From: Gretchen Miller Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 19:24:08 -0500 (EST) Subject: H-Costume Digest, Volume 49, 2/16/94 The Historic Costume List Digest, Volume 49, February 16, 1994 Send items for the list to h-costume@andrew.cmu.edu (or reply to this message). Send subscription/deletion requests and inquiries to h-costume-request@andrew.cmu.edu For archives of this digest, send mail to close@lunch.asd.sgi.com Thanks and Enjoy! --------------------------------------------------------------- Topics: Questions and answers about period storage methods References for undergarments SJCLO Tour Summary and Thanks Bad history, La Volta, and all that jazz ---------------------------- Date: Tue, 15 Feb 1994 20:39:59 -0800 From: knowles@netcom.com (Sheryl Knowles) Subject: hangers I've two questions for Those With Experience, one practical, one historical curiousity. First: How do you hang (or otherwise store) heavy costumes? I've a velvet cartridge-pleated Elizabethan skirt that no commerical skirt hanger or clip hanger will hold for long ... and folding seems to put creases in the velvet .... Second: How did high-class Elizabethan women store their skirts and dresses? I understand Elizabeth I had hundreds so ... how did her tirewomen cope? Anyone done redsearch into period storage techniques? Thanks. ---Sheryl Knowles SCA: Teleri Tawel ---------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 01:34:18 -0600 (CST) From: Amy Leland Hemphill Subject: Re: hangers On Tue, 15 Feb 1994, Sheryl Knowles wrote: > I've two questions for Those With Experience, one practical, one historical > curiousity. > First: How do you hang (or otherwise store) heavy costumes? I've a velvet > cartridge-pleated Elizabethan skirt that no commerical skirt hanger > or clip hanger will hold for long ... and folding seems to put > creases in the velvet .... What's worked really well for us is to attach the costumes to two or three hangars, rather than just one. The plastic tube like hangars are the best for this. Just find a strategic place in the shoulder seam/waistband (depending on the type of garmet) and put several heavy duty safety pins through there, and hang these from the hangars. Ours are not creased, and stay hung. Hope this is helpful. Amy Hemphill Rice Players, Houston TX ---------------------------- From: "Tanya J. Utt" Date: 16 Feb 94 09:23:32 EDT Subject: Under clothing ... Any ideas??? Good books???? I'm looking for a source or help on underclothes/garmets for approximately 2nd - 17th C. ... What I am actually looking for is what do you wear under a "wench" style outfit (without the bodice) to boost the cleavage. Anyone know any good reference books in print that I might be able to find? Any experience out there on problems/hints for making what I am looking for? Thanks, -Tanya ...................................................................... (tjuttx@tsrv1.ts.wm.edu) (tjuttx@birds.wm.edu) I'm _not_ dangerous... honest! (tjuttx@mail.wm.edu) ...................................................................... ---------------------------- Date: Wed 16 Feb 1994 07:05 PT From: Catherine.Keegan@EMC2NCAL.IBMMAIL.COM Subject: hangers After several years of breaking hangers, I finally have started storing my really heavy garb flat on the floor of my costume closet. Some things I store rolled loosely in the linen closet. This mostly applies to the skirts. I hang my bodices on a regular hanger, but I have to pin the Tudor bodices to the hanger because my shoulders are so broad the bodices just fall off. As to period techniques of storage: several woodcuts (German) show gowns hung from pegs. The gowns are all of the one-piece variety and are shown hung by the armscye. There are a lot of the very large chests (carcassone, but I've probably misspelled it terribly) that were given when you married (or so the museum placards say). These chests can easily hold any kind of clothing you would want to store. You must also remember that people didn't have as many changes of clothing as we do today. It was probably a lot easier for them to store their clothing than it is for those of us who costume for a multitude of periods. Catherine Keegan SCA: Ceridwen MacAoudhegain ---------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 07:53:11 -0600 (CST) From: "Donna Holsten" Subject: RE: hangers > First: How do you hang (or otherwise store) heavy costumes? There's at least one SCA merchant (and probably more) who makes extra wide, extra strong cedar hangars, specifically designed for hanging costumes. I don't have his name right now, but there's a big event in Arizona this weekend, and I'm sure he'll be there, so I'll get the info and post it next week. I usually just hang anything that won't break a plastic hangar, and fold the rest of it. Donna H. ---------------------------- Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 09:03:12 -0800 (PST) From: Heather Rose Jones Subject: Re: Under clothing ... Any ideas??? Good books???? On 16 Feb 1994, Tanya J. Utt wrote: > I'm looking for a source or help on underclothes/garmets for > approximately 2nd - 17th C. Rather broad time-span ... For the earlier centuries you can get an overview from something like C. Willett & Phillis Cunnington's "History of Underclothes" (Dover, 1992) but my experience is that to get enough details to really do anything you simply need to look at a lot of art. Try depictions of martyrs -- they tend to hang around in their underwear a lot. For the 16th century on there's more information (and a lot more existing garments). There are several good books about corsets in particular, such as Norah Waugh's "Corsets and Crinolines" -- but someone who does more in that period than I do can probably give you better advice. > ... What I am actually looking for is > what do you wear under a "wench" style outfit (without the bodice) to > boost the cleavage. I'm trying to figure out what you mean by this. By "wench style outfit" do you mean the sort of thing that a lower-class prostitute might wear? Or do you mean simply the semi-undress affected Renaissance-era re-creators who find it too much trouble to wear a complete outfit (i.e., just chemise and skirt)? If the former, I haven't really made a study of the subject although there is a wealth of depictions of scantily-dressed "bath-house girls" in Olga Sronkova's "Gothic Woman's Fashion" (Prague, 1954) some of which are reproduced in "The Pictorial Encyclopedia of Fashion" by Kybalova, Herbenova, & Lamarova, trans. Claudia Rosoux (London: Paul Hamlyn, 1968) which you might find interesting. If you mean the latter then the answer is "nothing". The bodice _was_ the foundation garment (although it wasn't necessarily designed to "boost the cleavage", especially in the 16th century!). There problem here appears to be (and please forgive me if I have read the situation incorrectly) that you are looking for an authentic way to produce an inauthentic effect. Perhaps if you could better define what era, class, culture, and profession you are aiming for, someone could provide better advice. Heather Jones ---------------------------- From: close@lunch.asd.sgi.com (Diane Barlow Close) Subject: SJCLO Tour Summary and Thanks Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 11:10:28 -0800 (PST) The tour of the San Jose Civic Light Opera's costume department was great! It was very informative, fun, and mind boggling. I never thought I'd see a fabric stash that was THAT HUGE!! It surpasses the collection of all of the quilters I know. Pat Havey met us at the front door and gave us a brief history of SJCLO. She pointed out the classes offered by the Light Opera Company and gave us several anecdotes of student's successes on stage. Then we talked a bit about the costuming department and costume rental departments and started on our tour of the facility. The first stop was the wig and makeup room. The SJCLO's staff make most of the wigs that the performers wear on stage. Pat explained about "fronting" a wig with lace so that it would stay on a performers head during vigorous dance scenes, yet look completely natural from a distance. We got to handle and observe the wigs and head gear up close and it was all very educational. Next stop was the prop room! Now this was a very fun place! Kristen, one of the senior costuming people at SJCLO, was there working on the armor for Pippin's war scenes. We all learned a lot about fitting performers and I was surprised to hear how little use they make of dressmaker's dummies. Most of the costumes and props are fitted on the performers themselves. The reason they don't do more on dummies is the amount of movement required of the costumes makes it more practical to fit on an actual human, where you can check things like joint placement more closely, etc. Kristen took us through the process of costume design, from the initial sketches to fabric selection to mock-ups and testing of paints, etc. We learned that latex is not a popular glue to use in costume prop making. Most of the stuff that will be worn is glued with a food-grade glue that is completely non-toxic and non-reactive, as well as being totally water soluble while wet. (It's called poly-something-80 and is used in the food industry to seal chip bags, etc.) Then we were set loose on the place to fondle and take pictures if we wanted. We got to see some incredible hats and headgear, as well as plate armor, chest pieces, panniers and caging upon which costumes would be built. We got to handle everything and lots of photos were taken. It was great! Then it was on to the main fitting and sewing area for costume creation. Here resided the incredible fabric collection, and we learned that the SJCLO does most of its shopping at Hancock's Fabric Warehouse and San Jose Fabrics. (I think I got that name right, correct me if I'm wrong, anyone. I haven't been there yet.) After having many of our costuming questions answered and viewing the sketches for Pippin compared to the finished costume and asking some technique questions, we were set loose in the upstairs storage area. This consisted of a costumer's heaven of hundreds and hundreds of finished costumes for all types of plays set in all types of eras. All of the dresses for No No Nannette were present, so I was in 7th heaven! :-) One of the things that struck me the most was the amount of embellishment present on most of the costumes. I tend to think of the costumes, when I see them from a distance as a member of the audience, as just being "pretty" and using nice fabric. Wrong! Most of them have very plain fabric that has been heavily embellished! Very eye opening. A mind-boggling amount of work went into these creations! After many photo ops and much handling of the goods, we were brought back down for a quick peak at the rehearsal halls, the stage-setting work area (with all of its large machinery needed to create proper background sets, etc.) and the costume rental area. We ended the tour with a peak a Pat's personal costume book library. She said that hers wasn't very complete, but told us that SJCLO will soon be offering a memorial library, consisting of a huge number of costuming books, dedicated to their late company director who died of AIDS last year. He, apparently, was an avid book reader and collector and he left his library to SJCLO. When the tour was over, about half the group met for Dim Sum at Hong Sing Tea House on Lawrence, and several brought their brag books along. Oh, it was so inspiring!! What a great collection of people and talent we have here in this group!! And I must offer my thanks and congratulations to all who went on this tour. You were a WONDERFUL group! And so generous too! There was no fee for this tour; Pat was doing this out of her love for costuming. However, I asked for a strictly-voluntary donation of $1 to go towards a thank you gift for Pat. Out of the 24 people on the tour, I collected $35!!! That just blows me away! What a wonderful, generous bunch! Thank you so much! I chipped in $5 to bring us up to $40 and got Pat some flowers. Actually I went to the florist and said "I want a thank you bouquet, but I want something that expresses theater. Something dramatic but theater-ish." The florist created a Japanese-style yet theater-ish design that was perfect! The bouquet sat on a black square base/vase. In a swooping arrangement were red antheriums, to represent the phallic nature of the upcoming Pippin, and peace rose blooms (cream roses with red tipped petals), to represent the bouquets that performers get after a performance that was well done. Intermixed was greenery and mosses that really tied the whole look together. I delivered the flowers to the front desk at SJCLO where it was met with gasps and much oo'ing and aw'ing and thanks on behalf of Pat (who was due to come to work later that day). So thanks to everyone who came along to enjoy the trip, and I hope I've managed to reproduce some of the fun we had for the rest of you with this message. Now you East-coast based people have to get to work on some of those New York theaters that I'm dying to hear about! :-D -- Diane Barlow Close close@lunch.asd.sgi.com I'm at lunch today. :-) ---------------------------- From: JLIEDL@nickel.laurentian.ca Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 17:16:46 -0500 (EST) Subject: Bad History, LaVolta & All that Jazz Hi folks--Janice Liedl, here--after Mr. Nusbacher posted, I couldn't help but respond to the call to arms. . . . Re: Dancing in Costume >One more point about dancing in costume: if you try to do lavolta steps >from 16th century galliards without the proper costume, you might >accidentally perform the Heimlich manoeuvre on your partner. Ah, the carefree, wild and feckless days of our youth remembered! That corset never fully recovered from the fun of lavolta (gentlemen are well-directed to grab the corset busk for the manoeuvre of launching their female partner in the air). Why I never recommend plastic boning anymore. . . . Someday when I have a _really_ sturdy corset with proper wooden busk, you and I have to have a rematch. . . . Re: Wearing nasty costumes > I think it's funny that some styles are obviously regarded as more > popular than others. For example in my recreationist circles they are > many cavaliers, but nary a roundhead, > >Hey! Watch where you put that nary! > >Did you hear that, Janice?! No roundheads! Sounds like a nest of ... Popery! Well, Mr. Nusbacher, you certainly can't forget that I'm a strong monarchist and that the only reasons I recreate Parliamentarian is a) my husband really, really wants to be a Puritan and b) my firm conviction that Charles I would have made a splendid art gallery director but a lousy monarch. I really can't understand why the winning sides in both English and American Civil Wars is so unpopular in recreations and in literature (if I read one more "Why the South really should have won the ACW" story again, I'll scream!). Why can't more people admire the winning side? (Okay, so I think Oliver Cromwell was a psychopathic tyrant with a bizarre religious interpretation. . . . But I'm just one historian!) My personal take on this (after many years in a variety of recreationist milieus) is that people instinctively gravitate to romantic images and a somewhat more bohemian or free image. Think "Scarlett O'Hara" versus "Mary Tyler Moore's psychopathic Mary Todd Lincoln". Think wenches in low-cut satin dresses dangling on some handsome musketeer's knee versus puritanical goodwifes staring disapprovingly ahead. It's easier and a lot more fun for the average person to get into. But, enough of my dissertation. . . . I remain, Janice Liedl, historian of medieval and early modern Europe, Ancarett Nankivellis, a member of Edward III's court, and Goody Myatt, a New Model Army campfollower (hey, I've got the card to prove it!) JLIEDL@NICKEL.LAURENTIAN.CA ---------------------------- End of Volume 49 -----------------------