From: Gretchen Miller Date: Fri, 4 Nov 1994 17:16:52 -0500 (EST) Subject: H-Costume Digest, Volume 178, 11/4/94 The Historic Costume List Digest, Volume 178, November 4, 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 Enjoy! --------------------------------------------------------------- Topics: "Killer" as costuming adjective Period costumes in the movies Enough House of Elliot! Clothes in the latest Dracula movie Getting dressed in 1590 Origins of hooks and eyes ISO Info on making capes/cloaks ---------------------------- Date: Sat, 29 Oct 1994 21:39:00 -0500 (CDT) From: Susanne M Reading Subject: Re: Question for linguists Fran, The use of "killer" as an adjective has been one of those popular slang words for a couple of years. It's been used everywhere: She (or he) has a killer body. It was a killer dinner....a killer performance.... a killer smile. It means "fantastic" or "stunning". It's passe now, though, so never mind. Susanne ---------------------------- From: GHaramaki@aol.com Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 00:24:11 -0400 To: h-costume@andrew.cmu.edu Subject: RE: Movie Costumes I'm new to this list and have been enjoying the discussion about costumes in movies, as that is how I became interested in costuming. I'm a musician that has been forced to wear many a horrible period costume, so I appreciate attempts at the real thing. Two of my all-time favorites movies are Richard Lester's 1974/1975 versions of _The Three Musketeers_ and _The Four Musketeers_. I enjoy both these movies because the costumes are treated as real clothes: the characters sweat, fight, undo or remove various articles of clothing, get rained on, or get dunked in ponds. Though there is some obvious Hollywood costuming in them--Raquel Welch's outfits spring to mind--the general silhouette is always pretty good. The costumes in Clive Donner's _The Scarlet Pimpernel_ are absolutely gorgeous. I'm not totally sure, but I beleive the movie is set around 1790 or so. And watching Jane Seymour in anything is always a treat. I also remember a T.V. miniseries version of _Les Miserables_ with Richard Jordan and Anthony Perkins from the late 1970's that was very good. Another film that deeply impressed me in many ways was Ridley Scott's _The Duellists_. The hussar uniforms are incredible, and I loved the costuming distinctions between the characters. I recently saw Hiroshi Teshigahara's _Rikyu_, about the sixteenth-century tea master. The costumes by Emi Wada were quite breathtaking and definitely not of your average samurai costume pic variety. I wouldn't usually think of _The Sting_ for the costumes, but it certainly had some beautiful clothes in it. Gordon Haramaki ---------------------------- From: BUNCHSHER@urvax.urich.edu Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 14:22:14 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: enough house of elliot I was under the impression that this list was devoted to discussion of how historical clothes and modern recreation of these clothes could affect or is affecting modern fashion. If this is the case who cares what happen to the castof House of Elliot. Please let's move on! ---------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Oct 94 15:20:22 EST From: Robin Colleen Moore Subject: Re: Movie costumes (fwd) On Fri, 28 Oct 1994, Althea Sexton wrote: > I just got back on line and am jumping into the middle of this thread. > Bram Stoker's Dracula was supposed to have had great, if not accurate > costumes. I don't watch dem creepy movies, but considered it just to peek > at the threads. If you want a look at the costumes without watching the movie, there's a gorgeous (and expensive!) coffee-table book "Coppola and Eiko on Bram Stoker's Dracula" (San Francisco: Collins Publishers, 1992. ISBN 0-00-255167-5) that has not only photographs of the finished costumes and movie clips but some of the working sketches as well. The historical accuracy, as far as I can tell, goes from ok on a few of the items to "accuracy? we don't need no stinkin' accuracy!" on the "medieval" stuff from the opening scenes. Heather Rose Jones Ah, yes...I drove my roommate absolutely batty (bad pun, so what?) when I started complaining that the very first dress we see Winona Ryder is in a classic 1885 dress, yet the movie is supposedly set in 1897(?)...I think I'm lucky that she didn't haul off and slug me then and there! Nifty clothes, all right, but dubious historical accuracy...oh, well, that's Hollywood for you! Robin Colleen Moore (the mad photographer & lurker) ---------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 14:14:44 -0800 (PST) From: Jeff Hall Subject: Re: Movie costumes ( I have a great many criticisms of Copolla's Dracula, not the least of which being its unfaithfullness to the book...It seems to me that there were a great many criticisms of historical innacuracy with this film..mostly due to the technology..but I can't remember this exactly. I've seen the book in question here...it has some fabulous pictures...one item I was particurally intersted in was Van Helsing's Cross where the top unscrewed so it could be filled with Holy Water (or something else depending on your preferences)...did these crosses exist? Do they still? I'd love to get one! -Grotesque and Arabesque -Sir.Real ---------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 12:45:17 +0900 To: h-costume@andrew.cmu.edu From: d9304570@student.anu.edu.au (Miesje de Vogel) Subject: RE: Movie Costumes Just a quick note I thought Lion in Winter was pretty gfood for early medieval, loved the Patrick Bergan/Uma Thurman version of Robin Hood (for both the most plausible approach to legend, and for authentic costume, esp the braid and cloaks)... But The Scarlet Pimpernel (Anthony Andrews/Jane Seymour)?? I have a copy of the movie on video (anniversary present) and love it (favourite movie as a child and now) but remember watching it with Art Historians in Holland, and them groaning over inaccuracies, especially in Jane Seymours costumes... Any comments? Miesje (Still searching for a movie with decent representations of a V-neck (1470's) flemish gown...) __________ @)--%-- -------- d9304570@student.anu.edu.au ___________ ---------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 21:13:11 -0500 (EST) From: Elizabeth McMahon Subject: Re: Getting dressed in the 1590's On Fri, 28 Oct 1994, Deborah S Labriola wrote: > > Do you know the length of time it took the aristocratic women to dress? > > How many people did it take to help a lady dress? Did the dressers have a > special name? The book that I've seen that has the most information about dressing and all from period sources is "Linthicum, M. Channing, _Costume in the Drama of Shakespeare and HIs Contemporaries_, C 1936, Clarendon Press, Oxford." This is a wonderful book, and I believe the copyright has expired, so you can (legally) copy it cover to cover if you can find it in a nearby library. (I know that its in Bierce Library, the University of Akron Library in Ohio. I also know that one of the vendors on the Serengeti sold me a copy for $7.00 at the Pennsic War two wars ago.) This book has chapters on layers of clothing, descrption of types of clothstuffs, colors, and accessories, all backed up by quotes from plays written in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. As for length of time spent in dressing, a favorite quote is on p. 281, under the section called "Pins": "'There is such doing with their looking glasses, pinning and unpinning', is Tactus' disgusted comment on the time needed to dress a 'nice gentlewoman'." Tee hee, tee hee. And it goes on to describe how many different pieces of dress of the time was pinned in place for the final effect. FYI, this appears to refer to straight pins, and earlier in the section it refers to the domestic manufacture of pins in England being well enough established that, by 1483, importation of foreign made pins was prohibited. And, 59 years later, there is a law passed that requires "that heads be well soldered to the shanks of pins, the shanks smoothed and the points 'well filed...and sharpened.' (p. 280) So there you have it. If something on your favorite dress won't stay where you need it to - pin it the heck down! ;*) Beth McMahon, overambitious costumer and book junkie ----------------------------- Date: Sun, 30 Oct 1994 22:34:40 -0500 From: pef101@psu.edu (Philip E. Frigm Jr.) Subject: Re: Movie costumes ( At 2:14 PM 10/30/94 -0800, Jeff Hall wrote: >I have a great many criticisms of Copolla's Dracula, not the least of >which being its unfaithfullness to the book...It seems to me that there >were a great many criticisms of historical innacuracy with this >film..mostly due to the technology..but I can't remember this exactly. >I've seen the book in question here...it has some fabulous pictures...one >item I was particurally intersted in was Van Helsing's Cross where the >top unscrewed so it could be filled with Holy Water (or something else >depending on your preferences)...did these crosses exist? Do they still? I'd >love to get one! >-Grotesque and Arabesque > -Sir.Real Jeff, At a museum in Kutztown, PA called Cut and Thrust, the curator has put on display a "Vampire Hunter's Kit". This kit was a box approx. 16" by 12" by 4". It contains a cross that was actually a pistol, silver bullets, three viles of holy water, several silver tipped stakes and a hammer! The ultimate authentic accessory for tomorrow evening! BTW, I have seen references to these and "vile" crosses in other places. It was just neat seeing the real thing up close. I believe that the date on the box was somewhere in the 1890's. Philip E. Frigm Jr. | You know, I really pef101@psu.edu | have nothing History Dept. - PSU | to say! ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 94 08:46:51 GMT From: paul@bozzie.demon.co.uk (Paul C. Dickie) Subject: Re: Getting dressed in the 1590's In message Elizabeth McMahon writes: > > As for length of time spent in dressing, a favorite quote is on p. 281, > under the section called "Pins": "'There is such doing with their looking > glasses, pinning and unpinning', is Tactus' disgusted comment on the time > needed to dress a 'nice gentlewoman'." Tee hee, tee hee. And it goes on > to describe how many different pieces of dress of the time was pinned in > place for the final effect. > > So there you have it. If something on your favorite dress won't stay > where you need it to - pin it the heck down! ;*) > It's surely no secret that, whenever a photographer wants to photograph clothes, he'll adjust the fit of them by the judicious use of pins, staples or bulldog clips. I've even needed to sew temporary darts in clothing, whilst the sitter was wearing a velvet frock that was just too baggy at the back -- and I'm sure that others will have done the same! < Paul > ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 09:07:21 -0500 (EST) From: andrea ruth leed Subject: Re: hooks and eyes On Fri, 28 Oct 1994, erin k. gault wrote: > > I have been so curious about hooks and eyes. Someone said a few messages > ago that they were invented (?) around 1814 I think. Well, did they go > into popular usage then? If not when did they become common? I was > reading Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion I and a lot of the dresses > seemed to have hooks and eyes. Were the dresses in that book real > garments or just from fashion plates and paintings? I couldn't tell from > the introduction. She didn't seem to really say. Hooks and eyes have existed for longer than two centuries. In Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion, the 1560's one (yes, I'm quoting scripture) they are usually used to fasten together bodices and doublets. I did see a painting of the Virgin once, done in the mid-1400s, where the Virgin's unlaced bodice was folded back to clearly reveal a series of metal loops running up both sides of the front closure. The ends of the loops were even with the edge of the fabric, so that when laced up they wouldn't show. ============================= aleed@ezmail.ucs.indiana.edu ----------------------------- Date: 30 Oct 94 23:14:00 EST From: "Gina Balestracci" Subject: re: movie costumes Nobody has yet mentioned the Gerard Depardieu film from a couple of years ago--Toutes les matins du monde--about violists da gamba Ste. Colombe and Marin Marais. A visual as well as an aural feast. And I believe that authentic costuming was actually a mandate. The scene of the full orchestra playing at court (I think it was actually filmed in a bank an Paris that had maintained its 18th-century decorations) was breathtaking! The other bits of incredible costuming that come to mind are the opera productions of Les Arts Florissants, a French baroque musical ensemble led by American William Christie. They've brought fully staged productions of Lully's Atys and Charpentier's Medee to New York, and although they weren't intended as Baroque period pieces (nobody in this country has a suitable stage for that), they certainly did evoke the period incredibly well. Just the wigs required for their performances boggle the mind. gb ----------------------------- From: pedersee@ccmail.orst.edu Date: Mon, 31 Oct 94 08:53:04 PST Subject: Re: hooks and eyes According to Naomi Tarrant, author of _The Development of Costume_ (a new book), "The hook and eye is not easy to document. In its familiar modern form it is of course a fiarly concealed fastening and is rarely seen in paintings. One early instance is the portrait of the Ferrara Court Jester, Gonella, by Jean Fouquet, painted about 1445. . . . The decorative form of the hook and eye is the latchet fastening which can be seen in several late medieval paintings and sculptures. . . ." p. 20. This is an interesting book; has anyone formed any opinions on its usefulness as of yet? Elaine Pedersen pedersee@ccmail.orst.edu ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 11:04:04 -0500 (EST) From: Elizabeth McMahon Subject: Re: Elizabethan dressing On Fri, 28 Oct 1994, Allan Terry wrote: > Jane Ashelford's _Dress in the Age of Elizabeth 1_ has some discussion of > the process of dressing. When this book was newer, I used to see it at the Metropolitan Museum of Art Bookstore. I haven't seen it there or anyplace else in ages. Anyone know if its still in print? Or have suggestions on where to get it? Beth ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 11:11:19 -0500 (EST) From: Elizabeth McMahon Subject: Re: Question for linguists On Fri, 28 Oct 1994, Allan Terry wrote: > I have a question for the linguists on this list. The local (San Francisco > Bay Area) costumers are fond of using "killer" as an adjective. As in > "So-and-so is a killer costumer" "The Killer Hair Workshop," and so on. I know that I first heard this among serious Garmentos (A distinct Garment Center breed sporting long commutes by train or bus or car, nails done every Friday afternoon and large gemstones, esp engagement rings in the female form. The masculine frequently had horrendous NYC accents ;*) ) when referring to a style that had been selling very well, or that was particularly good looking. As in "That sweater is _killer_! I've already got 30% sell through after only one weekend on the floor!" or, "I saw Liz Claiborne and her husband at the movies and she was wearing ... and looked _killer_" or, Saks just put some _killer_ Donna Karan suits in the window. I always assumed it was a New York slang, because when I'd picked it up and used it outside of work, I got funny looks. It certainly has the right sharp edge to it. Beth McMahon, never business oriented (or well-to-do) enough to be a Garmento. ----------------------------- Date: Mon, 31 Oct 1994 11:22:38 -0500 (EST) From: frederick honneffer Subject: man's cloak After reading Diane's posting regarding the Fabric of Society volume, I was inspired to write to the list and inquire if any of the readers could recommend a particular pattern or patterns for making a basic man's cloak with no specific time period in mind. Differentiation between the terms cloak and cape might also be helpful. Any information would be appreciated. Thank you. Eric Honneffer fhonnef@bgnet.bgsu.edu ---------------------------- End of Volume 178 -----------------------