One of the questions I ask people to answer with each Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge is how historically accurate their submission is, and the answers have revealed an interesting range of interpretations of what makes a garment historically accurate.
I put the question in the facts list because I think it reveals a lot about the intent of a garment, and I hoped it would encourage people to think about historical accuracy and what really is accurate.
I don’t actually think all garments need to be historically accurate – there is a time and place for accuracy in a garment. For some of us accuracy is our ultimate goal, others just want to create pretty frocks. For me, as a researcher, sometimes sewing a garment that you know is inaccurate in certain respects can reveal almost as much about a period as sewing a perfectly accurate one would, and so is worthwhile in its own right. I do think it is important to consider what aspects of your item are accurate, and what aren’t, to really understand how that will affect the finished product.
For me, historical accuracy is much more than the weave of your fabric, or whether it is hand sewn or machine sewn using the correct stitches for the timeperiod and type of garment (though those are obviously very important) – it’s about considering the entire societal context into which it fits.
Cotton knit t-shirting, for example, is a perfectly accurate modern fabric, but if someone 150 years from now sewed it up into a wedding dress based off an image from a modern wedding magazine, using a combination of t-shirt & wedding dress techniques, they would create a very odd garment indeed – not one that we would recognise as normal. It isn’t however, entirely implausible. We live in an age where experimentation is accepted and celebrated – one without a rigid social structure dictating the correct fabric or garment to wear in many situations, so there may be at least one very wedding-y wedding dress in cotton t-shirting. Evidence suggests that such experimentation was not the case in most other periods of history.
Here are some questions that I ask myself when I try to make a perfectly historically accurate garment:
The Wearer & Society:
– What type of person would wear this garment? What would their class be? What type of event would they wear it for? What would they do while wearing it?
The Wearer & the Maker:
– Would the wearer & the maker be the same person? If not, what was their relationship likely to have been? Who would be the impetus behind the design and the major aesthetic features? What conditions would it be made under? Would it be specially made for one person, or commercially produced?
– What fibre are period examples of this garment made in? What weave? What weight? How would the fabric handle? What was the dye being used, and what colours were fashionable? Does my pattern match patterns seen on the same kind of garments of the period (because a fabric may be perfectly period for a day dress, but not an evening dress)? Would a seamstress of the time recognise my fabric as suitable for the type of garment I am intending to make (irrespective of its fibre content)? Where would my fabric have been purchased, and made? How much selection would the seamstress have had?
– How was a garment of this period patterned up or draped? How was it fitted? How was it assembled? Would it have lining, support? Would machine or hand sewing have been used? What stitches? What type of thread?
– How is the sewing and the fabric choice going to affect the overall aesthetic of the garment? How it hangs, drapes & moves? How it feels on you? How it wears over time?
– Would your garment look out of place if it was transported back to the era that inspired it? Would it be visibly and obviously alien? Quirky, but not horribly out of place? A reasonable facsimile, until someone inspected it very closely? Completely indistinguishable from other garments of the period?
The final question is, for me, the ultimate litmus test. It does mean that (in my opinion) it’s quite possible to make a mainly machine-sewn 18th century garment, with the right fabric, with the maker and wearer and their status and relationship really considered, and considered in relation to the fabric and sewing, that is far more accurate than a totally hand sewn garment made from fabric that is inappropriate to the garment type, wearer, and social situation.
This is my current take on historical accuracy. It’s evolved a lot from my post on historically accurate fabric of four years ago, though some of the same themes remain. I wonder what my views will be in another four years?
What do you think? What makes a really historically accurate reproduction? What do you consider when you aim for historical accuracy?