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Rate the Dress: Paquin’s pale flower

I’ll be perfectly honest with you.  I was NOT expecting you, on the whole, to like last week’s Rate the Dress.  I thought all of you would be calling curtains and poof and froof and Miss Havisham.  I mean, it had puffed sleeves divided by puffs with triple rows of ruffles at the edges, and layers and layers of puffed skirts, all surmounted by a puffed sash.  But you loved it!  Perhaps all that paleness made the puffiness work, because it came in at a respectable 7.7 out of 10 (not bad for a dress that did, in the end, get compared to curtains & Miss Havisham).

This week I’m sticking with pale, but going outside the date perimeters of the Historical Sew Fortnightly with a 1950s gown (though Massignac was the designer for Paquin from 1945 to 49, so I question the dating slightly).

Colette Massignac for House of Paquin, 1950s

Colette Massignac for House of Paquin, 1950s or 1945-49

This dress reminds me of the moonflowers that used to grow wild all along the roads growing up Hawaii.  They would bloom at dusk, and fade early in the morning.  Massignac may have been using the exact flowers as her inspiration: evoking a fragile night bloom for a delicate evening gown, using a pale colour to glow against the dark of night, and adding rows of diamantes or sequins to further catch the light.

What do you think?  Would the wearer of this dress be the blooming belle of the ball, or sad, wilted wallflower?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

(and, as always, extra bonus points for anyone who can identify what collection this is from.  I’ve searched and searched, but all the sites link back to commercial sites that are using other images from collections I recognise, without crediting them, and their links send you to shopping sites).

A white skirt for Polly / Oliver

I had dreams of making myself a complete set of 1860s undergarments for the HSF ‘White’ challenge, but since I didn’t get the Polly / Oliver skirt done for ‘Literature’ it takes priority and will be my ‘White’ entry.

I’m using these two mid 1880s images as my inspiration for the Polly Oliver skirt:

La Monitour de la Mode, 1887

La Moniteur de la Mode, 1887

The first one is my primary inspiration – the plaid area will be white in my version, and the blue area will be the last of my red jacquard.  Plus, there will be the last of my buttons, and some gold braid used.

I am, however, tickled at how close the bodice of this yachting outfit is to the Polly / Oliver jacket.  And I rather like the layers of pleats that you can glimpse in the underskirt, and I may borrow that in some way.  Also, isn’t the flag-inspired dress fabulous?

1887, Godey's Ladies Book

1887, Godey’s Ladies Book

I’m basing my pattern and construction for the skirt on the 1887-9 day dress from the Victoria & Albert featured in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion.

1887-9 day dress from the V&A featured in Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion

The date, shape and details are exactly right, and I’ve always been intrigued by the self-boned underskirt of the pattern.  I’m hoping it will be strong enough for me to wear the skirt without a full bustle.  Less layers and weight makes sense for a military-inspired dress.  After all, Polly can’t be carrying around an extra bustle on campaign!

I started by sewing the basic underskirt layer.  I’m using the same ivory sateen I used for the vest for the all the light coloured portions of the skirt.  I stiffened the hem with a length of linen from the inside of an obi.

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

My obi recycling is very green.  I stop short of pulling out and using the threads for hand sewing, but everything else gets re-used.

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

For boning, I’m also recycling: using the bones from a modern commercial crinoline that someone gave me.  The steel boning is much lighter and weaker than the stuff I usually use, so I sewed three lines of boning rather than the two on Arnold’s original.

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

Unfortunately, even with an extra bone, the boning was still far too weak to support a nice curve in the underskirt itself, much less any extra layers, so I had to go back and double the lines of boning, ending up with 6 lines of bones each spaced 4″ apart, rather than 3 spaced 8″ apart.

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

The boning channels are yet another example of green-y/re-use-y/frugality-ness.  They are remnants of white cotton that I  cut into strips and folded and pressed and rolled on to card stock years ago, just in case they would be useful.  And they were!

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

I’m still going to have to wear a small bum-pad or short bustle to give myself the real “oomph” from the back that you see in mid-1880s skirts, but overall I’m pleased with how this is looking (or will look, once I tie all the hoop ties properly, so some of them aren’t pulling more than others).

ca. 1885 Polly / Oliver skirt construction

Pleased or not, I don’t think I’ll be using the self-boned underskirt technique for future bustle-era dresses.  It’s just so much easier to make them soft and put them over a full bustle.

So now I need to put in my red detail layer, and then my full over-layer, and then the final drape layer, and then gather/pleat the whole top, waistband and fastenings, and then final trim.  Easy peasy…

I hope!

Felicity thedreamstress.com

Is there a doctor in the house?

I’ve been reading Victoria Finlay’s Colour, and in her chapter on indigo she discusses how urine was used as the alkaline agent for fixing dyes across millennia and cultures: from ancient Pompeii to early 20th century Scottish islands.  And then she casually tosses in the information that the best urine for dye vats comes from pre-pubescent boys.

Wait.  What?

There is no exploration of this rather astonishing fact, no discussion of why or when it comes from, or what culture made the claim.  Short of reading all her sources (some of which I’ve already read, the rest of which are already on my reading list), I can’t think of a way to explore or test the claim.

I certainly can’t google it.  My first though, as it often is, is “Ooh…I’ll look it up and see what google shakes out…” and then my mind contemplated the possibilities and quickly shut down.  It would not end well.

Bacchus, Peter Paul Rubens, 1640, oil on canvas

Bacchus, Peter Paul Rubens, 1640, oil on canvas

And then I realised that I already have a pretty awesome resource (and one that isn’t likely to result in the police showing up at my door if I ask “does the pee of prepubescent boys really make the best alkaline agent for dyeing?) at my fingertips: You, dear readers.

So, has anyone else heard this?  Know where it comes from?

And, are there any readers with the sort of scientific or medical training who might know if there is anything chemically different in the urine of young boys which would make it better for dyeing?  Is it more alkaline perhaps?  Or is this probably some weird folk-myth that doesn’t have any possible basis?  Or might it come from a culture that fed young boys different foods?  Would this affect urine enough to make it better for dyeing?

Some cultural health/body practices do have their basis in practical, realistic, facts, so I’m not completely writing little boy pee off as an essential ingredient of a beautifully blue cloak.

Ancient Hawaii was one of many cultures that secluded women while they were having their periods, and forbade them from preparing food.  While I don’t care for the dirty/punishment-from-God connotation that has sometimes come with the seclusion, on a practical level, it kinda makes sense.  Many women are in pain and a bit grumpy and emotional at that time.  There are certainly months where having my own private hut where I don’t have to deal with people and food gets brought to me seems like a good idea.

One can imagine ancient cultures going through the logical process of “Hmmm….every month around this time when we ask for sandwiches instead of making them she throws all the sandwich making implements at us and then sits down and cries.  Maybe we should tell her to take a few days off and go hang out in her own personal place…” and then after a few generations it becomes a socio-religious thing that women go off on their own at this time, whether or not they get caught by the emotional/crying/grumpy/sandwich-implement-hurling blues or not (because not all women do).

So, could it be the same with the pee of pre-pubescent boys?

Dyers?  Doctors?  Scientists?  Anyone brave enough to look it up in google books (I’m scared to try even that)?

UPDATE: There is tons of interesting information and useful links in the comments, plus some fascinating conjecture, but I do believe I have the answer.  I discussed this with the medicos in one of my sewing classes (my sewing classes are full of nurses, doctors and digital artists) and they instantly said “Oh, you use boy pee because it is more hygienic.”  Basically, thanks to their longer urethra, and the fact that it is less likely to touch other stuff as it comes out, male pee is less germy than girl pee, and thus, ironically, less smelly after time.  Add that to the young boys having less contaminants than men, and it makes perfect sense that little boy pee would be the preferred urine for dyeing.

They also took the opportunity to tell me that if I was ever desperate enough for moisture to need to drink pee, man-pee was a much better option than my own.  As you can imagine, I am even more disinclined to try pee-dying than pee-dyeing.