Category: History

Linings, perhaps not Silver

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History, Museums1 Comment
MMA, 2011.104a–c, Silk & linen suit, 1780-1790
MMA, 2011.104a–c, Silk & linen suit, 1780-1790

The house is cleaned up for Christmas, which means all the sewing things have been put away, which is rather sad. Cassandra is banished to the basement, fabric stashed and stacked. It’s only ten days: better if I don’t count all that lost time when I could be pleating! Better to finish up some portable plain sewing, like shift and shirt.

On Friday, I spent part of the morning in the Cave of Wonders known as Textile Storage with a historical costume expert who specializes in men’s clothing. He had already promised to leave and sworn not move in before I opened the door, and that was probably a good thing. But I got a chance to ask some questions and here are the answers.

The frock coat tail linings of calendered linen: Nancy wanted to know if they didn’t stick to men’s breeches, linen catching on broadcloth, in the plainer suits. No, my source says, because the linings were slick. That was the point of the glazing. When it was new and fresh, it was much slicker than it is now. After 220+ years, slickness will fade. Calendered fabric has been pressed and heated, and that process makes it slick. If you’ve ever pressed a wool dress with too hot an iron, you might have achieved a glossy, slick finish that you weren’t expecting. Calendering is similar, but on purpose.

Incroyable-No3-detAnd then there’s padding. Sabine made an amazingly beautiful jacket based on an original. The lining is really interesting, because it is padded. Well, that padding is about style. In the plate at left, the shoulder line of the jacket is high, and the collar rises up as well. The chest is rounded, as we can see along the side. The way to achieve that look is through tailoring, including the use of padding.

The militia jackets in the collection at work include one with some pretty intense (several inches thick) padding in the front. That was for line, not repelling bullets, or even so much for warmth. The padding we find in men’s and women’s tailored clothes is about style, and maintaining a line. You’ll see this often in women’s riding habits or “Amazones.”

V&A T.158-1962
V&A T.158-1962
V&A, T.158-1962, overview

On pages 160-161 of Nineteenth-Century Fashion in Detail, there are two examples of padding used to shape garments. The first is a riding habit, seen here in detail and in overview. (Click for the record & larger views.) The padding here has been used to create the smooth, conical silhouette.

Sweet Little Dresses

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History

Bellville Sassoon rang no bells for me, being American. So I did the google and ended up at the V&A, of course. They have a Bellville Sassoon evening gown, which is a lovely column of froth and beads, but not my taste.

V&A T.17-2007
V&A T.17-2007

This led me to gifts from David Sassoon,including this miniature dress, a quarter-scale couture reproduction of a Jean Dessès dress.

Whoa. That’s really interesting!

There’s a Madame Grès as well, and the V&A catalog record notes:

“These scaled copies use the same fabrics and show the superb craftsmanship as their full size equivalents. The V & A have four of these miniature dresses which the donor acquired from the archive of the wholesale house of Dorville. Wholesalers would buy the copyrights to couture dresses so that they could sell modified ready-to-wear copies. It is thought that these quarter-scale dresses were sold alongside the patterns to show how the dress looked when made up.” Ever see the Newman-Woodwar movie A New Kind of Love?

What I love about the the Dessès dress is how much it reminds me of these dresses:

KCI 1845 English Day Dress
KCI 1845 English Day Dress
V&A ca. 1895 T.17-1985
V&A ca. 1895 T.17-1985

That’s one of the fun things about fashion, and about history. Details emerge and re-emerge in style and design (yes, historicism) and connect our present with the past. Museums strive to do that every day, but fashion can do it on the street and in your closet. That’s another kind of living history.

LBJ Had a Question

On By kittycalashIn History
Swearing in of LBJ as President

In 1963, Lyndon Baines Johnson was inaugurated as president on a hot, over-crowded airplane on the tarmac at Love Field outside Dallas. He had spent the years since JFK’s inauguration in 1961 becoming increasingly irrelevant, unnecessary, and humiliated. All the power that LBJ had built up first in the house and then in the senate–the place where he became the master of power, process, and of men–all that power was gone.

The Treatment: LBJ & Chicago’s Mayor Daley

He knew what lurked in the hearts of men, and knew how to use it or to buy it. He knew how to get things done, good and ill. It was Robert Caro’s recent book, The Passage of Power, that fully explained to me how kickbacks work. LBJ didn’t get rich by working hard in the conventional way. And yet: he never forgot Cotulla, Texas. Never forget the road gang, never forgot working hard with his (admittedly enormous) hands.

LBJ and MLK at signing, Voting Rights Act, 8-6-1965
LBJ and MLK at signing, Voting Rights Act, 8-6-1965

With the benefit of hindsight, does LBJ become clearer? We can never forgive him Vietnam, but we can remember the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Great Society. Johnson’s hero was FDR, his model the New Deal. In late 1963, when an ally told him that the fight for civil rights was a lost cause, Johnson had a rebuttal, according to Robert Caro.

“Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”

Johnson, not elected to the office he now held, and with another election about to swing into gear, asked that question. What was the presidency for, but to fight for lost causes, noble causes. Why else would you work so hard to build political capital, but to spend it?

What the hell’s the presidency for, but to fight for what a nation, or a nation’s most vulnerable people, need?

LBJ was corrupt, profane, adulterous, and coarse. I can’t say what he would have done in the political climate today, but the question he asked is worth asking today.

All images from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library‘s photo archive.

Night Lights and a Book

On By kittycalashIn Clothing, History

DSCN3605Last night, I went to a meeting downtown for my boss, and chose to walk instead of drive. I took some blurry photos along the way as evening became night and the city became more and more like Busy Town. The skill level of local drivers is not too different from Richard Scarry’s drivers…and the hills and the way the houses stack up, and the way we recognize or know each other here reminds me of Scarry’s books.

Walking back to the museum, I stopped at one of my favorite bookstores, where the selection runs from the perverse to the erudite.  I picked up many books and limited myself to three, including Very Vintage. (Did I mention Symposium’s remainder table pricing? Ah, yes: that’s why three books were possible.)
The text could have been edited a little more carefully and I am a fan of the endnote (not present here). But there are excellent photos I have not seen before and diagrams patterning garments. Now you see why I bought this: where else will I find diagrams of aTeddy Boy Jacket and a 1960s Bellville Sassoon-inspired evening dress?
dress2dress