Trying on History

Visit from Project AWARE

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Sun, 30 May 2010 14:54:00 +0000

On May 12, 2010, the VCCC hosted some of the girls from the Mill Street Loft's Project AWARE (in Beacon). We all had a great time - thanks for coming, ladies!

Here's a slideshow with some images from their visit.

You can click on the slideshow to go to the Picasa Web Album with the images; from there you can see a full screen view, or download your own copy of an image.

Class Visit - French 183

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 15:34:00 +0000

On October 8, 2009, the VCCC also hosted Susan Hiner's class "Fashion and Modernity." Here's a slideshow with some images from their visit.

You can click on the slideshow to go to the Picasa Web Album with the images; from there you can see a full screen view, or download your own copy of an image.

Class Visit - Drama 231

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:03:00 +0000

On October 8, 2009, the VCCC hosted two class visits, including Holly Hummel's History of Fashion for the Stage. Here's a slideshow with some images from their visit.

You can click on the slideshow to go to the Picasa Web Album with the images; from there you can see a full screen view, or download your own copy of an image.

Construction of the Reproduction

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 21:01:00 +0000

What construction techniques were used to make this dress?

We've made a lot of progress, and the reproduction is almost done. Take a look at this slideshow, showing many of the steps along the way (and many students helping out).

A great deal of credit goes out to the following students for their hard work to actually put the reproduction together:

Emily Riehl-Bedford (many parts of the bodice - and she was the one who stuck around after finals to help put it all together!)
Jessica Barksdale (skirt)
Chloe Boxer (bodice)
Elisabeth Watson (overskirt and overlays, lace skirt)
Emily Leimkuhler (lace skirt)
Danielle Morvant (pleated sash)
Margaret Dwyer (cutting out parts of the bodice)
Sharon Scoble (lace skirt)
Emily Antenucci (sleeves)

(If I'm forgetting anything or anyone, just let me know and I'll edit!)

Costume History meets Chemistry

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Sun, 31 May 2009 17:07:00 +0000

What are the different fabrics, trims, and hardware used in the dress?
Where were they produced, under what conditions, and at what cost?

Three weeks ago, on Friday, May 15th, Holly Hummel and I (Arden Kirkland) had a wonderful visit to Vassar's Chemistry Department. We met with Stuart Belli and Edie Stout, who were very generous with their time and introduced us to two different instruments, which in turn introduced us to a whole new world of fiber analysis.

First they introduced us to the Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer, which measures how infrared light is absorbed by a substance. This is a non-invasive technique. We started by placing small fragments of fabric in the spectrometer (one at a time) to analyze them, but later in our session Edie was able to test the sleeve of her shirt while she was wearing it! This has great potential for analyzing fibers of textiles without needing to remove a sample. The most common method for fiber analysis in a costume shop (vs. a lab) is to do a burn test, which requires that you remove a sample from the textile and essentially destroy it. Standard microscopy is also possible, but even for that I believe you would usually want to cut a small sample to place on a slide. A non-invasive technique is greatly appreciated.

By comparing our results with those from a known sample, we were able to easily recognize patterns and determine composition. Our samples included the silks from the dress discussed in this project, and a few other samples. They had samples of silk, wool, and cotton that we could compare. We also discovered that Holly was wearing a linen shirt, so we analyzed her shirt (again, while she was wearing it) to have a linen to compare, as well.

We were pretty sure that the samples from this dress were silk, and the spectrometer easily confirmed that. Here's the result from our analysis of the skirt lining, which shows a typical pattern for silk:

From Chemical Analysis

On the simplest level, this makes it very easy to determine if something is silk or wool or cotton or linen, etc., and in a non-invasive way. On a more complex level, we see a potential to look for subtle differences in a larger sample to determine more specific variations, for example identifying regional differences in textiles, or dating textiles by identifying other compositional factors involved in the manufacturing of different time periods.

Next, we went upstairs to experiment with the XRF (X-ray fluorescence) spectrometer. We inserted the same samples. In this case, the instrument was able to analyze the presence of certain specific elements. This was particularly interesting for our silk samples, which we believed had been weighted with metallic salts, as was common in the late 19th and early 20th century. This weighting unfortunately leads to an increased rate of deterioration. We were hoping to prove that they were weighted, and to find out what they were weighted with.

Indeed, all our silks were found to be weighted at least with zinc. Our worst offender, the silk gauze (badly deteriorated) that formed the sleeves, was found to have not only zinc, but also iron, copper, potassium, and lead. Here's the analysis of that gauze:

From Chemical Analysis

We're very excited about the potential to analyze more of the textiles in our collection. There's a lot more to be figured out here, but this is a great beginning. Next comes the "So What?" Why add zinc or copper or lead to silk? How were they added? We've started by looking at similarities, but over time it may be more interesting to look at differences. We're hoping to find some students who are interested in both science and design who might want to take this on as a project. Design meets Science! Costume History meets Chemistry! This is a great example of what a liberal arts education is all about.

Hi, Project AWARE! Thanks for a great visit!

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:09:00 +0000

Yesterday we had a visit from the girls in the Project AWARE program in Beacon. We had a wonderful time - the girls had very thoughtful questions about the collection, which got us all thinking about what life was like 100 or so years ago. Their challenge now is to imagine what fashion might be like 100 years from now, in 2109.

I'll try to post some images soon from our time together.

Cutting and Draping the Lace Skirt

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:03:00 +0000

What construction techniques were used to make this dress?

Here's a slideshow showing the steps to build the lace skirt of the reproduction.

About this blog

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Sun, 03 May 2009 00:10:00 +0000

This blog is about Vassar College's Trying on History project - but for now, it mostly follows one dress.

Yes, one dress. What can it tell us? What can we learn from it?

With a team of students, I have studied this dress down to the tiniest detail. We have measured it, drawn it, photographed it. We have patterned it. We are reproducing it. We are reproducing the corset that would have been worn under it. We are researching it, and its context. Who wore it? Why? Who made it? Why? How? (take a look at our full list of questions)

Yes, it's just one dress, but from it we're learning about New York City in the 1910's - and both the students who help to build the reproduction and the students who get to wear the reproduction will be able to step back in time.

To begin, you can start with some Highlights, or just browse around!

-Arden Kirkland
Vassar College Costume Collection (VCCC)
Vassar College Drama Department

Format Question to My Readers

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:34:00 +0000

Here's a question for anyone following this blog - when it comes to presenting images of our process, which do you prefer - individual images in a row, or a slideshow of images? If you prefer the slideshow, which do you like better - the format from Picasa, or the format from Flickr?

Please leave a comment below to answer these questions.

Your answers will help me to decide how to format future posts.

Thank you!

Steaming Lace

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:23:00 +0000

What construction techniques were used to make this dress?

I wish I hadn't forgotten to bring back the camera today - I missed a great photo op.

Today we almost were ready to start cutting the lace skirt, but when we tried to lay it out, we realized that after the dyeing, the embroidered parts had shrunk a bit more than the overall body of the lace. So, luckily Emily Leimkuhler (VC ' 10) got to steam it all out! She pinned the whole length of yardage up along the storage boxes that line one wall of the shop, and then set to steaming. It would have been a great photo, and I'm sure she would have loved to record the moment for posterity. Because the lace is pretty sheer, at times it looked like she was just steaming the boxes!

Anyway, thanks, Emily!

Construction Order of the Original

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 02:45:00 +0000

What construction techniques were used to make this dress?

After carefully studying the construction details of the original dress, I think I've figured out the steps taken to put it together. Here's a slideshow with some detailed images:

For our construction steps on the reproduction, I've made a few changes to incorporate some modern conveniences, like serging raw edges.
To view a table with the details, go to:

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p7ouScE49p7pFev1bQXpCWw

Final Materials

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 23:32:00 +0000

Where can we find similar fabrics, trims, and hardware to reproduce the dress?

Now that the lace and jacquard have been dyed, we can show you swatches of all our fabric choices:

From Dyeing

Dyeing

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Where can we find similar fabrics, trims, and hardware to reproduce the dress?

Two of our fabrics, the silk jacquard and the beaded lace, needed to be dyed for the color to match the original more precisely. Here are the swatches from our attempt to make the match. Students Chloe Boxer (VC '12), Emily Leimkuhler (VC '10), and Charlie Pane (VC '10) all helped to get the dyeing just right. We started dyeing on Weds., and thought we were done, but looking at it dry on Friday morning, it still wasn't quite right. We worked on it throughout the day, taking the fabric out of the vat, adding just a few more grains of dye, and putting the fabric back in to try again - it was certainly tedious, but we finally got it just right!

From Dyeing

Mockup Fitting

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 20:15:00 +0000

What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?
What would the dress have looked like in 3D? In motion?

We finally had a mockup fitting to try out the pattern of the enhanced size reproduction!

Here's a slideshow from the fitting.I'm trying out the slideshow feature from Flickr - if it doesn't show up, please try a different browser. Click on the arrow (play button) for it to start playing. You can also click on the icon in the bottom right hand corner for a fullscreen view - and then, to get out of it, press the "esc" key.

The fitting went amazingly well, with only a few minor alterations. I'm patting myself on the back for my draping!

Final Draping Step for Enhanced Size

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 23:27:00 +0000

What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

I spent some time over the break working on the pattern and mock up at home.
Here's the last step of the draping for the enhanced size - the overskirt.

From Draping - Enhanced Size

Completed Draping of Original Size

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 23:10:00 +0000

What would the dress have looked like in 3D?
What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

Today I finally finished the draping of the original size dress!

(click here if you have trouble viewing the slideshow)

Sketch of the Dress

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 20:45:00 +0000

What would the dress have looked like in 3D?
What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

Here's a sketch of the dress, used to diagram out some of the measurements as part of the patterning process.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

Lace Skirt Pattern - trueing up

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:57:00 +0000

What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

It has taken a few draping sessions, but I think I've finally been able to true up the pieces for the lace skirt.

The pattern Emily made as a rub-off works extremely well. I just had to true up a few lines, straightening out the seams, waistline, and horizontal tuck. However, the process of trueing it up proved somewhat difficult - mainly because the skirt just wouldn't fit on the child-sized mannequin we were using! Our original wearer really was very petite. We had padded the hips of the child-sized mannequin slightly, but even after removing that padding, the mannequin was just too small. So, I switched back to the historic mannequin we used to mount the original dress (see these previous posts labeled with "size"). The mannequin doesn't really have proper shoulders, so I've piled on the shoulder pads to make the upper body a little more realistic, but now the lace skirt portion does seem to work properly.

There are some surprises here. The pattern pieces from the ruboff are rather asymmetrical, but when you get them back on a body they make sense again. I originally thought the horizontal tuck just below the waistline was an alteration to adjust the hem length, but now I see how it actually helps to shape the skirt over the hips.

Mannequin switch

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:03:00 +0000

Well, we knew that even the child sized mannequin was slightly too big for our dress, but I thought we could still work with it. Turns out we're doing so much of the patterning by draping now, that it really makes too much of a difference. So, we have returned to the mannequin we used to mount the dress for photographs early in the process. This is still a bit problematic, as this is a mannequin we made ourselves years ago, and it doesn't have much structure. I've added many shoulder pads (it didn't really have defined shoulders to begin with) and stabilized the shape as much as possible. Also, it's shorter than the original, so I still have to remember to account for that.

Tech problems

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 21:21:00 +0000

If you have trouble viewing the images or slideshows, please try a different browser. If you continue to have problems, please leave a comment below - I'll get an email when you do, and then I can try to fix it. Also, please try again later! Sometimes the problem is just temporary and unexplained.

Lace Skirt Pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Here's an overview of the entire process to get the pattern of the lace skirt layer.

What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

On August 18, Emily Leimkuhler (VC '10) began working on patterning the lace skirt layer. She started by measuring the hem circumference. In the process, whereas I had thought that the lace skirt was in one piece with one seam, she found an additional seam very cleverly hidden in the design of the lace. The skirt is in 2 sections, one of which is 46" wide at the hem; the other is 18.5", for a total hem circumference of 64.5". The main seam is a French seam at the center back, but the other seam is very well hidden, with the two edges simply overlapped and stitched to carefully follow the pattern of the lace.

Next, she cut, pressed, and blocked a large piece of muslin to prepare to make a rub off of the lace skirt, especially showing the pattern of the beadwork.

She also began basting a "grainline" into the lace - identifying a vertical pattern in the lace and following it with a thread basting line. This will be used as a landmark point to pin the muslin over and rub off the beadwork design.

Emily's next day working on this was August 27th.
Here Emily was carefully placing muslin over a section of the lace skirt, and pinning it in place to be completely smooth. It was very delicate, time-consuming work.

From Lace Skirt Rub-off

Once the muslin was all in place, she was able to carefully run a piece of chalk over it, registering not only the design of the beaded lace underneath, but also the shape of the pattern piece, and placement of seams, for the lace skirt.

From Lace Skirt Rub-off

Once all the pieces were rubbed-off, we were able to lay out the flat pieces on the table and true them up, pinning them edge to edge at one of the seams.

From Lace Skirt Rub-off

As Emily's rub-off process couldn't easily reach up to the waistline of the dress, the upper edge at this stage was still somewhat unknown. We solved that by using the gridding technique to measure out the shape of the upper edge, including the horizontal tuck that falls just below the waistline (hidden by the overskirt). Emily drew some gridlines onto the muslin, along the waistline. Then we used landmarks in the embroidered lace (as noted in the rub-off), along with the threadlines Emily had previously basted into the lace, to delineate an axis that we could measure out from. As I worked with the original garment, measuring over and up from each landmark point the the next, Emily measured and marked each point on the muslin. The resulting pattern is remarkably accurate.

From Lace Skirt Rub-off

Shoulder Lace Pieces

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 12:38:00 +0000

Today we worked on the pattern of the shoulder lace pieces, which were easy to pattern by simple measurements, since they are essentially based off a rectangle, with angled ends as they attach to the bodice.

Translating into the enhanced size figure is trickier, though - if we were to use lace of the same width as the original (8.75" wide) then the fit over the bust falls differently, and doesn't come as close to meeting on the sides.

Taking into account the different proportions, it might be helpful to find a slightly wider lace - but if not, we just have to take this into account in terms of where the lines fall.

Repeat in Jacquard

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 21:00:00 +0000

What are the different fabrics, trims, and hardware used in the dress?

One of Lydia's tasks for today was to measure the repeat in the geometric pattern of the jacquard that is used for the overlays of the dress. This will help us not only in finding a similar fabric for our reproduction, but by identifying the parts of the print it will make it easier for us to measure/diagram the flat pattern of the overlay pieces.

The repeat occurs at 6.25" vertically, and 2.75" horizontally.

Starting to drape - original size

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:00:00 +0000

What would the flat pattern for the dress look like?

Now that we have an appropriately sized mannequin, we can start working on the original size pattern.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

Beginning to drape the original size pattern, with the reproduction size draping in the background.

The first piece to capture is the inner waistband. I thought it would be simple to measure out the placement of darts sewn into this grosgrain ribbon, and I had Emily and Lydia work on measuring that out. It turned out to be much harder than we thought, however, so after they left I took it on myself. The complication is that the darts are not on the straight grain of the ribbon, but at angles. The best solution was to use a modified rub-off technique, and shape a piece of muslin over it to find the exact placement of the darts.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

The darts at the side seams imply to me that the dress was made for a slightly larger size, but taken in for our smaller wearer.

The next pieces are the bodice lining pieces, front and back.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

If the top edge seems a little low on the bustline, it's because the proportions of our smaller mannequin are still a little off, since it started as a child's size. We're working not only off the mannequin, but also off of the measurements of the dress itself, which of course are more accurate than the mannequin shape.

Next, I had Lydia skip ahead a layer to measure the lace pieces that go over the shoulders.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

I also took a gentle rub-off of the lace inset piece at the top center front of the bodice. Then I took this shape to size up proportionately on my reproduction size.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

Meanwhile, Lydia took a rub-off of the shape of the decorative fabric-covered buckle on the back of the overskirt.

To end her workday, I had Lydia transfer some of our completed pattern pieces to paper, using a pounce wheel, pushpins, pencil, ruler, and French curve.

From Research Process Part 1 - 1910's Franklin Simon gown

Corset pattern

noreply@blogger.com (Arden Kirkland) — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:30:00 +0000

Today Liz LaBrocca '09 started working on the corset that will be worn under the dress.

We chose a 1911 corset from Norah Waugh's Corsets and Crinolines to reproduce (figure 45, on page 86).
(Waugh, Norah. Corsets and Crinolines. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1970.)

Liz traced the page onto a transparency, then placed it on an overhead projector to enlarge it.
By moving the projector and adjusting the focus, she was able to adjust the size, measuring key shapes to get them to the overall size desired. Then she traced each piece onto a piece of brown paper taped to the wall.

From Corset