The Life Sartorial

So long...

ladykalessia — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:27:23 GMT

Farewell...? Tribe was down so long that the Burn was over twelve days ago, and I can only *today* take down the gone-to-burning-man thing. If you need me, google this name. Or this name at yahoo, or gmail, or on AIM. I love you all, and I'll miss tribe. But I'm starting to think that the logo is actually a little robot dude tearing his hair in frustration.

A few good playaheads

ladykalessia — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 19:29:15 GMT

Looking for a few good Burners who know who Rick Astley is. Ping me for more details. Muahahahaa.

En Fuego

ladykalessia — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 20:37:06 GMT

So it looks like I'm going to Burning Man after all. I guess I shouldn't have griped so much about not going. I now have three weeks to get my shit together - good thing I camp Faire as much as I do, or this would be difficult. Also, Dear Subconscious: How did you know? Why have I found little caches of stuff around my apartment that I don't really recall buying, but that are perfect for Burning Man? The blinky lights, for instance. Or the dollar two-pack of single-ply TP rolls, or the big bag of puddin' cups. Subconscious, you're starting to freak me out. Please clue the rest of me in next time, 'kay?

The End of an Era

ladykalessia — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 04:46:42 GMT

I'm standing in a parking lot in the late afternoon sunlight, shivering in the onslaught of a wind that brings a thick blanket of wet, cold, gray creeping over the nearby hills. In front of me is a four-year love affair in red-painted steel and safety glass: a triumph and a milestone, and yet now another milestone and a tragedy. I slide the key into the door lock one last time, turn it and hear the old familiar clatter as the tumblers give way. The door swings open and I sit, take out the title from its envelope, and sign it on the flat plastic center panel that would've been a horn if it still worked. Replacing the title I add the spare key, and hesitate a moment. Taking out the main key one last time, I put it in the ignition and turn. The engine splutters to life with an uncharacteristic reluctance, and I can feel the whole chassis shaking at the noise the piston rods make against the head. And then oil seeps into those spaces and she quiets a bit, idling down to her accustomed putter. I lean my head against the steering wheel, fighting back tears. Why am I doing this? It's not like she can hear me. More for myself then, I guess. "I'm so sorry hon. You were so good to me, and I tried to do my best by you. I just can't afford to fix you this time. Thanks for holding out until I had the new job. I don't know what I'd have done without you." I turn the key again, and it feels like slamming the door on a friend. The engine rumbles into silence, and I'm left remembering those four years. There were entire runs of Northern Faire done with the trunk loaded so high I couldn't see out the back. Taking 17 over the hill almost every weekend to escape Santa Cruz. Parking in San Leandro under the tree with the eternal bird problem. Turning on the engine every once in awhile while watching snowflakes fall on the side of a road near Angels Camp. Sleeping curled uncomfortably in the back seat after a long day of working Operations for Golden Gate. Sitting on the tailgate with David, talking in the cold San Luis fog. Parking triumphantly in front of my parents house. Parking in front of ByTheBeach, Dad at my side while we diagnosed the dying battery. Parking, haphazardly, in front of Circus. Parking in front of Atrium. Parking in front of Tom's. Parking in front of Belmont House. So much of my life in these past four years has depended on this miracle of engineering. I could not have survived Santa Cruz without the distractions she enabled. When I graduated, it was she who made my first job possible, and it was a detour in the commute that landed me the second. And limpingly she ferried me that last day to the third job, and then gave up gasping on the side of the road north of Edgewater. I put the key back in the envelope, get out, lock the manual doorlock, and hesitate like I always do, heart racing as I feel myself tottering out over limnal space. Then I slam that sticky door one last time, then impulsively stand back and look at her sans-disco-ball-rearview-ornament, sans junk in the back, sans jug of water and case of tools. This is it, this is the end. Tomorrow morning a tow truck will come and take my treasure, my triumphant chariot, my very first large purchase, my friend, my shelter, my companion away. I manage to hold off the bawling until I walked in the door at Bower. My Red Vixen is gone. Please forgive me if I'm not quite right for a few whiles.

New Tribe

ladykalessia — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 05:49:33 GMT

So this going through my friends list one by one and trying to remember who lives in the South Bay thing is for the birds. Especially since we all put "California" or "SF Bay Area" these days. :P So we've started a new Tribe for South Bay Faire folk. This would be similar to the original goal of the SC-Faire list, with bimonthly pizza meetups and stuff like that. You know you want to join! http://tribes.tribe.net/southbayfairefolk And look, here's a picture.

I really ought to clear out my camera more often...

ladykalessia — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 04:29:29 GMT

I dug this picture out of my "Raw files" folder on my computer the other day. Yes, that's me in my full victorians. Yes, that's a power drill. YES, I was using it, NO it's not just staged. I'd been putting up those coat hook thingies that you see. Clothing rarely will keep me from my power tools. (Or in this case, Dave's power tools.)

New Tribe, New Content

ladykalessia — Fri, 22 Sep 2006 16:29:52 GMT

I suppose now that the evil that was Old Tribe is... well, at least promising to better itself, I'll start adding new content again. Well, okay. I actually have a bunch of new pictures I ought to put up, and I only realized this because I got some previews from a photo shoot on Wednesday. (The pictures are TEH AWESOME, by the way.) I guess this means I ought to update my fanclub, also. Hm.

Land of the Gods

ladykalessia — Sat, 10 Jun 2006 01:00:54 GMT

No Valhalla for me. I'm sort of on the fence between sad (Dammit, I really, really wanted to go to this) and angry (goddammit stupid cars and argh always at the worst time when I have no money post move), and if we want to make it a three-way fence, well, I feel lonely and left out too. I can make the Gaskells, but it's not the same. Argh.

Some people are idiots

ladykalessia — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 16:29:09 GMT

http://people.tribe.net/ladykalessia/photos/f1dc61c8-852c-4854-876b-bea5315c6f31 By which I mean, if I was going to show you nipples, you'd be paying for it. And you'd be paying me a LOT for it. Asshole.

Goodbye Santa Cruz

ladykalessia — Mon, 05 Jun 2006 03:28:25 GMT

You were good^H^H^H^H^H^H^H bad^H^H^H^H^H^H there for me. Hello San Jose. I don't know you very well yet, but I hope we'll get along fine.

On the brink...

ladykalessia — Mon, 22 May 2006 05:13:13 GMT

Well folks, I'm moving. Goodbye Santa Cruz, helloooooo San Jose. First weekend of Valhalla, it looks like, curse the luck... But the place is pretty awesome. So if anyone isn't busy on the weekend of June 3-4, I could use help. Barring that, I could use boxes. BOXES AND BOXES AND BOXES, OMG, PLEASE. There's also some more info on my LJ about stuff I could use

Decisions, decisions...

ladykalessia — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 05:00:31 GMT

I'm migrating The Life Sartorial to somewhere with less of a habit of claiming ownership over content it didn't create. So to that end, it'll be http://thelifesartorial.blogspot.com/ Now I need to decide if I want to leave my beloved writings up here for Tribe to continue to say they own, or take them down and lose the intermittant comments from friends. Hmmn.

The Semiotics of Corsetry in Design

ladykalessia — Mon, 16 Jan 2006 07:05:44 GMT

-or- Why That "Corset top" is really a "Shoelace top" Semiotics is the study of signs and symbols. It's used particularly by folklorists and theater people, since the former are studying the signs people use to communicate shared ideas, and the latter are trying to evoke those shared ideas in the artificial world that exists behind the curtains. But the study of semiotics can rarely be applied to the study of fashion. Except here. I was in the mall the other day, and I walked by a display of "corset shirts" which (to hear the adverts sing) are apparently the new Big Thing in fashion. After scoffing at the garments (which, I might add, are nothing but a plain knit long sleeve shirt with curved vertical pin tucks and an insertion of crossed ribbon over lace down the front) I continued on my merry way. Later that night I was searching a lingerie website looking for a particular type of corset that would do for a newcomer to Dickens Fair costuming, and the search string "corset" returned *eight pages* of results. Four items, in those eight pages, were actually corsets, and the rest were... well... not. Let me make an aside here and go over some terms. A corset is a boned, stiffened garment that often laces closed, and which compresses the waist and shapes the torso in a specific way. A girdle shapes the body, but makes fewer claims of waist reduction and is often much more flexible since it doesn't always have bones in it. A merry-widow is a lightweight, often fancy, flexible boned garment that generally extends from the waist up only. All three of these items support the bust and are often sold with attached garters. But a girdle is not a corset, and a merry widow is not a corset. Nor is a corselet a corset - the term was popularized in the 1950's to describe evening gown construction that had structural similarities to the merry widow, but that needed a less risque term. Also, some of you will be surprised to note that a bodice, particularly those sold at Renaissance Faires, are also Not Corsets. (The term bodice only refers to the upper half of a woman's outfit, so even plain modern dresses have a "bodice".) Back to corsetry, now that I've had my moment of quibbling. A corset is a very specific garment, but there are as many types of corset as there have been eras in fashion. The first corset-like garment recorded is found in pre-Roman-era frescoes and art from the island of Crete in the Mediterranean, and the next reference is in an illuminated medieval manuscript on sin. Corsetry has since evolved, from simple support garments in the medieval period to complicated garments including springs, levers, elastic and special patented parts (check the US Patent registry sometime and search for "women's undergarment"), but the corset has always remained a corset. Until now. The women's lib movement did many great things, and many things that were great at the time, but we've since moved on from. Bra burnings, for instance. Bras are no longer generally considered an instrument of social enslavement of women by men, instead they are now considered either an item of seduction (and to quote third-wave feminists, thus an item for exerting agency within the modern social system) or an everyday "necessary evil". Likewise, corsets are beginning to lose their designation as a garment representing female suffering and bondage, and are now being seen as items by which women are able to to express both their sexuality (by taking control of how their bodies are shaped and seen) and their femininity. David Kunzle's book "Fashion and Fetishism" is an excellent resource for further reading on the subject. The movie "Pirates of the Caribbean", however, is not. (This is a Rant For Another Day, in which I will how just about every reference to the corset in that movie has nothing to do with actual experiences of period corsetry, and everything to do with the writers getting a cheap laugh by appealing to the audience's dated view of the corset as an instrument of female bondage.) At any rate, the corset is the new "in" thing, because of its status as an undergarment (oooh, sexy), and its status as a previously taboo item. To modern consumers, the corset connotes sex, and the notion of "suffering for fashion" made sexy. This is extremely unfortunate, because the fashion design world has taken this fascination with heretofore (and again) naughty support garments, and run with it. They have tried to distill the allure of the corset into a single design feature, and by adding that feature to every imaginable object, they hope to sell more of them, whatever they are. Have you guessed what that single design feature is? Yes, ladies and gents, "corset style lacing" it is. Instead of trying to sell clothes, shoes, purses, hoisery, skirts, etc by virtue of their style, fine craftsmanship, or place in the endless march of what is fashionable, designers have slapped a set of faux laces on every imaginable item and then touted it as having "sexy corset detailing". Evidently, to the woman on the street, a set of ribbon Xs has become shorthand for a complex expression of fetishistic sexuality which has been then again distilled down to "check me out, I'm hawt." It makes me want to scream, or sometimes point and laugh. "Do you have any idea what that's supposed to stand for?" the anthropologist in me screams. "Do you know what your plumage is telling people?" Lastly, as a fashion historian, I'm vaguely bothered by the idea that a centuries-old fashion tradition has been converted and distilled _inaccurately_. You see, a technique called "spiral lacing" was used for most of the history of the corset, with the crossover, X, or "shoelace style" lacings only coming into vogue with the advent of fixed, opening front busks. (When one has to relace the corset every time one gets dressed, one needs a significantly faster way of lacing.) The majority of period corsets are laced in a zig-zag pattern that connotes nothing to fashionistas these days. Know your roots, is all that I'm saying.

We interrupt this (admittedly intermittant) broadcast...

ladykalessia — Sat, 24 Dec 2005 12:15:57 GMT

...to tell you that I've had my first brush with Big City Crime. Yeah, my car was broken into. A bunch of my stuff is gone. More about it on my LJ. And yes, I filed a police report. Not that I expect that to do me any good.

On Laundry

ladykalessia — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 02:54:20 GMT

Alright, so I admit it: I am a thrift store junkie. I really am. Recently I managed to turn an addiction into a profitable activity by collecting things that could be used as costume parts at Dickens, and selling them during workshops. Not only do I get to gratify my inner hunter/gatherer (look! Chanel purse circa 1984, ook ook!), but I also help out the costuming staff by helping to improve the general caliber of the costumes at the Fair. It also helps out my cast mates, but I digress. What always has boggled my mind is the amount of really awesome stuff that gets "thrown away" to the thrift store just because it's got a stain. Or it's missing a button. Or it needs ironing. Clorox recently ran a television ad where a woman talked about just what I'm seeing: she'd buy nice clothes with stains, and take them from the thrift store knowing that with her handy bleach at her side, she could make them "as good as new". Now mind you, there are *some* stains that are just about impossible to lift. But for the most part, you need to work in an industrial dye shop or paint cars for a living to get these types. And there are some times when it's not worth bothering to sew the button back on, and the shirt is too thin to really be worth ironing anymore. At THIS point, and this point only, do I see these items as rags. You see, the problem I'm seeing more and more is that Americans are less and less amenable to the idea of "fixing" things. We have all of this amazing new laundry technology available (I'm a big fan of Spray N Wash, and the Clorox Bleach Pens), and yet we're getting worse at cleaning up after ourselves. Why? And how, I'm sure you're asking, is this related to fashion? Americans are born and bred to consume. Now don't get me wrong, I am not a proponent of communism, but Americans really are enculturated to buy more. For instance, the concept of "planned obsolescence": Companies design an item to have a completely arbitrary lifespan, the point being that once the thing breaks, or is no longer functional, the consumer must buy a replacement. Think of Arthur Miller's _Death of a Salesman_, and the question of "getting your money's worth" on the refrigerator. This isn't a new thing, folks. What it comes down to is that as part of our consumer habits, we've grown increasingly lazy. Ever notice how there's a sudden lack of TV repair shops, or cobblers? People these days are more likely to buy a replacement than to try and fix what's wrong with what they've got. Unfortunately, this trend has combined with the decline in home economics training with the end result of an entire generation of adults who never learned how to iron a shirt, make a cake from scratch (withOUT a mix), or even what settings to use when doing the laundry. I wonder sometimes if I'm the only one in my town who know what blueing IS, much less understands how to properly use it, and if by some chance I'm just terribly neurotic that I don't wash my whites and jeans in the same load. I had a dorm mate my freshman year in college who broke the washer twice because nobody had explained that you couldn't just shove every dirty piece of laundry imaginable into the machine and expect it to just cope. Nobody had ever explained the concept of separating whites and brights, and for that reason never had white socks. Sometimes they were blue, sometimes pink, often a brownish grey. There was a point when I ended up teaching someone how to iron a shirt so they could go to an interview. And there was another time when I saw another girl sewing on buttons with dental floss, because she didn't know any better. Again though, I digress. Nobody is training anyone to take care of their possessions anymore, and it irks me. But what's slightly worse is that fashion designers have contributed to this too. The most noticeable sign of this is to be found in denim. Men's pants, many have noticed, are made of a much sturdier material than women's. This isn't a new thing, though the current trends for form fitting stretch jeans have exacerbated it. Women's jeans are designed to last about six to ten months at the most, at which point they pretty much shred, or have worn themselves to tatters in multiple places. Men's jeans on the other hand will last a year, sometimes as much as five. (I had a very favorite pair of men's 501s that someone had made into flares before sending to the thrift store, and even previously used, they lasted me a good four years.) Designers are now picking poorer quality fabrics in order to stimulate the need for new clothes. Only the truly high-end designers these days are exempt, but then you can expect to pay upwards of $500 for a skirt, but expect that twenty years from now it will be worth more as a collector's item. What can you do? Learn to do the wash. There are instructions available from most washing machine companies, as well as independently authored home economics books. Pick up a few neat laundry gadgets, and learn their proper use. Try a few times to remove stains before tossing a garment. Learn to use sew-on patches, how to replace buttons, and if you're particularly interested, find an older sewing manual and learn the fine lost art of Turning a Collar. Make a sad, sad costumer's day! Sort your whites!

Curvy Women and War

ladykalessia — Thu, 18 Aug 2005 08:56:19 GMT

"The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation!" -'La Vie Boheme', _Rent_ by Jonathan Larson Not at all linked, you may wonder? During my costume history class, we discussed how, during the height of the Black Death in Europe prevailing female fashions called for a bulk of fabric at the front below the waist, and a rasied forehead - a simulation of pregnancy, and a symbol of youth and by association fertility. Men's fashion, on the other hand, seemed to stress widened shoulders and lean but muscled legs - the signs of masculinity and of survivability in times of famine. In other words, men looked like survivors, and women looked like they were constantly breeding, and this was *what was fashionable*. Fashion theorists have always ventured into the realm of psychoanalysis for this one, and said that during times where stress is applied to an individual, their first basic instinct is to breed. Theorists have concluded then that high Medieval period clothing styles are the result of a population looking at its own dwindling numbers and go forth an repopulate. Now how is this related to war, you may ask? Observe the trend for the low cut ladies jeans. While they've drawn fire from critics who've coined such evocative terms as "muffin top" and decried their utter failure to cover thong underwear (which is a rant for another day entirely), I would credit them with a shift in how women's bodies are viewed; to wit, low rise jeans have helped us move away from the stick thin and stick straight silhouettes of the 90's. While some are saying that this heralds the coming of another "goddess age", I would offer that it mostly tells me that America is worried about dying, and is making babies to cope. Why, you may ask? Several reasons. For one, the net effect of lowering waistlines is that jeans have to become looser to remain on the body. Since low-cut jeans without any stretch quickly squeeze down and fall off, and low cut ones WITH stretch quickly lose their elasticity and simply fall off, wider belts have been adopted to compensate. Women are no longer able to easily squeeze into a pair of jeans two sizes too small because they'll simply *fall off*. What this means is that suddenly, women are having to reveal their actual sizes to the entire world, and it's caused quite a stir; department stores are getting larger, curvy mannequins, and beauty magazines now are as likely to cover tips on creating sleek curves as creating a washboard stomach. Larger women are constantly in the public eye, and are thus becoming more acceptable. And just in time. While pre-September 11 the trend for wide-legged, low cut jeans was starting to dwindle (I remember the height of its run coming sometime around my Freshman year in High School), the post-September 11 world saw a resurgence in low cut jeans. Unsurprisingly, May of 2002 (do the math) saw massive number of women giving birth. But due to the political unrest surrounding the fall of the Twin Towers, Americans continued to feel as if their numbers were threatened, and thus the trend hung on. Women who were pregnant looked pregnant, and women who were *not* pregnant looked it because low cut waistlines emphasized a bulging abdomen. Since the war on Iraq started, it's only gotten worse. Right about here I'll add a little bit to say that even though the war on Iraq may not pose quite the same level of threat to the general population as say, an outbreak of the Black Death did in Medieval Europe, the mass media has brought the war to our doorsteps in a way that places it in roughly the same category of importance in day to day life for many people. I'll step off my soapbox. So, because of September 11 and the resulting War on Iraq, Americans (because let's not joke here - America dictates the fashion in jeanswear ) feel themselves and their populations threatened, at least on a subconscious level. And because of this, the idea of pregnancy has become fashionable and desirable. Men's jeans too, are beginning to be lower and lower cut, emphasizing slim hips and youthful virility. Thus the low-cut jeans trend continues. And if you want another historical precedent besides the Black Death for this sort of thing, I'll give you one: Right now, current fashion trends most closely resemble those of the early 1970's, right smack dab in the middle of Vietnam. Just watch a tape of Jesus Christ Superstar from the 70's, and you'll most likely have the same sense of recognition.

On the evolution of Regency Fashion.

ladykalessia — Thu, 21 Jul 2005 08:29:15 GMT

(The picture is titled "The Three Graces in a High Wind", and is a semi-satirical cartoon poking fun at the scandalously revealing fabrics and lack of layers of the second phase of the Regency.) Any of you who've read Jane Austen, read Vanity Fair, or watched the (fantastic, unsurpassed) A&E version of Pride and Prejudice have probably marveled at the fashions worn by the heroines. (Unless you saw the recent movie adaptation of Vanity Fair, in which case you should have been marveling that someone could get them *so wrong* in such a short period of time.) The ethereal fabrics, long clinging skirts, and high-waisted bodices present a very distinct era in women's wear, lasting from 1790 to 1820. Where did Regency fashion start? There's no real certain answer, but most fashion historians will point to France in and around the time of the Revolution. The first step in the direction of the style that was to predominate began with a type of gown called the _chemise de la Reigne_ which translates literally to "undershirt of the Queen". The story of this gown is actually rather interesting. Of course most people know the story of Marie Antoinette, the ill-fated Queen of France, but few know of the ill-thought out and rather desperate final attempts she made to present an empathetic face to her people. So hard did she try, that she went through the trouble (and expense) of having a little country chalet built on the grounds at Versailles where she could retreat and don polonaise-style gowns inspired by her fanciful ideas of shepherdess' clothing. Of course, this did little to placate her subjects, who saw this as yet another frivolous expense. The next, ultimately unsuccessful move was towards a fashion that did away with the rich brocades and self-trims of the previous few decades. Stiff silks were replaced by layers and layers of plain white muslins newly imported from India. Panniers and hooped petticoats deflated completely, only to be replaced shortly by bustle pads and "cork rumps". Mirroring the deflated skirts, hairstyles once bolstered with false hair and stiffened with lard and flour drooped into Fanciful trims and adornments were done away with completely, and the most common adornment was the sash of an unadorned solid color, often blue. Although this shift in fashion may have temporarily convinced the poor that there were steps being taken to try to relieve the economic trouble of the time, we all know that the Revolution happened despite the measures taken. With social change comes fashion change, and the new thinking of the new order spawned new fashions, including the Incroyable (incredible) and the Merveilleuse (marvelous, as in: astonishing), as well as some attempts at a unified revolutionary national dress. As the thinking of the time turned more and more towards democracy and the republican ideal, thinkers and scholars began more and more to popularize the works of Greek and Roman authors. This in turn led to a neo classical revival. Doric and ionic columns appeared in architecture and furniture, and women's gowns more and more began to resemble them. The first true stage of women's Regency fashion came around 1790, in the form of the "round gown". To most this style looks like a prototypical version of the Regency styles we all know and love from Jane Austen, and in truth these gowns bear more resemblance to the chemise de la Reigne than not. They are, in fact, a transitional style. During the decade that ended the 18th century, the fabric of the chemise gathered more and more in the back, and was topped with a redingote which just as it sounds, is a sort of cut-away coat based on a man's riding jacket of the time. At the same time, waistlines climbed from the slightly-elevated point of the chemise to just slightly below the place that it would come to rest for the next twenty years. Sleeve lengths remained at the fashionable elbow-length of the previous fashions, though gloves now bridged the gap between fingertip and elbow. The droopingly curled hairstyles in evidence prior to 1790 became more refined, and elaborate hats often decked with ostrich plumes began to top piles of tightly wound curls. The cork rump remained in place, and the first reports of false bosoms began to circulate around this time. It's interesting to note here that the silhouette produced by the Round Gown is very similar to that produced by the S-curve corsets of the late 1890s and early nineteen-teens. The second phase of Regency fashion developed from a simplification of the Round Gown, and brought England and France into fashionable accord. False rumps disappeared allowing the line of dress to straighten, and more emphasis was placed on vertical lines and height, mirroring the ionic column ideal. Sleeves shortened to abbreviated puffs at the shoulder, giving the visual appearance of width to the shoulders and again mirroring the caps of ionic columns. Shoulders and necklines simultaneously began integrating elements designed to mirror the look of Greek and Roman toga. Of course, the most famous innovation of the period was the use of filmy, single layers of cotton which produced scandal and embarrassment among those less inclined to blindly follow the whims of fashion. There was even a short period of time when gowns that completely bared the breasts were fashionable, though it is assumed that this did not last due to weather conditions. The sudden revelation of the hitherto-concealed female form was the cause of shock as well as amusement, and we have ample evidence in the form of cartoons and caricatures that tell us that contemporary critics of fashion found the new look quite as ridiculous as we may find it today. The third and final phase of the true Regency showed a further refining of style. While white fabric had been *the* mode with little relief during the previous decade, the 1810-1820 period saw women beginning to take steps back into the realm of color. Patterned muslins and stiffer silks with tiny motifs came into popularity, and sleeve lengths varied up and down depending on the season. Corsets of the final Regency period began to constrict at the waist where they had only slimmed and smoothed the line of hip and stomach before, and the corset began its long slide into the tight lacing evidenced in the Victorian period. With this increased emphasis on the small waist, the waistline of gowns necessarily dipped ever so slightly, combining with the widening skirts to form a silhouette that looked rather like a cone with the top half of a woman balanced atop it. As the years wore on, these skirts would widen further, hemline decorations would thicken unto the point of actually *holding out the skirts*, the waistline would drop, and sleeves would attain the massive "leg-o-mutton" size that was to be imitated by later fashionistas in the 1890s. Inexorably, the mark of the desperate Queen's bid for survival worked its way out of mainstream fashion, to be replaced by a look in the 1840's who's line and silhouette almost mirrored that popular during her heyday. Hooped petticoats were replaced by crinolines, "pairs of bodies" replaced by corsets of whalebone and steel, and the cycle of fashion began to rerun again.

1950's fashion, Family Values, the 1920's and flapper fashion

ladykalessia — Sat, 09 Jul 2005 08:48:10 GMT

I sit at an interesting confluence of subjects: I'm interested in period (and vintage) dressmaking techniques, and the cultural and social factors which create and change fashion. I'm interested in the politics of fashion, and how fashion can affect politics. Fashion isn't something that happens to people - *people make fashion*. At any rate, sitting at this particular point in the world, I'm set up to notice some things in trends that escape those who're solely interested in, say, historic costume construction, curation of vintage and antique garments, or general fashion theory. America is in the middle of a moral contraction, the likes of which we haven't seen since the 1950's. The return of the female workforce to the home following World War II sparked the first of these contractions, in which the liberties enjoyed by women factory workers were essentially revoked, and female fashion became more restrictive, and more feminine. The emphasis of fashion shifted from the wide-shouldered, slim skirted looks of the 30's and 40's, to the "fit and flare" look that emphasized small waists and wide hips with the full-skirted New Look created by Christian Dior in 1947. Even though later 50's fashions were for slimmer pencil skirts, tightly girdled bodies still retained the nipped-in waist and wide hip juxtaposition. At the same time, high heels created a debilitatingly alluring wobble in the hitherto sure strides of women. The "CFMP" (or "Come F*ck Me Pump") was an invention of this era. Right now one only has to look around to see the resurgence in 1950's fashion in stores and malls. Necklines are widening to boater styles and sleeves are tightly fitted at three-quarter length. Skirt lengths are just about at or below knee-length, and high heels of every type (and I mean EVERY - from little girl's shoes to ballroom shoes) are becoming increasingly and perilously higher. 50's style vintage costume jewelry is coming back into fashion, and not just for old ladies and school teachers anymore. The other day I saw a popular mall shoe store carrying matching shoes and handbags. While I'm happy to see a return to a more deliberate, elegant style of dressing, there are a few distressing things going on beneath this all. One, is that today's "modern" woman disdains all proper undergarments. Instead of aspiring to corset down to 18 inches, our grandmothers simply invested in a slimming, padded girdle. Today's woman knows little or nothing beyond the simple bra and panties, and the common middle class woman of today has never worn garters and stockings outside of the bedroom. While the lingerie person in me is affronted by this, there's also a certain danger to this lack of shaping garments: Women today are aspiring to the figures and outlines of yesteryear *without aid*. Instead of elastic, coutil and whalebone, crinoline and lace working to create the shape, women today are turning more and more to surgery and extreme diets to try and reach their waist-to-hip ratio goals. Second, I'm concerned at the implications of this shift towards the 50's. The 1950's brought us bored housewives, McCarthyism, the Cold War, and outrageous conspicuous consumption. While fewer women are now able to afford to stay at home, our current moral and political climate is very similar to that of the 50's. Instead of the House Un-American Activities Committee, we now have the Department of Homeland Security, and are engaged in a war that nobody knows how to win. If you only look outside to the roads you'll see the analogs of the huge tailfin-bearing land yachts of the 50's bearing the names "Escalade" and "Excusion". But mostly, I'm worried that we're approaching the same level of repression that was in action during the 1950's to create the original repression of sexuality and self expression. In the similar expression of styles, I see a similarity in underlying psychology, and I am terrified that I will someday be expected to don an apron, forget that feminism ever existed, and start churning out babies. But not everything is 1950's all the time. Those of you who've been inside the Juniors department at any major store lately will have noticed the weird change in formal and semi-formal gowns. Amazingly, these dresses have many of the same elements of the 1920's - bias cut ruffles, dagged hemlines, handkerchief hems, gathered asymmetrical ruffles. The 1920's, I'll remind everyone, gave us the beginnings of true birth control, necking in cars, the first "Sexual Revolution" and flappers. Why are flappers so important right here, right now? The flappers, the mothers of the stay-at-home housewives of the 50's, rebelled against everything that their daughters were to revert to. The emergence of 1920's fashion in the midst of a conservative shift gives me hope that we're not facing another religious Dark Ages.

On Costumer's Process

ladykalessia — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 19:13:49 GMT

When I was working Chautauqua (the student play festival) as a costumer, Wendy had asked me what it was like to costume a show. So I wrote this out, and now I'm reposting it, since it might be of some interest to those of you who aren't familliar with this sort of thing. What's it like to costume a show? I would imagine that it's very interesting and difficult. Can you share more about that? The first step is pretty boring: you read the play, write down any first impressions, and talk to you director about their design idea. Then you re-read the play, making a list of the characters, and highlighting ANYTHING that could have to do with how that character appears. In most modern plays this is written in italics in the stage directions, but since Shakespearian plays are almost entirely without stage directions, most of the character descriptions come from the Dramatis Personae or from the dialogue. (For instance, in Midsummer, we'd never really know that one of them was supposed to be taller than the other without the "Thou painted maypole!" line.) Once you've made the list of characters, a quick description of what you think they look like goes a long way. The next bit is technical: You have to make a grid of which characters are in which scenes. I also liked to combine this info with which actors were playing which characters, and when; this is particularly important for the supporting actors who may be playing several roles throughout the play. I had one actor who had literally fifteen seconds to duck behind a curtain and change from a paramilitary guy to a DOG - needless to say, having prior warning of this made it easier to accomodate that quickchange in my design. Later, I build the second grid into a list of what each actor is wearing as each character through each scene. This helped my wardrobe crew make sure that everyone got into the right costumes, since I wasn't there to help. The next step after making the initial grids is to do renderings. I don't really like drawing people all that much, which is probably going to be my downfall. I can draw clothes perfectly well, but I dislike drawing the people in them. Some designers use a croquis, or a pre-drawn human form, and others (really unprofessional others, I'll add) will sometimes do a collage for each character (which really, really annoys the costume shop staff because THEY then have to make the decisions that the costume designer ultimately should be responsible for). Of course, before these renderings can be made official, they have to be run by the director to make sure they still fit in with the design scheme. Once that's finalized, the designer makes a list of items needed for each character. Next the actors get measured, which includes both tape measurements, and a survey of shoe, pants, dress, t shirt, bra, suit and dress shirt sizes. Generally all of the measurement sheets for an entire cast are kept together in a binder for the duration of the show. Some shops keep the sheets for several years, especially if they expect to have to make costumes for that person again sometime in the near future. In Chautauqua, I had little/no budget for costumes, so everything we used had to be pulled from Stock. Just about every costume shop has a collection of basic (and not-so-basic) costume pieces that they'll use so they don't spend fifty percent of their time building generic petticoats or something during a show. For Chautauqua, I spent a good chunk of time upstairs pulling items from stock to try on the actors. A lot of this (especially where it involved pants) meant that I had to keep a tape measure on me at all times to get a basic idea of what size various items were. In a working costume stock, the size on a pair of slacks is pretty much never the actual listed size because they get altered to fit other people so much. Only jeans are spared, and that's mostly because of the unsightly dye variations that happen when you DO alter them. In a normal production, with a budget, the designer goes from the list of items and decides which things can be pulled and which have to be built. Often, the women's wear requries building, especially in period plays. This requires the designer to pick out (or at least point in the general direction of) an appropriate pattern or sourcebook, and to shop for the fabric they want the item made from. The fabric is prewashed if necessary, ironed, and rolled onto a long tube to prevent it from forming any major creases. A muslin mockup is constructed to fit the actor's measurements, and tried on by the actor in the presence of the cutter working on that particular project LONG before the (usualy) expensive fabric is cut. The Stage Manager for the show then arranges fittings for all of the actors, since they're usually the authority on who's free at what time. The actors try on various pulled items, or are fitted for anything that needs to be built. Notes on alterations are made (and often saftey pinned, especially in the case of cuffs and hems) and sometimes at this point (at least in Chautauqua) they are requested to bring in certain items that couldn't be found easily in stock in their size, or something similar. Organization becomes key here, and all of the costume pieces that "work" are put on a rack behind a divider with the actor's name and character on them. "Ditty bags" are added to this section to hold shoes, glasses, ties, jewelry, watches, hair doohickies and other small accessories. Sometimes these are placed in a labeled box below the actor's section of rack instead, particularly if there are multiple pairs of shoes for a single actor. Once the built costumes are finished, the actors are given a final fitting to work out any last problems in the garments. Around this point, there's usually a final desperate scramble to find last minute accessories, hem those last pants cuffs, and do any minor fiddly work before handing the show's costumes over to the actors to run through a dress rehersal or quickchange rehersal. In some cases, last minute finishng touches are being added up to fifteen minutes before the show - I once spent half an hour frantically basting lace trim onto mesh on a ruffled dress with four other people doing the same thing beside me, up until literally fifteen minutes before curtain. Sometimes small things like button changes or tiny things like that will get left until a show or two into the run, so that the major things that the audience would notice get taken care of instead. Once the show is completely "built", the designer's role is pretty much over. At that point wardrobe crew takes over - they're responsible for the care, cleaning, and repair of the wardrobe, as well as making sure that everyone gets into the correct costume at the correct time onstage.

First Post!

ladykalessia — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 09:28:08 GMT

So, ladies and gents, this is where it begins. "The Life Sartorial" will be my blog about fashion, costume, and other sorts of related things. Fashion theory, costume process, dress diaries, whatever comes to mind will be included, and I welcome reasonably relevant questions on the subject. I'll be reposting a couple of bits to get started with in awhile, one on my costuming process, and one on the current trends in 1950's inspired fashions. Further things I've got at least a half-formed entry kicking around include: -anthropological studies of "Gothic Lolita" fashion -the narrative of the development of Regency style from late 18th century modes -women's dress and health in the mid 19th century -corsetry, tightlacing, and body modification -the fine lost art of remaking If you've got *any* fashion theory questions, now would be an opportune moment to ask them!