lillie langtry and worth- part 2

Some time ago I bought a copy of People and Pearls which included a very large two page photo of Lillie reclining on a settee and I thought oh yes that dress.. nope. It’s not the same dress as appears in in Victorian and Edwardian Fashion A Photographic Survey as I thought but is a later dress but also by Lafayette.

This gown is of the same type as the infamous ironwork dress by the House of Worth. Here though the velvet is in an open and stylised “palmette” (as opposed to another velvet used in house which was a densely filled palmette style.)

These gowns often have the pattern mirrored around diagonal seams from waist to side seam and often the front is likewise mirrored and cut on the diagonal.

http://lafayette.org.uk/lan2194.html

The bodice appears to fasten up the front and the front overlaps to her right side (our left) and closes under her arm.

http://lafayette.org.uk/lan2194.html

The skirt appears to close at the CF line with an inverted pleat below knee level.

http://lafayette.org.uk/lan2197a.html

https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portraitZoom/mw56835/Lillie-Langtry?LinkID=mp14015&wPage=1&role=sit&rNo=37

An extreme close up reveals that the bodice shaping is carefully created by centering one of the motiffes at front waist and the fabric carefully cut away from the top of the motiffe allowing the design to be the means of shaping over the bust. 

scan from People and Pearls.

By this stage many of Lillie’s bodices seem to be of a very similar shape, very conical and quite flat. This shape seems to also repeat in House of Worth bodices of the same sort of date range.

The pearl swags are repeated under her arm to the back of the bodice.

Embed from Getty Images

This gown was worn by Lillie as Mrs. Trevelyan in The Degenerates. Her gowns are described as: 

Mrs. Langtry in flesh-colored satin with sapphires, Mrs, Langtry in pale-blue satin with diamonds in dazzling array, Mrs, Langtry in white v/ith pearls,…

MRS. LILY LANGTRY’S COSTUMES FOR THE STAGE, by, ROSE LEE HEAD, B.A. 
https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/ttu-ir/bitstream/handle/2346/22475/31295010288347.pdf

There are hand coloured photos of Lillie and one from this set has been tinted blue.

This fabric is also to be found in an extant House of Worth gown at the Metropolitan Museum of art:

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/81751?who=Worth,+House+of$House+of+Worth&pg=7&rpp=20&pos=133

Tassinari & Chatel supplied Worth with many velvets in different colourways and it is likely this is a different colourway as there are some differences in how the pattern is handled in each example.

book layout struggles

I’m struggling between modern expectations and what I know of cutting books throughout history. The whole point is to have a book that looks like it dropped in from a quite specific point in the past- not just for fun but because it helps with removing all the modern aesthetics that wind up influencing the use of the patterns.

I pretty much went straight from sewing a simple carry bag in form 2 (age 12) to using Patterns of Fashion for my dolls (which were from my childhood, I still have them but they desperately need to be restored and dressed well.)

It was pretty much because the patterns were so strange to me that I wanted to understand them and why they were so different. How could it be that when bodies are as varied as they are that modern patterns were so limited? The patterns of extant garments really do look so much like the cutting books of their time that it’s really easy to see where alterations are made to fit the wearer so closely.

So I want my book to be able to be read stripped of modern expectations. The simplest explanation of why is that modern patterns have a straight CF line. This shifts the customisation to the sides which then is not supportive. Most patterns prior to the 20thC have a curved CF line. This effectively pulls the fabric to the body creating support.

Modern patterns are designed to sit on the body, historically they are designed to support the body. There are obviously exceptions to this, but it is so absolutely the opposite of the fundamentals of modern dressmaking that it is often hard to retain so any reminder is of help.

.I have shared most of the cutting systems I find helpful here (I just added blog categories to my menu bar, so exciting- should be all under “cutting a fashionable fit” and tag “historic guides” ‘ll try and get categories sorted this week as the tag is a better filter atm.)

Anyway. So I can usually figure out the date of a publication by the layout. Until the 19thC I can sometimes pick country. 

But the 19thC is so fun if somewhat the opposite of everything we are taught.

An advert using a font per line of text from a dressmaking guide.
https://archive.org/stream/devereauxsactual00deve#page/40

I mean that is so fun and feels like a spoof, but it’s real.

In order to keep my tags and categories tidy I’ll put up the book separately.

I may just do what I was originally intending, except without all the handwriting-I can still draw by writing is a big big big resource user now.

So I’ll save the kanzlie style font for my personal copy (which will be a beautiful book on beautiful paper, bound authentically and hand painted.

It’s still a struggle to find a font that meets the following criteria:

• Feels authentic- many fonts just look too modern either with a retro or vintage feel not of the era. There is a whole language to how to read a font that I don’t have- it’s like music, but my eye is pretty darn good at spotting copies vs original.
• Doesn’t feel too early- rounder fonts reads as mediaeval not reformation era. I need enough roundness to read as a lot of fonts with max readibility cross platfrom are rounded. But not too round. Somewhere between TNR and Raleway (which it the main font on my site currently, and TNR I think is what the WP editor shows)
• Scales well
• is free or minimal cost so that I can change the entire thing if something more appropriate crops up.
• is easily imported into a website- googlefonts is surprising limited on the historic font range (but there is a bit of code that will work across many font. Preferably not as a dl from my site but from a secure and trusted source.
• has a clean edge- these mimic variances but they do so in an artificial manner and can make readiblity difficult.