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Jul. 28th, 2007 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tudorladyOkay, I have the beta-test version of my smock cut, and started on the embroidery.
The hardest part was figuring out how big to make the neckline. I consider myself unforgivably pudgy, but beneath it there, my frame, and especially my shoulders remain a stubbon 10-ish. As in, unless I'm very nearly dead, I'll never wear anything off the rack smaller than a 10, because that's the size my shoulders are. So, when the most visible part of a garment is going to be right where my body hardly changes, but it also has to cover the rest of my loathsome adipose carcass - yeah. One size will not fit all. And in this case, it may well not ever fit anyone else.
So, I played around last night, and came up with a good way to freehand Tudor roses, which is a good thing, because I can't draw worth a damn. I can get the basic shape and do the detail work with the threads. Originally I was thinking I'd do violets - mostly because I have an enormous amount of purple embroidery thread, and I happen to like them, but I wasn't able to find them as embroidered decoration in any other 16thC examples I had handy last night - at least not where they were by themselves, but rather in the context of something else.
Which brings me to this. I am going to talk to the empty auditorium here for a minute. I'm going to try to make this make sense, but chances are I've completely missed the point, so don't take me too seriously.
Original, period clothes, by which I don't mean actual extant examples. I'm talking about original work done within the period parameters (as much as reasonably possible).
This is a big bugaboo of mine. It's wonderful that there is so much source material out there now to learn from. If we'd had anything remotely resembling this back in the early 70s when I got started (except for a single broadcast of Elizabeth R here in the states), there is no telling how far and how fast I would have gone. I'm pretty sure I would have left the solar system years ago, yanno?
So. How come I keep seeing things that are supposedly copies of garments in portraits, often down to the trim and fabric being near-perfect-replica? Some are uncannily accurate, and I can appreciate that, but those who actually manage to achieve this are really a very small percentage. If you want to copy, fine. I totally get it. It takes a tremendous amount of skill (not to mention time, money, and other stuff) to bring off a good copy of something from a painting or an extant piece - and when it's done right, the effect is amazing.
But what about a little originality? I see so many outfits which are an attempt to copy a portrait (or copy a copy of someone else's copy, by which time they're not really recognizable as such) that it makes me wonder if (a) people simply aren't very imaginative, or (b) people are afraid to use what they've learened to experiment. No excuse for the first, but I have some empathy - although little patience - for the second. Sticking with known things is safe. You can produce documentation on the spot, if you're asked, and yes, some of us have been asked and are ready with it. Copying requires no extrapolation.
However. The clothing worn in portraits is the equivalent of what's worn to the Academy Awards. Wealthy persons got good use out of it, but unless one was a monarch (or a Medici), one didn't go about like that 24/7 and I'm none too so sure what the Medicis did on the weekends). The same people who had these stunning things also had more commonplace clothing. But there's kind of a problem with that, too - because now that people are actually researching it, you keep seeing things that look pretty familiar. (Seen one Flemish, seen 'em all? No? Then how come I see so many of the same dress?)
I'm NOT talking about spanning eras or cultures in a single suit of clothes, although I see it done with alarming frequency. I'm talking about exercising your own personal taste within the period. Imagine for a minute that my 16thC persona has come back to the country from Greenwich, where just now (1580s) anything Italian/Spanish/French/Flavor of the Month is all the rage. I do not have a court tailor. However, I have a perfectly able tailor in Ewell to whom I'm able to describe and perhaps draw this in detail for. I can't copy the exact goods I saw there, except for a length of fabric I may have bought from a fashionable draper. I can incorporate the right elements from the period. The result is a suit of clothes in the flavor of the month, in a color that suits me rather than one as close as possible to the example, and done with my own accessories which are like, but not identical to those I saw a month earlier (by which time this suit would get me laughed out of Hampton Court). By changing a few, mutable details, you can have something that is your own. You do look like you've just stepped out of a portrait. Your OWN.
Uhm, so. Yeah. I'm trying out a smock pattern.
The hardest part was figuring out how big to make the neckline. I consider myself unforgivably pudgy, but beneath it there, my frame, and especially my shoulders remain a stubbon 10-ish. As in, unless I'm very nearly dead, I'll never wear anything off the rack smaller than a 10, because that's the size my shoulders are. So, when the most visible part of a garment is going to be right where my body hardly changes, but it also has to cover the rest of my loathsome adipose carcass - yeah. One size will not fit all. And in this case, it may well not ever fit anyone else.
So, I played around last night, and came up with a good way to freehand Tudor roses, which is a good thing, because I can't draw worth a damn. I can get the basic shape and do the detail work with the threads. Originally I was thinking I'd do violets - mostly because I have an enormous amount of purple embroidery thread, and I happen to like them, but I wasn't able to find them as embroidered decoration in any other 16thC examples I had handy last night - at least not where they were by themselves, but rather in the context of something else.
Which brings me to this. I am going to talk to the empty auditorium here for a minute. I'm going to try to make this make sense, but chances are I've completely missed the point, so don't take me too seriously.
Original, period clothes, by which I don't mean actual extant examples. I'm talking about original work done within the period parameters (as much as reasonably possible).
This is a big bugaboo of mine. It's wonderful that there is so much source material out there now to learn from. If we'd had anything remotely resembling this back in the early 70s when I got started (except for a single broadcast of Elizabeth R here in the states), there is no telling how far and how fast I would have gone. I'm pretty sure I would have left the solar system years ago, yanno?
So. How come I keep seeing things that are supposedly copies of garments in portraits, often down to the trim and fabric being near-perfect-replica? Some are uncannily accurate, and I can appreciate that, but those who actually manage to achieve this are really a very small percentage. If you want to copy, fine. I totally get it. It takes a tremendous amount of skill (not to mention time, money, and other stuff) to bring off a good copy of something from a painting or an extant piece - and when it's done right, the effect is amazing.
But what about a little originality? I see so many outfits which are an attempt to copy a portrait (or copy a copy of someone else's copy, by which time they're not really recognizable as such) that it makes me wonder if (a) people simply aren't very imaginative, or (b) people are afraid to use what they've learened to experiment. No excuse for the first, but I have some empathy - although little patience - for the second. Sticking with known things is safe. You can produce documentation on the spot, if you're asked, and yes, some of us have been asked and are ready with it. Copying requires no extrapolation.
However. The clothing worn in portraits is the equivalent of what's worn to the Academy Awards. Wealthy persons got good use out of it, but unless one was a monarch (or a Medici), one didn't go about like that 24/7 and I'm none too so sure what the Medicis did on the weekends). The same people who had these stunning things also had more commonplace clothing. But there's kind of a problem with that, too - because now that people are actually researching it, you keep seeing things that look pretty familiar. (Seen one Flemish, seen 'em all? No? Then how come I see so many of the same dress?)
I'm NOT talking about spanning eras or cultures in a single suit of clothes, although I see it done with alarming frequency. I'm talking about exercising your own personal taste within the period. Imagine for a minute that my 16thC persona has come back to the country from Greenwich, where just now (1580s) anything Italian/Spanish/French/Flavor of the Month is all the rage. I do not have a court tailor. However, I have a perfectly able tailor in Ewell to whom I'm able to describe and perhaps draw this in detail for. I can't copy the exact goods I saw there, except for a length of fabric I may have bought from a fashionable draper. I can incorporate the right elements from the period. The result is a suit of clothes in the flavor of the month, in a color that suits me rather than one as close as possible to the example, and done with my own accessories which are like, but not identical to those I saw a month earlier (by which time this suit would get me laughed out of Hampton Court). By changing a few, mutable details, you can have something that is your own. You do look like you've just stepped out of a portrait. Your OWN.
Uhm, so. Yeah. I'm trying out a smock pattern.
