Live brief: World War One

The Suffragettes

As we're now second years, my Uni class have been given a live brief off a real client!!!! A local museum has asked us to make some historically correct costumes for their up and coming exhibition this summer which looks at the 100 year anniversary of World War One and clothes and uniforms worn around this period! 

My briefing is to research and make a costume made for a suffragette from this period!

Initial research brought up some lovely Edwardian images.......

From early Edwardian styles.......

......to the Belle Epoque period (my fave!)........

........to glamorous late Edwardian evening wear!

My favourite Edwardian lady has to be actress, Camille Clifford! Just love her S-bend!!!!

I had to give a presentation (yikes!!) to the curator of the museum and show him some of my ideas! As I'm still at the interpretation stage and not a designer as yet, I can work from an actual garment. I'm looking for costume worn just before the War, from around 1909-1914. Here are a couple of the outfits I liked.........

Lovely Edwardian lace dress in the Suffragette colours of purple, white and green!
Images from auction site -  
www.1860-1960.com

Another dress I liked was from the Victoria & Albert Museum in London www.vam.ac.uk for which the pattern appears in the Janet Arnold 'Patterns for Fashion 2' book:

This dress is made from rose pink linen which is cut on the cross is trimmed with cotton braid and embroidered striped net.

After much thought, the curator finally picked one of favourites for me to (attempt) to make.....a purple gabardine skirt and white blouse combo.........

This original outfit sits in the V & A Museum and belonged to a Miss Heather Firbanks of London during the start of the 20th century.

It consists of a white cotton lawn blouse with elbow length sleeves, a wired collar, laced yoke and guipure lace appliques down the front. It's also fastened at the back with mother of pearl buttons. Ebay, here I come!!!!

The skirt is a purple wool gabardine lined with purple satin and edged in black silk jacquard fabric. It's a mock wrap skirt which fastens at the back. The museum says it is gathered at the back with a black buckle fastening (?) so I'll have to work this one out as there are no images!!!!


Have to be quick on this costume as we've only got 7 weeks!!! So model sorted, patterns cut and toile on the go....pics to follow!!!!

21/02/14

Lots of fabrics have finally turned up!! Love it!!!!!!!! Can't wait now to get to uni next week and start on my final costume!

March - May 2014

                    

My final costume started with cutting out basic patterns and lots of adjusting! i made the toile for the skirt out of medium calico and as the blouse was to be made form cotton lawn, I made the toile from muslin.

My tutors gave me access to the archive room at my uni, just to take a look at some original clothing from that period. This was great as it gave me info on things like correct seams and which buckles to use.

 After my toile was complete (and fitting correctly) I cut out my costume from my final fabrics.

This is always the scary part!

The skirt was cut out and sewn together along with a purple sating lining to match. The bottom of the skirt was edged in a black brocade fabric which I lined with interfacing for strength. I also covered 10 large buttons in the same fabric. 

The blouse was fairly easy to construct. I just had to make the front section wider than normal so when it was gathered it gave the wearer that pigeon chested look! I stitched together the side seams using French seams as this seemed more appropriate.

The sleeves were really wide to begin with......

.....but turned out OK once they were gathered at both ends!

I then attached the guipure lace to the ends of the sleeves to act as a cuff and also around the sleeves for decoration.

After quite a bit of research I found that the collars in the Edwardian period were usually wired to keep them upright. I found a book in the uni library which explained the best way to construct one of these wires. The best way was to use millinery wire and bend it into a zig-zag shape.

Two of these were used in the collar, one at each side.

Once the collar was finished, I hand stitched some guipure lace down either side of the blouse front as in the original garment. Each piece took 2 hours to sew, so I just sat and watched Star Wars as I did it!!

I had bought some real Edwardian Mother-of-Pearl buttons from EBay a few monthe before, so these were now sewn down the back of the blouse and the button holes made.

I also made a 'Votes for Women' sash from white cotton and green and lilac bias binding. The writing down the centre of the sash was printed for me by a graphic design friend!

Once the costume was finished, I constructed my straw hat by first purchasing a parasisal capeline (or an unfinished straw hat body) from MacCulloch & Wallace who are based down in London. The hat base was then stretched over a hat block and left to dry for 24 hours.

Once it was dry, I applied stiffener and left to dry again. I then bound the edges in black satin binding, lined the crown with black taffeta and hand stitched (a lot) of purple and lilac flowers around the base of the crown to finish.

My final costume appeared in the end of year degree show brochure, worn my by lovely model, Danielle!

It finally went on show in the local art gallery on June 5th and has been exhibited at a number of places since.

It will finally go into a WW1 exhibition ran by my local museum in October 2014 and will remain there until March 2015! It was sad to see her finally go......bye Betty! ;)