Ninon’s dress: the skirt
Unlike most seamstresses, I like to make the skirts of my ensembles before I make the bodices. My skirt is 150″ wide. My research revealed that anything from 115″ to 150″ is period accurate, but I really feel that I needed to size-up, as modern bodies are bigger than 17th c bodies. Hunnissett recommends 140″, but I wanted my dress to be quite sumptuous, and even with a boned bodice, my waist is bigger than the average 1950s actress she was writing for! I thought about having a train for the skirt, as many portraits show them, and there is a lot of information available on the sumptuary laws for trains in 17th c France. As Ninon wasn’t nobility, her legal train allowance would have been relatively short in any case. However, this turned out to be irrelevant as I’m a little tight on material, and want to be able to dance in the dress, so I’m skipping the train. My research suggested that even ladies of leisure only wore trains for the most formal …