist of the dress
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1
The lush fabric is also quite interesting. Fabric has been imported from China into Europe for millennia, but few examples used in European clothing in the mid-19th century feature such obviously Chinese motifs.
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1
In addition to the brocaded dragon roundels on the silk, the fabric has manufacturers marks in Chinese on its selvedges. In the 1850s they were probably sewn into/embroidered on to the selvedges with thread after the fabric was woven, a technique still seen on some high end Chinese and Japanese silks.
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1
Although there are many examples of formal garments made from textiles imported from China, India and Japan in the 19th century, there is also a strong link between patterns and designs that had their origins in these countries (and other areas of the world seen as ‘exotic’ to Victorians) and informal, private, intimate, garments. Think of all the examples of Victorian petticoats and corset covers decorated with paisley embroidery. Or tea gowns based on kimono? Dressing robes, banyans, and smoking jackets all had their genesis in banyans imported from India, jackets imported from the Ottoman Empire, and robes imported from China.
In the Victorian imagination, the ‘East’ was often a world of seraglio, concubines, opium dens, and harems. This image was perpetuated by accounts like Leonowen’s The English Governess at the Siamese Court (1870). Although 20 years later than this dress, it similar themes were covered in numerous other novels and bibliographies that influenced her work.
This image contributed to a tendency to use obviously ‘Oriental’ textiles for private garments which still has an impact on fashion today. It’s not a coincidence that the only lingerie store on Wellington’s priciest shopping street has been decorated with an ‘Asian exotic’ ‘geisha’ theme (their words) for the past 12 years (it’s a choice that I was gobsmacked by in 2009, and cannot believe is still in place in 2021).
The longstanding Western practice of pigeonholing Asian fashion as informal (and thus less worthy of being taken seriously) and inherently sensual has a wider social impact as well. For one, it contributes to negative stereotypes where Asian woman are both sexualised, and infantilised.
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1All of this makes this dress particularly intriguing. The combination of a textile with a very obviously Chinese design on a dress with a bodice that reads, at least to the modern eye, as more informal, brings up a number of questions.
Day Dress, ca. 1850, British, silk, Purchase, Gifts in memory of Paul M. Ettesvold, and Judith and Gerson Leiber Fund, 1994, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.302.1
Is this, despite the decadent textiles, an informal dress? Perhaps a morning dress, just a smidge up from a wrapper? Or are modern impressions colouring our view?
It’s true that the styling in the pictures that read as more brown are not helping the formality: the too-small hoop and too-low mannequin allow the skirt to trail on the floor.
It also pays to remember the dress would have been worn with engageantes (under sleeves, usually in white with lace and embroidery) and a white lace collar, both of which would make it read as more complete.
What do you think of the dress, aesthetically, and otherwise?
A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.
As usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment.
