(This page is best viewed using Microsoft Explorer 5.0 and with a monitor that displays more than 16 colors. Please give the pics time to load, they are interlaced gifs so it shouldn't be that much torture... but then I know some of you LIKE torture, hehehe... but the pictures will look very grainy unless you do!)
This is actually a shot I took without flash, and I like it, it's very atmospheric. I think the shots I took with flash turned out a bit bright... you can judge for yourself...
What's that? It's NOT a Highland Gown? The Devil you say!! Well, if you want the story behind this gown, and more piccies of it, along with pics of the undergarments that make such a shape, "Read on, MacDuff!" (or something like that...)
This all began when my good friend Nancy V., aka "Magwah" of QOTD fame, asked me, since I was a costumer, if I had a nice Highland outfit for her to wear to the Oberlin Highland Festival that is coming up later this month (note: I wrote this in June 1999, I think...). I told her that sadly, no, I had never done a production of Brigadoon or anything of that ilk, but that I would make her a Highland outfit to wear. She had made a chemise for herself, but that was all she had so far. We went excitedly together from there!
This was all through chat lines, mind you, I have never touched the woman! She sent me her measurements and mentioned she would like it to be peach, when I quizzed her about the color, but I had some nice Italian textured cotton in the basement that I thought would dye a nice blue, but not peach. She had sent me her lovely photo, and it made me want to dress her in blue. Gee, wonder why? BTW, she named this photo "Cheesy Nancy", I think she is being too humble! It was an honor to dress this pretty lady!
RESEARCH:
It was no easy task to find information about what Highland women wore. There is a lot of information out there on male Highland dress, however, (so much fascination with what they wear beneath the kilt) but the women dressed fairly unremarkably as far as the fashion history books are concerned. I learned that they are a barefoot, no nonsense, and practical race of people; the women's dress was akin more to peasantry when compared to the English, French and even American colonial women of the day.
Highland woman wearing a tonnag, a square tartan worn as a shawl. The silver brooch is usually a treasured family heirloom, handed down through generations. Going barefoot is a common practice in the Highlands, and isn't a mark of poverty or lack of education.
I was slightly distressed because I knew Nancy was wanting a very pretty type of gown. She had sent me pics of French court gowns in the Watteau style (with a particular type of train), and others. I didn't think she wanted to look the way I was seeing in my research. Here is Nancy's impression of what she was thinking of.
As I muddled through what I was going to do, and how I was going to rectify the situation, I was dyeing my fabric. Unfortunately , I could not get out enough of the mauve dye in my cotton fabric, and my dyeing efforts came out a very raisin-y plum. A good earthy color, mind you, but I kept thinking of Nancy, and peach, and her favorite period of art, the Rococo period, which is ultra bright and full of light; it's ultra French, pastel and extrememly feminine. Raisin was just NOT going to cut it. : (
I was peeved about it, and didn't know where I was going to get tons of yardage and still make this project cost effective. I had purchased that cotton years ago when a fabric store was going out of business, and I got it for almost nothing. I didn't want to turn around and tell Nancy that this was going to be really expensive.
I was also keeping in mind that it would be late June in Ohio for the festival, it needed to be light enough fabric to wear, so she wouldn't keel over. These gowns are not "user friendly" , and Highland gowns are of course designed around the fact that it is very cold up there!
Having worked in fabrics, I knew it was too early for fall stock to be coming in and for fabric stores to be clearing out their summer stock. And I WAS NOT settling for a cheap cotton or cotton blend, it would not be worth the time I put into the dress to use something crappy.
Back of Nancy's Gown
As luck would have it, I went to a fabric sale and found a ream of wonderful linen/cotton blend of fabric in a clearance section, dirt cheap already and an additional half off besides! It was a mill end, and I had to thank my lucky stars for huge warehouse type fabric stores. Someone was looking out for Nancy's Gown! It was a pale, ice pink, easily dyeable, with that nice woven look and feel that would make a gown look and hang like a period piece. I quickly purchased 20 yards of it, intending 10 of it for Nancy's Gown.
( I also picked up some other nice pieces of fabric, as I am busy sewing myself maternity dresses with some funk and spunk! You can't beat paying 15 dollars for a new dress!)
PROCESS:
I set myself to dying again, and my kids were really starting to get used to seeing me in huge rubber gloves and a special face mask for filtering out pollutants (Jonathan got it for me, isn't it a romantic and thoughtful gift? I really appreciate it!) (airborne dye powder is NOT HEALTHY, take great care if you dye something yourself, dye is extremely light and quickly floats up in the air....)
I ought to post a pic of myself with my gear on, but alas, Jonathan had been out of town this whole time being an oil man on a job, so there was no one to take one.
I knew Nancy wanted peach, but I was hesitant to try for it in earnest, as I was afraid to err on the side of ORANGE, and I couldn't bear it if Nancy was turned out in an orange gown! No "Tang" dresses. I decided that if there was going to be pigment error, it should be on the side of PINK, so as you can see, the dress is a sort of salmon/coral color. I mixed pinks with yellows and a little orange.
I was glad I did this, because this fabric really soaked up the dye, AND VERY FAST, and turned a deeper color in a short amount of time than I expected it to. If I had the time, I would have done more experimenting with small pieces of fabric, but by this time, I had only a couple weeks to get this done.
I decided to keep it early 1700's, but not to go all out Highland, as I thought the Highland look done authentically would look silly in such a pastel color. I also decided against the arisaid, as I thought Nancy could do without another layer of fabric covering her up under a hot summer sun.
The arisaid is sufficient to cover the wearer from head to toe, and is gathered at the waist with a belt. One can easily see what a practical and very useful garment this was to Highland women. The hair is worn in plaits. This research is from plates dating to the mid 18th century.
I started patterning out a basic early 18th century corset, and used Rigilene boning as opposed to steel stays, which would have to be removed for washing, and would have taken a while to mail order. These corsets were shorter than one's typical image of the corset, which is generally Victorian. The 18c century corset was designed to flatten the front but generally fell short of covering the hips, unlike a Victorian corset that is designed to push that area of the body towards the rear and to help attenuate and narrow the waist.
To narrow the waist while allowing the hips to pop out was the job of the early 18c. corset, as the desired affect was that of full, good child-bearing hips and an ample behind. This is further accentuated by the use of a "bumroll" a padded precursor to the bustle. The heavily boned corset helps guide the flesh into the desired shape. Allowances in the rigidness of it had to be made to accomodate a modern body unused to such restrictive underwear (and you thought bras were bad!). I didn't want to tempt Nancy into pulling it so tight that she would do herself injury!
Sorry for the murky pic, it's the only one I took of the underwear apparently...
The desired effect. It looks a lot bigger in reality than it does in the picture. Any bigger around the hips and it would be too stagey, too exaggerated. Not that that is bad, but larger than life has it's place, and the Oberlin Highland Festival is not it.
After completing the corset and bumroll, I worked on the skirt... all 7-8 yards of it!! There was very little shaping required, and the gathering of it was time consuming and fussy. Once I firmly stitched it to the waistband, I was amazed at the weight of it, and decided at once that Nancy did not need to wear the petticoat underneath, it would just be another hot layer. Slightly longer at the back, it had a wonderful movement to it, and a lot of play in the folds at the hem. I was very pleased. I was also pleased that I wasn't the one who was going to hem that sucker! : )
After assembling the piped bodice, I wished that I had time to line it. I interfaced the bodice fabric hoping to stiffen it and give it some body, and I disliked having the "guts" of the stitching and seam allowances hanging out. I also did not stiffen the front panel and make a proper "stomacher" as would have been appropriate, but I decided it needed to be comfortable. As it was, it was a costume piece and I decided not to go nuts over it.
It was around this time that I asked Nancy about the chemise that she had made. Did it have blousy enough sleeves to hang out from under the 3/4 sleeves? I was told, "It has short sleeves". ACK!! I took some cream eyelet/broderie anglase and put mock chemise sleeves in the dress, and added lace trim to the cuffs and the neck of the dress. Luckily, I have this sort of thing on hand, and it was no big deal, no trip to the store.
The chemise sleeves are pinned up to the dress form, as they would be pushed up and blousy when Nancy is in it. They look bloody horrible hanging down from the weight of the cuffs, just terrible and saggy. So I pinned em up so they look like they should when worn.
I thought to myself, "I hope she likes to be the center of attention!" This was a big, bright, puffy dress!! Although made of summery fabric, the sheer volume of yardage made this dress a heavy duty animal.
(I really hate how my electrical outlet made it into the pics!)
Well, that's the story behind Nancy's gown, I hope it wasn't too tedious a read. (If you read it at all, but I wouldn't blame you, I'm such a windbag!) I didn't get too technical, because I would find that as boring to write as you would find it to read!
I sent Nancy's Gown off via UPS who promised it to her in TWO DAYS, and guess what, she actually got it in two days, as well! Also, and most importantly, IT FIT! ( I can't tell you how much sleep I lost over that worry alone!) It must have been karma, as these types of things usually require at least 3 fittings and a mock up in muslin.
In THE END,
I feel like the dress was a reasonable hybrid of the simplicity of shape that the Highland gowns had, while incorporating Nancy's wishes for something more frivolous and feminine, without going over the top.
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©1999 Helen Ralph
