A few weekends ago I was a star.
It was only for a few hours, in a couple of places, but man oh man was it fun. I had people take my picture, I had people shout at me from across the road, and I was fangirled more than once. It was a heady feeling, and I found myself rather liking it. I'm not used to being complimented on my looks, even if this time it was because I was dressed like someone else:
Peggy Carter, hell yeah!
For the uninitiated, this was my attempt at cosplaying
Agent Peggy Carter, World War II spy, co-founder of SHIELD, and among the best kickass females on television since Emma Peel fifty years ago. Smart, strong, fearless, and blessed with a fashion sense to die for, Peggy has gone from the pretty girl Captain America pined for in the 2011 movie to a fully fleshed-out character in her own right. Her eponymous TV series was a social media sensation thanks to strong scripts, a story arc that pulled no punches in detailing the sexism that women faced after the Second World War, and wonderful period details in the costumes, set design, and writing.
There hasn't been a better female action lead on TV in years. That's why even though I'm older, heavier, and not nearly as attractive as Hayley Atwell, the actress who portrays Peggy in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, I decided to spend a few hours on a beautiful spring Sunday dressed, made up, and shod as much like Peggy as I could.
Of course I wasn't perfect. I'm wearing modern business clothes, modern shoes, and modern underwear. I'm carrying my aunt Betty's old briefcase, which usually sports a shoulder strap. I'm wearing MAC lipstick and Bare Minerals Foundation, and I had to practice putting my hair up in pincurls for a week before I finally got the look I wanted. The only thing that's authentic to Peggy's time period is my hat, and that's only by a fluke; I once had the good fortune to encounter a hatter who not only had a beautiful piece of wool felt and a hat block from 1937, but the skill to shape the felt and proportion the brim in the correct period style.
So...for all that people were praising my costume and shouting "Agent Carter! You look great!" across Seelye Lawn at me, at best I was only a pale imitation of the original. I'm hoping to do better by the next time I portray Peggy (probably at PI-Con in August), with a skirt instead of trousers, more comfortable shoes, and possibly even a dress taken from a vintage pattern. I love the character, love the look and cut of the clothing from that period, and if I'm going to go to the trouble of creating a costume, I want it to be as close to accurate as my means allow.
I'm scarcely the only person who's attempted to do this. Re-enactment groups abound for every time period from the early Byzantine empire to the 1970's, with standards that range from the loose (the SCA, at least for beginners) to the anal retentive (Revolutionary War groups that require cloth from the same British tailor that made redcoats' dress uniforms in the 1770's). Period pattern books are available from Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and secondhand stores like Powell's and local used book emporia. Historic clothing enthusiasts have a rich variety of source material to draw upon, and that doesn't even count the actual vintage clothing and resized patterns for sale on eBay, Amazon, and from commercial companies like Vogue and McCall's.
It's a real shame that some of this source material is not precisely - dare I say it - entirely accurate. Many older costume books are based on bad research and redrawn paintings, not actual garments, and plenty of "vintage" patterns are anything but. Serious reenactors almost always end up learning to draft their own patterns and make their own garb, whether that means a Venetian matron's gown from the 1520's, a steampunk gentleman with gears on his monocle, or Rosie the Riveter stomping on a battered copy of Mein Kampf.
I'm no exception. I may have thrown Peggy's outfit together from clothing I already owned, but my SCA wardrobe is almost all homemade. I've struggled with bad costume books and less than workable patterns for years, and I'm far from the only medievalist who's done so.
Tonight's rewind is dedicated to everyone who's ever dreamed of dressing in the fashions of a bygone era. Originally published in February of 2012, it discusses two very interesting costume books indeed, one by a Victorian lady, the other by two professionals who suffered from lack of proofreading and a certain odd prudishness that makes them more than worthy of being considered Books So Bad They're Good. I've even added some of the illustrations from the former, and if what they depict doesn't count as Pageant Costumes So Bad They're Good, I shudder to think of what does.
Join me, then, for a nostalgic trip to Badbookistan that I like to call
WHAT NOT TO WEAR, HISTORIC EDITION
As most readers of these diaries know, I’m a quilt historian.
This was not my original goal in life. I’d originally wanted to be a paleontologist, then a crusading lawyer, then a college professor, then a Unitarian minister. All of these dreams yielded to reality as I gradually became aware that I wasn’t suited to be anything but what I am: an overeducated officer manager with a love for old textiles, too many books, three obstreperous cats, and a tendency to crack jokes at odd times.
How I got that way is anyone’s guess…but the quilting part is easy. I became a quilt historian because someone pissed me off at an SCA event in the spring of 1992.
Precisely which lucky gentle is responsible for irrevocably changing my life is a mystery; all I remember about him is that he was tall, wearing a brownish tunic, and seemed to find the idea of medieval quilting amusing. He might have had a mustache and glasses, but since that would describe roughly two-thirds of the male population of the Laurel Kingdom of the East, my mocker’s facial hair and ocular deficiencies (if any) are no help.
Our exchange was simple: he asked me what I was teaching at the day’s event. I said, “Medieval and Renaissance quilting,” and smiled up at him. He chuckled with the same gentle condescension that a parent gives a clumsy child who’s just announced that she’s going to win an Olympic gold medal in the balance beam.
“Why are you teaching that? They didn’t have quilts in the Middle Ages!”
I fired back with, “No, we actually have records – “ but he’d already faded into the crowd, probably in search of the class schedule or possibly the dayboard. I never did get his name and probably wouldn’t recognize him on a bet, but his words lit a fire that hasn’t gone out yet. I’d been quilting for about ten years and loved it, but it was only after he told me what I knew was wrong that love became obsession. I started reading everything I could on pre-1600 quilts, textiles, and interior design, determined to make so strong a case that no one, no one would ever tell me I was wrong again.
To my dismay, most of what I found was unsourced, vague, or even wrong. It seemed that no one had actually done any primary research on very old quilts, at least since the death of an elderly English antiquarian named Averil Colby. The information was there – a line about silk quilts as Ottoman tribute here, a paragraph about Bengali coverlets being imported to Spain there, pictures of what appeared to be patchwork heraldic banners and tabards everywhere – but it was uncollated, uninterpreted, unread…for all intents and purposes, unknown.
And so I started gathering all that scattered information, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, reference by reference. Year by year, note by note, I teased what had been lost from books on the Silk Road, on heraldry, on court life in England and France and Florence. If I was somewhat surprised when I joined Kris Driessen’s old Quilt History mailing list to find that I knew more about pre-1600 quilts than the professionals, well, I was too busy developing courses and teaching classes and transcribing inventories that someone had decided to reprint in 8 point type for it to register. I even had the dubious honor of being plagiarized by another SCAdian who wrote to me seeking information and then took what I’d sent her, rewrote it enough to pass muster, and put up a website back when it was still expensive and I was struggling to pay the bills.
My break came in 2003, when costume historian Edward Maeder read my e-mail offering to volunteer at an upcoming symposium on early quilting at Historic Deerfield and asked me to teach two workshops. I did, and when I saw a call for papers on medieval textiles at a medieval studies congress in Michigan in 2005, I swear it was only the knowledge that I’d already done this for Edward that gave me the courage to hit “send” on my abstract. Before I knew it I was in Michigan, my friend Yolanda riding shotgun to keep me from bolting for the nearest ladies’ room, delivering a paper on what may have been Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon’s wedding quilt. That article was accepted for publication on the spot, and after eight rewrites and several more migraine-inducing reads through Henry VIII’s death inventory, I had the satisfaction of seeing my paper in print.
I’m not ashamed to say that I burst into tears at the sight of my author’s copy,
One article led to another, and now I’m not only writing about old quilts, I’m reviewing books by acknowledged experts in the field. I’m welcome at the Metropolitan Museum and Old Sturbridge Village, people write to me from all over the world for information, and I’m slowly gathering the courage to write an actual, genuine book on medieval and Renaissance quilting and patchwork. If I’m ever rich, or even just get a big enough tax refund, there’s an interesting piece of 14th century applique in Breslau that’s never been written about in English, and since no one else seems interested in writing about it, well….
As for the man whose little jibe was the catalyst? As I said above, I haven’t seen or heard of him for years. It’s more than possible that he got married, had kids, and gradually faded away into Mundania like so many others before him. But if he is still attending kingdom events, I hope he attended Birka in 2006, when the seed sown by “Why are you teaching that? They didn’t have quilts in the Middle Ages!” came to full bloom. That’s the day when I was given the highest honor the SCA can bestow upon its members: elevation to the Order of the Laurel for – you guessed it – my fourteen years of research into medieval quilting and patchwork. And if through some peculiar bit of synchronicity my mocker is reading this diary, he has my eternal gratitude, because if he hadn’t pissed me off none of it would have happened.
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One of the things I’ve learned during the past twenty years is how to tell good sources from bad source, particularly when it comes to textiles and costuming. This sounds a lot easier than it is; textile and costuming research was largely confined to the theatre world for many years, resulting in a lot of books geared to professionals working on tight schedules and tighter budgets. Historical accuracy was not as important as looking good from thirty feet under stage lights, and inevitably errors crept in, especially for early periods with few surviving garments.
Add in that many, many Victorian and Edwardian costume books were based on romantic notions of what people in Ye Olden Days had worn, and you can see why serious researchers wince when certain titles are mentioned. 19th century Frenchman Auguste Racinet’s books and image archives may be a valuable source for design elements, but when it comes to actual garments, he understood neither the construction nor the use of anything that much preceded his own lifetime. Costume was seen as art, not something that would have been worn by actual, genuine humans beings, and the clothing in paintings, statues, and illuminated manuscripts was redrawn (and frequently altered) with little regard and less understanding of what and how and when and where the clothing was worn, by whom, and why.
Medieval queens with vacuous expressions and tightly laced corsets under their sideless surcoats…Elizabethan courtiers with no codpieces to cover their dashing manliness…seamless 12th century hosen…impossibly draped mantles, missing clasps and laces…there are times it’s literally painful to open a reprint, recognize the source of the costume, and spot all the ways that the long-dead artist altered the original to fit the Victorian aesthetic.
Fortunately this is starting to change. The late Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion series went back to actual surviving garments, including detailed photographs of trim, fastenings, and inner seams. Costume expert Robin Netherton and Anglo-Saxonist Gale Owen-Crocker edit a yearly hardcover journal containing rigorously researched papers on everything from weaving techniques to head coverings to the imagery on a 14th century quilt.
Alas, the improvement in dress and textile studies haven’t always trickled down to the average person in need of a costume for a Renaissance faire, a medieval-themed wedding, or an SCA event. Some of the very worst costume books are still available thanks to well meaning museum gift shop buyers, reprint houses like Dover Publications, or older libraries that haven’t been able to weed out or replace inadequate or just plain bad costuming books.
Tonight I bring two such Costume Books So Bad They’re Good. One is the product of a genteel Victorian antiquarian, while the other is a 1960s book aimed primarily at theatrical costumers:
British Costume During XIX Centuries (Civil and Ecclesiastical), by (Mrs.) Charles H. Ashdown - at first glance, this Edwardian costume book seems to have it all. Not only does it promise a comprehensive look at British costume from Saxon times to around 1800, its author, wife to an expert on arms and armor, avowedly set out to correct the numerous errors she saw in previous works. Even better, she had been a consultant to several of the “Great Pagaents” that were the last gasp of the great 19th century medieval revival. As such, she claimed to have learned much about the way medieval clothing and headdress were constructed and worn through the most basic of means: by overseeing the manufacture of such costumes, which she deemed free of the errors of the
“pot-pourri of stage dresses, which [were] invariably a réchauffé of costumes authentic, conjectural, and mythical.”
In addition,
(Mrs.) Ashdown had gone back to the best primary sources available to her, especially the brass rubbings her armor-loving husband had studied for clues to military costume, and had early, crude artwork from early “illuminated MMS, missals, brasses, effigies, etc.” redrawn to show the clothing in a print-friendly format rather than a tiny illumination or six foot funerary brass. These illustrations, many of them recognizable from modern compendia of clipart, are common until (Mrs.) Ashdown gets to the Elizabeth period, when the appearance of woodcuts and engraving ended the necessity for redrawing the art.
Best of all, (Mrs.) Ashdown included nine rare and precious color plates of her own reconstructions of Saxon, medieval, and Elizabeth costume. These plates are truly astonishing in their own right, as much for their look into the world of the late 19th/early 20th century pageant circuit as anything else. Their use of rich materials, beautiful models, and bright, lush colors are make it clear that the wealthy would go to no expense in recreating the past.
(Mrs.) Ashdown unquestionably did the best with what she had available, and with what training she had. Unfortunately, the results are...problematic. For one thing, she devotes chapters to, say, the reign of Richard II, that include illustrations of Henry V, who reigned forty years later. She also gives little sign that she either knew or cared what fashions were like on the Continent, even though many of the clothes she loves originated in France or Italy or Germany.
There’s also an unlovely streak of homophobia that surfaces whenever (Mrs.) Ashdown discusses the fashions of kings she doesn’t like:
“It may be admitted as an axiom that during the reign of a strong king, when the time bristles with stirring events, costume retires into the background, and makes little if any progress; whereas under a weak or effeminate monarch costume and all its accessories proceed by leaps and bounds. Probably the most eccentric and striking dresses ever evolved saw the light of day during the reigns of Edward II., Richard II., Henry VI., Charles II., and George IV….”
Not only does this imply that “stirring events” only take place during the reigns of strong, manly kings (which would likely surprise the Regency bucks who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo), it doesn’t say much for Richard II, who only faced down a revolt at the age of 14, or Charles II, a weakling whose piddling accomplishments included reclaiming his throne, restoring English literary culture, and overseeing the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire in between romps with Nell Gwynn, Louise de Keroualles, Lady Castlemaine, and a host of others. It also completely ignores the amazing fashions at the courts of Henry VIII and his daughter Elizabeth I, neither of whom could possibly be described as “weak.” These garments put any and everything (Mrs.) Ashdown scorned to shame, with the possible exception of late 18th century fashion (which was oh-so-boring except for trifles like the loss of the Colonies, the French Revolution, and George III’s unfortunate recurring bouts of madness).
Worse, (Mrs.) Ashdown’s vaunted research was much less than promised; not only are many of the redrawn costumes inaccurate, some, like an “English” lady wearing a houppelande, are blatantly taken from Continental sources like The Hours of Catherine of Cleves. This is particularly evident in her prized pageant costumes, which feature medieval ladies in colors impossible to obtain with natural dyes
Environmentally responsible royal purple that didn't kill a single murex snail!
14th century ladies with visibly corseted waists
Modest, demure, and thoroughly corseted to preserve m'lady's modesty
and headdresses that resemble open telephone books
"(Mrs.) Ashdown? I'm ready for my close up!"
The most unintentionally hilarious is a bright green ensemble allegedly from the reign of Henry VI or Edward IV. Not only is the model, a serious young maiden, quite obviously wearing a corset, she sports a bifurcated headdress at least two feet high that must have weighed several pounds, complete with a cotton sateen “veil” hanging from its slightly off-center points, and a lacey little collar that would not have been out of place at the Royal Yacht Club at Cowes.
(Mrs.) Ashdown's masterpiece of great pageantness.
Clearly (Mrs.) Ashdown was not quite as knowledgeable as she believed herself to be, no matter how many brass rubbings she and her husband had examined in their pursuit of knowledge.
The Evolution of Fashion: Pattern and Cut from 1066 to 1930, by Margot Hamilton Hill and Peter A. Bucknell - this book could not be less like (Mrs.) Charles A. Ashdown’s amazing attempts at medieval costume, both in intent and origin. Margot Hill and Peter Bucknell were trained costumers who had worked with extensively with the drama department at one of America’s finest theater programs, the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University, as well as the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Bath Museum of Costume, and similarly august institutions. There’s a long and fairly good bibliography that even includes Janet Arnold’s first Patterns of Fashion volume, patterns for each costume, and an explanation of the sizing used for the sample garments. Best of all, new patterns are given for each significant era of costume, with even subtle changes noted.
One would think that all this hard work would have resulted in a masterpiece…but as hard as they tried, and as professional as The Evolution of Fashion appears to be, Hill and Bucknell still miss the mark more than once. Most notable is the legendary houppelande sleeve that is drawn in such a way that it’s essentially reversed and inside out, but the “unboned, tightly laced strapless corselet” and bared shoulders in the Richard III female costume are equally ridiculous.
Most risible of all are the missing codpieces. The codpiece, for those who’ve never heard the term before, is the padded and frequently decorated pouch that contained the proud manliness of manly men like Henry VIII, Sir Walter Raleigh, and other luminaries of the English Renaissance. Originally a sort of y-front laced to the shocking new Italianate hosen that allowed the manly organ to be freed for such important tasks as elimination, procreation, and recreational rogering of assorted giggling maidens, the codpiece later became a fashion accessory in its own right as it jutted in a bold and manly fashion from the skirts of the wearer’s doublet.
It’s not that the codpieces aren’t in the costume drawings. They are, and if the Henry VIII clone in one picture looks more petulant than imperious, it’s certainly not because his manliness was omitted or improperly encased. It’s that with the exception of three garments in the early to mid 1500s, the patterns to make them for your own manly man aren’t there at all.
What’s worse is that the original art on which Hill and Bucknell relied for their garments clearly depicts codpieces, even in the “pansid [sic] slops” and trunk hose that prevailed until the early Jacobean period. It’s quite disconcerting, especially in the drawing taken from a portrait of a very young man in very short hose, whose lack of codpiece makes him look somewhat less than manly.
Other flaws include the lack of instructions on how to make undergarments such as hose, chemises, bustles, and corsets; a complete lack of garments during the Commonwealth, which makes it difficult to understand how English fashion went from Charles I to Charles II; and advice for how to move in the costumes that ranges from the useful to the ludicrous.
Needless to say, Hill and Bucknell are not highly regarded today, especially by Tudor re-enactors who wish to emulate the manliness of Henry VIII.
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And so, my manly friends - what bad books on fabric or costume have you encountered? Did you try to make a Hill & Bucknell houppelande? A codpiece-free Elizabethan? Did your grandmother participate in a Great Pageant? It's time to strut your stuff and wear something grand and glorious.....
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