All posts tagged: terminology

Terminology: What is a sabot sleeve?

My last two terminology posts were so popular that I’ve decided to make them a regular feature, so you can now look forward to them every Thursday or Friday. I even got all excited and (maybe just a bit overly ambitious) and started a grandly titled Great Historical Fashion and Textile Glossary, so that you can see them all in one place (including anything I’ve written in the past that defines and describes a historical costume and textile term nicely). As it develops I’ll do fancy things like allowing you to skip to the letter you want and all that. The last two terminology posts I did were about 19th century fashion, and I’ve done a lot of fabric terms in the past, so thought it was high time I posted an 18th century definition. So I started researching the sabot sleeve, a term I am familiar with from 18thc fashion plates (but as it turns out, was probably mistaken as to what it meant), and as I did I found the term was also …

More terminology: What is a pardessus?

Published by The Dreamstress

Continuing on from my post about guimpes, I’ve been noticing all sorts of costuming words that I see, and can guess what they mean, but never properly research. My latest word is pardessus. V&E posted a gorgeous 1874 pardessus pattern that started my research. Pardessus, unglamorously enough, just means ‘overcoat’, from the French ‘passed over’. We can see the term, or variants of it, used in early French fashion magazines. The notes for this fashion magazine from 1814 described the garments as 1. Robe de Levantine et fichu-canezou garni en broderie. Chapeau en Gros de Naples garni dune ruche de gaze. 2. Canezou de velours. Jape de reps garnie en rouleaux. Chapeau en velours epingle garni de plumes d’Autruche. 3. Par-dessus four-6 en merinos garni de chinchilla. Toque de velours plein garni de roses. The term pardessus gained popularity in English in the 1840s as a term to describe a mantle, along with pelisses, paletots, camails, and crespins. Mentions of pardessus are most common in English fashion magazines in the ’40s & ’50s, and American …

What exactly is a guimpe?

Published by The Dreamstress

I ran across this object recently, and was most intrigued: The MFA Boston describes it as: A guimpe of gathered and puffed white net, high round neck, open down front elbow length sleeves, foundation of tarlatan covered with net, white tulle ruching around neck held in place with narrow coral velvet ribbon. While interesting, this still doesn’t explain what a guimpe is (other than a sort of lacy blouse thing which you obviously had to wear under or over another garment, which you can tell from the photo), or what you do with it. So I did a little research. Apparently a guimpe is a short blouse worn under a pinafore/jumper dress, or a fill in for a low-cut dress. It’s very similar to a chemisette or dickey. It was a word that was particularly common in the mid-late 19th century, and it comes from the Old French word for wimple, which is why the white thing that nuns wear around their necks/heads are also sometimes called guimpes. Here is a very early gown with …