There are other derisive terms for the authenticity snobs, but stitch counter will do well enough for me.

I didn’t mean to turn out this way, but I did. It might have something to do with being interested in historical costume for as long as I can remember, or spending summer afternoons at the Chicago Historical Society, or a grandmother who could turn fabric and thread into anything. But inauthentic clothing and gear grates on me, and that’s one reason I’m incredibly unlikely to trail along with the “colonial” women behind a militia unit in a local parade. I just can’t trot along next to a woman wearing Hush Puppies and a short gown made of fabric last seen on Bob Ross’s couch.

This is not to say that I’m perfectly authentic—I have problems with gear and clothing, mostly revolving around fit and using a sewing machine on some long seams, or seams that get stressed, and let’s not get into what I carry in my sewing basket. But I keep trying to learn more, and trying to figure out what would fit my persona of the past. Here’s what I do know:

Like my grandmother, I’m picky. I would never have given up stays unless my child would starve if I didn’t sell them.

And like Elsa, I care about my appearance—I’m just less successful in presentation. So how my clothes went together would have mattered to me.

Shoes. Guaranteed, we would have managed shoes, since my great-great grandmother made her own.

As much as I try to get into a real lower-sorts place, I can’t. Tidy, orderly, as clean as possible. That’s just part of who I am.

So what about those women in their upholstery-like prints, plastic glasses and little cotton caps plopped atop modern haircuts? What to do about them–and their men? One man asked us yesterday where we’d gotten Dave’s uniform–where’d we find the hunting frock and overalls?

I made them, I said. By hand.

Standards, people. The list serves erupt at least quarterly on the subject of authenticity in reenacting. We must have standards.

Yes, we must. We must do the best we can to recreate the past, and to share the best history we possibly can. But that does not give us a license to hurt others with words.

The Captain told me Saturday that “It used to be so bad in the Brigade, and in the Continental Line, too, that women would come up to a newcomer like you,”—here he fingered my cloak, all hand-sewn, of Wm Booth 100% wool broadcloth in a color documented to a RI runaway, and patterned after a period cloak in a RI museum—“and say, ‘Is that machine stitched?’ and proceed to criticize what the woman was wearing. The woman would never come back.  She’d take her husband with her, and we’d lose a soldier forever.”

I had to tell him they still do that, just now they do it behind people’s backs, on list serves and on blogs. “I know,” I said, “because they’ve written about me.”  After that, I hunted up the documentation for the specific little fabric trick I’d done, and date it to 1785. Oops, OK, not appropriate to a Brigade event, being two years after the end of the war.

And then again, I’ve seen similar handling of fabric in a ca. 1760 child’s frock coat from RI…. But the stinger was in, and the gown, my favorite of but two gowns, is relegated to non-Brigade events.

So where does this leave us? I can be as bad a stitch counter as the next person, able to discern a machine-stitched pocket welt at 20 paces. Sometimes I can tell a seam is machine-stitched, too. And yet…

I will confess: Machine-stitched breeches were worn by my men at Battle Road. It was that or not go at all. The buttonholes are all hand-finished, as are the eyelets. Thank goodness Dana helped me with Thomas’s breeches, or I would not have slept at all that Friday night. Two pairs of breeches had to be made, a dozen eyelets and 30 buttonholes in total. The buttons were cheaters, too, fabric-covered, but for most I used the metal blanks fitted with metal backs. For some I used rings and gathered fabric around the ring to form the shank.

Those are the least of the problems with the breeches. Despite muslin fittings on squirming boys, the legs are too long and should be shortened. Dave’s are too loose at the knee, and his waistcoat is also too loose, now. Thomas ought to wear leather-soled shoes, and the gaiters he had were too small. His breeches, too, are too long, the knee band too tight.

I know all these things. Will I fix them? Not necessarily. Their overalls are in greater need of replacement, battles loom, and time is limited. Perhaps next winter I will be able to re-fit their breeches. Until then, we’ll muddle through with what we have, upgrading the necessary, and avoiding the egregious.

For the rest of the state where we live, I hope to emulate The Hive and create workshops to help educate museum staff members in the fine art of not dressing like a tavern wench. Educating is surely better than criticizing without offering alternatives.

Technically, it’s not a corset. The garment driving me mad is a set of stays patterned from an original in the Connecticut Historical Society  (CHS 1963.42.4). I’ve re-measured and re-cut the front panels twice, the cups three times and even the back once, because it showed under the test bodice. I’ve given up, and will start over with a different kind of stay.

Women in the 18^th century usually bought their stays from a professional stay maker, just as most women today do not make their own bras. But like a well-fitted bra, a set of well-fitted stays is integral to achieving proper garment fit. This is real infrastructure.

Well-fitted in the 18^th century really did mean well-fitted, for high-fashion and middling garments alike. To the left,  Betsey Jenkins, painted in 1748 (1905.6.2). The slim, conical shape of her torso and her incredibly erect posture are thanks to her stays. The fit of the bodice of her gown depends on the stays: these truly are foundation garments. Without the stays, the gown wouldn’t fit.

This portrait of Eleanor Cozzens Feke (1947.4.2), painted in 1750-51 by her husband, Newport painter Robert Feke, is one of my favorite paintings in the RIHS collection. The wide robings on the front of her silvery satin gown and the shadowy back in the image make it slightly tricky to see, but she’s wearing a well-fitted gown over stays, again, that give her the straight-backed posture typical of 18^th century women’s portraits. Even women who look like they’re not wearing stays probably are. John Smibert painted Mrs. Browne in 1734, (1891.2.2), and her pose suggests she’s in stays.  The articulation of her breasts suggests she may not be, but the drape of the silk around her side hints that she is. There’s a conical shape under that drapery.

Contrary to some beliefs, the fully boned stays of the 18^th century are comfortable.  The ones I have feel comforting in the same way swaddling might be for an infant. Bending and squatting and sitting the ground are all challenging. I’ve sat on the grass in stays and gown and provided plenty of entertainment for a regiment when I made my way up off the ground (not that they helped me).

But in getting ready to clean the John Brown House Museum, I decided I needed a new set of stays. At the short gown workshop at the ALHFAM  conference in Bristol in early March, someone asked if I really did, and perhaps I don’t. But I’d like the early 19^th century gown I’m making, and the short gown I’ve made, to fit properly, and they simply won’t without the correct foundation.

Julia Treadwell Pinckney (1984.8.1) was painted (1797-1845) around 1817, but the gown she’s wearing is of a style that lasted decades, so the high waist and long slender skirt are typical of the styles that would have been worn in Providence around 1800. The silhouette, even in this half-length portrait, is visibly different—radically different—from the silhouette of the mid- to late-18^th century. We interpret the John Brown House to about 1790-1810, and we know that John Brown’s daughters followed the fashions of the times: servants, maids, “help,” would not have. We have no evidence of what John Brown’s servants or slaves or maids wore,  but I would expect that in a port town like Providence, fashions would not have lagged twenty years behind, even for working women. St. Louis, far from the east but in communication with New Orleans, showed fashionably dressed Creole women in 1818. 

Based on these images, I believe that I would most likely not have worn my ca. 1770 stays in 1800 or 1810, if I could have avoided it. And by the means of used clothing merchants, employment, or my own skills, I would have acquired the new, softer, stays that created the raised bust silhouette. And today, with my own skills, I’m trying to do just that.

~Kitty Calash