I love rules
Jan. 19th, 2013 08:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotSo yesterday Kim (the educator) asked me if I'd look at the docent costumes they have because apparently the women all tend to wear the hoopskirts and she wasn't sure that that was right for the later 19th century. And I did, and I think I've come up with a list of things for if I end up as educator at a small museum, or if they just let me do the costumes even if I'm not in education. They're mostly common sense, but hopefully writing them down will help me in the future to be firm about them if I need to.
- Don't get rid of anything, or suggest they get rid of anything, unless it's really, really bad. CHM has two children's (probably) 1870s dresses that are just hideous and I'm sure nobody wants to wear them, so Kim and I lol'd over them and those will probably go or be cut up. Suggest replacing the worst offenders first to gradually get rid of the bad costumes.
- Corsets, even if corded. What really makes something look good and real is fit, and corsets both make an outfit look more real and make it way easier to fit clothes on top (since there's less necessary ease, and fewer bulges). CHM probably won't start using corsets because most of their docents are older, and women who remember their mothers wearing girdles, or wearing them themselves, tend to be a lot less open to wearing corsets. I need to come up with a good other option to wearing a corset (maid/cook impression?).
- Re: fit, make everything with big seam allowances and assign a costume to each (volunteer) interpreter for a set period of time, then make it so the outfit at least basically fits them.
- Polyester may give you more of a silky look, but just go for solid-colored cotton/cotton blends (unless you're good at dating prints). It just ... I can't. It's so gross. Especially that nubbly poly crepelike fabric my grandmother's permanent-press pants are made out of. It's not worth it. Have fewer fancy dresses than you would, and budget for a single new silk dress per year or something like that. Or don't have any silk dresses.
- 1980s blouses can be good in a pinch, yes, but should only be used in extremis. A good second-level replacement area after the big issues with dresses are fixed, especially if they're polyester.
- Make sure a variety of eras are represented if they're wanted. Maybe this is like a corollary to the "replace not get rid of" one. For some reason, CHM has like ten Civil War-era outfits and several Edwardian ones when they want 1870s-1900s. Oh, they have two 1890s things when I think about it, but they're really not good. I realized that when you do 1890s, in order to get a decent sleeve, you have to either do it all in one piece or make that top gathered piece so big that it covers the seam below the puff.
I'm going to try to get the dress form cover done today so I can work on the spencer - I started trying to draft it on paper last night and I got the back piece all right but those fronts are hard to figure out. I think I'm going to go with the earliest of my examples, and see if this can help me make the shawl collar. I've got some extra light blue wool from an old project I might use to do something like this with the collar and cuffs, although I need to look at the two cloths together as they might not go. It might be better plain, anyway.
- Don't get rid of anything, or suggest they get rid of anything, unless it's really, really bad. CHM has two children's (probably) 1870s dresses that are just hideous and I'm sure nobody wants to wear them, so Kim and I lol'd over them and those will probably go or be cut up. Suggest replacing the worst offenders first to gradually get rid of the bad costumes.
- Corsets, even if corded. What really makes something look good and real is fit, and corsets both make an outfit look more real and make it way easier to fit clothes on top (since there's less necessary ease, and fewer bulges). CHM probably won't start using corsets because most of their docents are older, and women who remember their mothers wearing girdles, or wearing them themselves, tend to be a lot less open to wearing corsets. I need to come up with a good other option to wearing a corset (maid/cook impression?).
- Re: fit, make everything with big seam allowances and assign a costume to each (volunteer) interpreter for a set period of time, then make it so the outfit at least basically fits them.
- Polyester may give you more of a silky look, but just go for solid-colored cotton/cotton blends (unless you're good at dating prints). It just ... I can't. It's so gross. Especially that nubbly poly crepelike fabric my grandmother's permanent-press pants are made out of. It's not worth it. Have fewer fancy dresses than you would, and budget for a single new silk dress per year or something like that. Or don't have any silk dresses.
- 1980s blouses can be good in a pinch, yes, but should only be used in extremis. A good second-level replacement area after the big issues with dresses are fixed, especially if they're polyester.
- Make sure a variety of eras are represented if they're wanted. Maybe this is like a corollary to the "replace not get rid of" one. For some reason, CHM has like ten Civil War-era outfits and several Edwardian ones when they want 1870s-1900s. Oh, they have two 1890s things when I think about it, but they're really not good. I realized that when you do 1890s, in order to get a decent sleeve, you have to either do it all in one piece or make that top gathered piece so big that it covers the seam below the puff.
I'm going to try to get the dress form cover done today so I can work on the spencer - I started trying to draft it on paper last night and I got the back piece all right but those fronts are hard to figure out. I think I'm going to go with the earliest of my examples, and see if this can help me make the shawl collar. I've got some extra light blue wool from an old project I might use to do something like this with the collar and cuffs, although I need to look at the two cloths together as they might not go. It might be better plain, anyway.
