I don’t know about you, but the past ten days or so have been surreal in a way that I haven’t experienced in a dozen years or so. Numerous creative folks I know are working hard to find new, engrossing projects and sharing what they find with others. As always, Satchel Paige has excellent advice: Don’t look back, something might be gaining on you.
What project shall I take up again, to distract myself from the shorter days and colder temperatures?
This is actually making reasonable progress, and might even be done by early December.
It’s satisfying work, pleating and stitching this lightweight cotton, tiny stitches in white linen thread. I’ve made some modifications to the pattern, but not many, aiming for a 1780-1782 style. Judicious cutting and generous friends will, fingers crossed, even yield a matching petticoat, which is very exciting indeed– and an unusual fashion statement chez Calash. Here, we focus on clash, but the fabric itself takes care of that for me.
Now, if only I had bright red morocco leather shoes to wear with this, that would be a sight indeed.
Mrs William (Jane) Pabodie. oil on canvas, 1813. RIHS 1970.60.2
Remember Mrs Pabodie? She appeared a week ago today in Providence after an intense sewing effort left your author with numb fingers. The process was as straightforward as these things ever are, manipulating fabrics to do your bidding once you think you have the right materials.
It took more rounds of white muslins from Burnley and Trowbridge than I care to count, and a variety of book muslins from Wm Booth Draper, just for the chemisette and cap. The laces came from Farmhouse Fabrics in the most expensive small package I’ve yet ordered that did not contain antique jewelry.
Mrs Pabodie attempts to remember when she was born (1771). Photo by J. D. Kay
The gown is a wool and silk blend remnant from Wm Booth Draper, just enough to make a gown (even at my height) though I admit the front hem will need some piecing or a ruffle to give it the proper length. Still, the thing more or less works, though as I compare the details to the original painting, I admit we’re still in beta.
Impressed from Newport– or nearly so– Low Spark makes his Providence debut. Photo by J.D. Kay
Reverend Hitchcock, hoping against hope that the tailor will one day finish his fine silk waistcoat. Photo by J. D. Kay
Sissieretta Jones extols the beauties of Paris– and pearls. Photo by J. D. Kay
I was joined by three friends from different eras (because you know me: if it’s not didactic, we’re not doing it): a sailor who on the run from a Newport press gang in 1765; Reverend Enos Hitchcock of the Beneficient Congregational Church in 1785; and Sissieretta Jones, soprano of Providence, around 1880. Each of the characters described their lives and their clothing, and I will admit that the Annual Meeting audience may not have been fully prepared for some of what they heard– I’m not certain they had ever considered how apt “balancing a sheep on my head” might be in describing Reverend Hitchcock’s wig.
Mrs Pabodie points out East Side landmarks to a visitor examining the theatre curtain backdrop painted around 1810. Photo by J. D. Kay
In the end, they were entertained, and may even have learned something, as we celebrated 2016’s interpretive theme, Fashioning Rhode Island.
“It looks like you rolled in dirt,” I said to the Young Giant when he dumped a gritty mess on my lap.
“I did,” he said, “but it was rolling with a purpose. We dug a fire pit, and then I had to keep the fire going. So I was on my belly in the dirt.”
This was followed by, “Mom, you need to mend my shirt.” But first, I needed to wash that shirt.
I did what mending I could before I washed it, since some areas seemed more likely to disintegrate further in the wash.
That’s clean linen verus dirty linen, the 18th century wrestling match. Patch secured, I very nearly packed this into a priority mailing container for delivery to the esteeméd Red Shoes Laundry, but I took a deep breath, and put the lobster pot back in the cupboard. (Yes, I considered boiling this on my stove top on a 95° day. Wouldn’t you?)
Instead, I trekked down to the cool of the basement and ran the water as hot as it gets and added Oxiclean (used by some of the finest weavers I know when they encounter dyes less fast than anticipated.)
The first tub achieved a kind of colloidal slurry of mud and sweat and soap. Delicious. Five rinses and an overnight soak later, dirty shirt became just a shirt again.
I took advantage of the clear weather to dry this outside on the grass, hoping the later sunlight would aid in whitening.
Wondering about that patch? Wonder no more, compare:
It’s another one of those “is it done? it’s perfect” situations. I’d love to wash my clothes with historically correct methods, but for now, the shirt’s clean enough for final mends and wearing in October. The winter should give me time to figure out stove top washing.
I am not a costumer, not really. But I’m not really a re-enactor in the classical sense: I no longer roll with a military unit and my military experiences are typically fort-based domestic activities. My favorite events have me representing women’s work in the past,the quotidian experiences of ordinary people. Documentation is my thing: what happened on a particular day, in a particular place. Who was there? What were typical clothes? The foods in season? The gossip of the day?
A Lady’s Summer Promenade Dress, 1800.
And yet. Everything I do is really a fantasy, even when it’s work. We are not [yet, always] using the actual words people spoke or wrote. We typically inhabit characters who are grounded in fact but for whom we do not have full documentation. We are representations. We are playing, more than we are being.
I could easily be persuadedto take a walk along a sea wall or coast to collect seaweed samples for pressing. This would inch me into Austen territory, especially if my friends will join me. I’ve even gone to the lengths of acquiring an appropriate hat, and to make another gown is but nothing in the pursuit of happiness.
Woman in a Turkish interior Pastel on vellum, Jean-Étienne Liotard, 1749. Museum of Art and History, Geneva.
If I could truly be a fabulist, I might be tempted to adopt a style a la Turque, for a portrait by Copley or for my paramour. This portrait by Liotard– who was known for his Ottoman works— is a great temptation, with her patterned overdress and belt with golden clasps, though she is thirty-three years earlier than The Abduction from the Seraglio, Mozart’s comedic and trendy 1782 opera.
If I made myself a Turque (and Reader, it is tempting though useless), I will confess it would be for the multiple pleasures of wearing it, knowing why it had been worn in the past, and for the pleasure of having it taken off me. Because we forget what the European fascination with exoticism and Orientalism meant: they meant sex. The Abduction itself is, in essence, a tale of sex trafficking.
And that is something we do forget about the past, that the clothing we adopt as we portray the past had meaning– sometimes a meaning we miss, when we layer costume upon clothing. Wives and mistresses alike were portrayed a la Turque, and some theorize that this style of portraiture was chosen to portray the sitter in timeless, classic dress. For Copley’s sitters, it was a way to be at the height of London fashion; for Lady Mary Montagu, Turkish dress allowed her to travel freely in the Ottoman Empire. But portraits of women in Turkish dress situated in Turkish interiors were also allusions to polygamy and to sexuality, and there is no way of escaping the fact that paintings of women were largely made for men.
So what, then, of fantasy dressing in the past? What sense can we make of historical representations of “Oriental” fashion? How do we understand what our clothing and our appearance means? Every choice we make is layered with meaning, in the present and in the past. For women, routinely objectified by society, the meaning of our clothing is particularly important, even when, or perhaps especially, when it is not what we want to focus on.
Kirsten Hammerstrom 
You must be logged in to post a comment.