Dressing up in a 1870 Dinner Dress

Hello, Isabella from Bright Eye here, and welcome to the newest Getting Dressed clothing. We haven't done them for a bit. I've been just far too busy. And to be honest, I didn't really plan this one either, but we have a photoshoot with a good friend of mine and a professional model, Jess, in Brighton this weekend. And I was thinking the dress I made for her is such a nice example of the late 60s, 80s, 60s, that is, and early 70s styles, the transitional style between the crinolines and the bustle, that I thought it would be really a pity not to have it done now. And after the shoot, I have no idea what state the dress is going to be in, to be honest, because we are going to be walking and it's a light coloured dress. So I thought I'll just do it quick and dirty and shoot at home with a sort of background. So no push location today, no money for that either. So there you go. But it's just a really interesting style. So forgive me if I'm sort of improvising stuff a little bit. The dress is too big for me as well. Jess is statuesque, so I'm a sort of tiny little person next to her. We share similar measurements of the body, but she's much taller as well with a bit more boobage. So it's not going to fit perfectly, but I will obviously have some footage of Jess and I will have some nice photography from the photoshoot. The dress is for the Victorian Dressmaker 3, which is coming up, I think, pre-order end of this year and possibly next year, it's going to be printed. And that's mostly ball gowns, evening gowns, dinner gowns, stuff like that. You've seen a few of the videos for that. So that's the first bustle style. So without further ado, let's get on. I'm really sorry. I'm really sort of wrapping my button hook around. I was just putting my buttons, buttoned my shoes, that's what I wanted to say. So the usual outfit, I've got my cotton stockings on with long pantalettes and a chemise, all nice cotton. It's quite hot at the moment and the lights here do not really help, but I'll see what I can do. Now, I don't have, I've got my own corset here, but I thought if I use this one I made for Jess, it's not going to be tight lace. It will give me a little bit more inches when I need to. It's the opposite problem that I usually have where things are too small. This is too big, but let us have a look. I've made this corset just recently because I just thought it went very nicely with the gown. And it's made to the red threaded pattern for 1860s corsets. And that's, I've sort of tweaked it around to fit to Jess and change some boning patterns to fit more of what I had in mind. So it's just about wearable for me, but it's a little bit too big, especially in the boob area. Almost there. And late 60s and beginning of 70s, it's really, sorry, it's really a very, very interesting time for women's fashion. Not so much for blouse, getting boring at the time. Mostly because of the change of silhouette and a lot, a lot of innovation. So we have lots of underlined ties coming on as well. We've got new techniques. So progress is happening and a lot of innovations in cut and design. Obviously we have sewing machine coming up at that point as well. And by this very early 70s, they were really, really popular and everywhere. So people could make much, much more complex dresses with fewer labor and time cost. So this corset has gauze. I'm not sure if you can see it very well. Has gauze at the bust. At the bust is a little bit too big for me. It should be really a bit there. That should do a nice go on the hip. So that makes a really pleasing shape and it's very comfortable. You still have the traditional six or four or five panels more per side as well. There's loads of different patterns starting to be appearing at that time, I think. I'll try to put a couple of them on the photos. And they usually sort of sport this kind of flossing with a little tear shape. Do I still have light here? Oh, you can't see it. I'll get photos later. Maybe you can see. So that's my basics. To be honest, the weather as it is at the moment, that should be more than enough. But that's the piece de resistance for the whole thing is a sort of crinoline, but not really. It's a kind of crinolette. You've seen crinolette before from the pink dress I made for the first book. But this one is different. And again, that really reflects some of the crinolines at this time as well. Some of them are covered completely with the fabric. Some of them were much lighter where just the wire is covered in cotton. So all of that is cotton tapes, stiff wire covered in cotton. Haven't made this one. I bought it ages ago. Must have been some six or seven years ago, I think. The commission is from Russia. And obviously nowadays you can't anymore because of war, which is a pity because some people will want one, but you can make a crinoline one covered with fabric just like that in my book, if you want to. So let's step into this one. As you can see, it has still the round shape at the bottom, but it has a little bit of bustle and a bit of a flare at the end. So that really helps with the traditional late 60s, beginning of 70s. Forgot to put a hook on the corset, so I need to improvise to keep it away from the waist. So that's, I don't know if you can see, but that's, it's very light. Obviously you can sit without any problems and you hardly notice it really. But it doesn't have that width here like the crinolines would have earlier on. And on top of that, we have a few petticoats. I've got one crinoline petticoat and the other one elliptical crinoline petticoat. I didn't make a special one for this one. So I may play around with the length and they are not pressed. Now, pressing is an interesting subject in Victorian times because most of the things were pressed, most. If you are very wealthy and you have servants, then pressing is not a problem for you. It's your servant's duties. So that's easy to do it. But if you're middle class and you have just only one housemate, then you wouldn't bother too much about pressing stuff that would not be seen because not much point really. Let me find the front of that. It's much too short at the back at the moment. Because it's a different shape. But it still adds to conceal the wires and to provide some volume. And let's go for the bigger one. Also, that might be too big actually. I'll have a look. That might be a little bit too big. Let me have a look. Oh, maybe not. Let's improvise. So yes, if you had help, if you had servants, then absolutely be pressing everything or sending it for official services. Pressing. If you didn't, you will definitely press the gowns and the bits that would show. You would not press stuff like chemises or pantalettes or maybe not petticoats. You could, it's a little bit long, but it should be just enough to provide some protection for the skirt. I'm a little bit short of space here for you to see. I'm going to just, Lucas? I'm going to ask you to move the camera a little bit. Do you mind moving the camera so that it's less of my head? Just a little bit down so I can see the bottom. Thank you. Still want my face. Hello. Just for the time being. Let's have a look at this. So the fact that it's on the floor is a bit of a pain. It is too long. Usually it would be just on the floor at the back, protecting the fabric of the skirt, although they have polyes anyway. But don't go yet. Can I have my face back now, please? Although I need to be crunching here. No problem. Just the top of my head. There we go. Beauty restored. Well, about that. Well, let's put a chemisette on as if I wasn't hot enough. The dress here is a afternoon or dinner dress. It's not an evening dress, but could have an evening bodice if necessary. Let me see if I can put it on without any problems, more or less. Now, 70s is also quite famous for big hair. I mean, big, big, big hair. Mine is not very big. It's just an afternoon dress, doesn't even lot. But you see huge copiers for evenings and balls. And obviously very few people actually have that much hair. And it goes without any kind of doubt. And it went without any kind of doubt. Where's my button? Oh, sorry. There's a doubt about the button. It's not a doubt about the hair. That people were using extensions. There was a huge market for hair pieces. There were instructions in the fashion magazines telling women how to make hair pieces, how to make sort of braided pieces or curled pieces, what to make them from or where to buy them. I think I'll leave it like that. So it was normal. I mean, you didn't have as much hair as nature would give you. You just supplement and hair was just huge. Nowadays, it's much more tricky, obviously, because we don't have a specialized industry for that. But you can still find occasional hair pieces online, either just plain wigs or hairs when you can plait yourself or curl yourself or different ringlets. Or you can dismantle a wig and make it. Let's see if I can find a spare bit somewhere here. So that's one of the bits to just basically plait so you can build up and add much more if you need to. Oversized plaits were very fashionable as well. Now, we are getting into the dress. And it's quite heavy. I was really, really lucky to get this silk veil on the whole roll out in sales. It was about 30 meters and it still wasn't really enough for what I had in mind. So I didn't manage to do all the things as if in the original and I have to be really, really careful how I was cutting it. I mean, I have just literally bits that are left out after that. And I had some silk veil, but you've seen some of it in my recent video on how to deal with silk veil. But, excuse me, very dry. And again, I had just enough to make most of it. Not as much as I want, but enough. You can see here, the whole bottom has a balayers already attached all around. So you have pleated cambric with some lace and it is attached to underside of the skirt. Just to make sure that the skirt is not damaged on the knee. So when this one gets dirty, you basically just wash it and reapply. You can button it up. This one is stitched. I do prefer stitching to be honest, even though it takes a little bit more time to put it back on. And this dress, it just shows how decoration really, really started hitting the seventies because of the machine. You could make loads of stuff much faster. So you can make short seams. You can trim, you can make cruller much faster. You can make bias strips much faster, binding. You still use a lot of hand stitching. So for example, this edge here is still hand stitched with the ribbon. The ruffle is hand stitched. The additional ruffle with the little pussies here, I think, also needs, had to be hand stitched. But the machines really were a game changer and they brought a lot, a lot of very complex decoration that suddenly didn't take as much time as before. So yes, let's have a look. This is quite, it's not very heavy. It's heavy for summer, I suppose. Right, come on, see what's happening at the back. I presume things are in place. Can I hook it up? And yes, normally I would have help. But I'm just going to sit with my shoulders up like so. This is quite big. It's possibly not really a promenade gown unless you want to butter it up. But still there. The petticoat is a little bit too long, but we'll live with it. For the time being. As if that wasn't enough, we have an overskirt which has a lot of trim as well. It has the same trim as on a skirt. It's a lot of silk. It has some various hanging bits. Let me just see which one is back, which one is front. This one is front and this one's back. That's, I think, how it's supposed to sit. Not so much at the back, but more or less. And the last thing, well, almost, is the bodice. Again, loads of decorative bits and pieces. The bodice is still boned. This one is still very much 60s cut. So still front with darts, side piece or side back piece and the back with a little peplum here. That cut will start changing into adding another side piece once where bodices go below the waist just to give a little bit more shape to the hip. For anything above the waist, not really needed. For things going down the hip, you need a little bit more tailoring there. So let's put that on. Let's not lose my hair anywhere. There's lots of weird things on. Let's see. It's quite loose, but it should be okay just for a quick video. So as the decade sort of goes, as we go into beginning of 70s, we see further move away from the width and going into the bustle and elongating into the natural form towards the end of it. I'm not the biggest fan of this style. I think it's a little bit too much to be honest. It's interesting to wear and you do feel quite grand, but I love my trains and I like the sleek forms of natural form much more. So late, late first bustle is a bit better. The bodice is a bit too long, but obviously Jess is much taller than I am, but it's not too bad. Let me get these ones. And I've got some, well I thought I've got some gloves, but they've gone away. And I've got a hat. I might have a hat of him somewhere, but at the moment hat will do. I've just had enough of leftovers to retrim an old hat. So that's how it's sitting here. Obviously I will need a nice hat pin to go with it. And this is a nice visiting gown. Definitely you'll be wearing that indoors. Outdoors, just as a way of cutting from one place to another. So usually in a carriage anyway, but if you're outdoors, it would be on a pretty clean surfaces. So in museums, for example, or open air museums, you just want to wander around in a marble in it. And yes, it has been a year, so it can get dirty, but well maybe that's just modern sensibilities talking here. Maybe they just didn't care that much because they had servants to take care of such mundane things like cleaning your dust truffle. I don't have servants, so I do very much care about how much time it takes to do the dust truffle or not. So, well, I'm looking forward to the shoot in Brighton with Jess because she's going to look so much better than me in that. And well, you will see very, very shortly because I put the videos and photos at the end of it. And then it's going for sale because I can't really keep all the gowns here. Small house, just one room for the costumes. But I hope you don't mind the sort of ad hoc presentation here and I hope you've enjoyed seeing this monstrous, I don't know, lavender and vanilla ice cream. I want ice cream now. Well, thank you so much for watching and hopefully see you soon in better surroundings. Thank you.