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1525
Florentine
Gown
 Inspiration
and Plans
I'm back! I'm returning
to my first
costuming love--16th-century Florentine fashion. I've fallen in love
all over again with Ridolfo Ghirlandaio's Lucrezia
Sommaria, and so I have decided to make this gown.
I was inspired to recreate this gown after
receiving swatches of Renaissance Fabrics' lightweight silk taffetas.
They are thin, yet crisp and most of all, gorgeous! The hunter green
was calling my name loud and clear, and at $8/yard it
was a real bargain.
The National Gallery of Art dates this
painting at 1510, the dress looks more like the styles around 1525 and
later. The bodice waistline seems to be raised just above the natural
waist. Lucrezia isn't ultra-busty, but her torso isn't flattened out or
cone-shaped, so I will be using a corded interlining in my bodice to
give me a slightly (well, largely) rounded look. The skirt waist
treatment isn't too visible, but if the Bronzino portraits of the time
are any indication, Florentine skirts did appear to use pleats to
control fullness. I also prefer the look of pleated skirts, and I find
them loads easier to set than cartridge pleats. Therefore, my skirt
will be pleated.
The sleeves seem to be a two-piece construction, with a
cap/puffed
sleeve half superimposed onto a full straight sleeve for stability and
support. Because of the size and weight of these sleeves, I will be
sewing them into the armscye. This will limit me to a rear-lacing
bodice. I'm afraid that if I tied them in they would sag, and I would
not want to stitch them into the armscye after I laced up a side-lacing
gown.
The camicia will be worked in a modified raglan format made
from all
square/rectangular pieces, which avoids the nasty pulling you get when
the raglan seam is on the bias, cut slanted toward the neck. I saw a
camicia done like this somewhere (and I can't find the stupid link!)
and it resembled the camicia in the portrait (by giving a true rounded
neckline) more so
than the T-tunic styled camicias that seem to be canon in 16th century
Italian costuming. Sure, there might not be extant proof
of it, but this method looks right and doesn't cause the neckline to
pull into a
square when worn--so that's good enough for me. :)
The guard on the bodice seems fairly matte, so I'm going to
use velvet to recreate it. As I can't see the bottom of the skirt, I
can only guess at what kind of guard would be placed on the bottom. For
now, I'm thinking of a single guard of an appropriate width (to be
determined later) to mirror the guard shown below one the dress of one
of the donors in Bacchiacca's The
Preaching of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1520.
The girdle will be made of a length of silk habotai, dyed
reddish-brown perhaps, with large beads and self-tassels on the ends.
Ensemble
- Green silk gown with black velvet
guards
- White linen corded corset
- White linen round-necked camicia, complete with hand-felled
seams and decorative smocking worked in white silk
- Red-brown silk girdle with beads and tassels
- Generipetticoat in white cotton (I have a stash from my
last LA Fashion District voyage that I need to finish off!)
- Cut and sewn hose in some flavor of linen or wool, possibly
with embroidered tops
- Perhaps a pair of low-rise linen drawers
Materials
- 8 yards hunter green 100% silk taffeta (from Renaissance Fabrics)
- Black cotton velveteen remnants for guards
- 2 yards medium-weight linen and 1/16" hemp cord for corded
corset
- 3 yards hanky-weight 100% linen (also from Renaissance Fabrics)
- Unidentified number of yards of an unidentified fabric for
lining
- Materials for girdle
May
8, 2006
As of right now, I have completed felling nearly all the camicia seams.
I still have to fell the gussets, and then I can start on the neckline.
It's all white, thus really difficult to photograph in stages, so
you'll
just have to be patient!
June 6, 2006
Welcome to my 6/6/2006 update! Spooky!
 Since
I created this diary, I've managed to make two of the most fiddly parts
of this outfit - the corded corset and the camicia. I did something
rather dumb and rinsed the corset to remove the water-soluble ink pen
instead of dabbing it out, and the resin or glue used in making the
cord came out. Yuck! So I had to really wash it with some detergent to
remove the residue, and I let it dry flat. One of these processes ended
up shrinking the corset about an inch or so in length, and possibly a
small amount in width. I'll make it work though, because linen
stretches like mad, and I am certainly not doing all that cording
again! The corset is corded with thin hemp cording (48# test) between
two layers of white linen. It laces on the sides through hand-worked
eyelets.
 As
for the camicia, the body seams and gussets were sewn on the machine,
but that's it! The seam allowances are split and ironed flat and
hand-felled with silk thread using a running stitch. The top neckline
was rolled and finished using pickstitches that barely showed through
to the front. I then inserted four lines of running stitches by hand
for the smocking. And if that weren't enough, I worked three lines of
smocking stitches to hold the neckline in place. I started the handwork
on the back portion of the neckline with the hopes that my stitches
would look better by the time I made it around to the front.
  I
tried to use a cable stitch for the topmost row, and that line looked a
little meh. Oh well, at least it's up against the ruffle so it doesn't
stand out so much. For the second and third stitch rows, I worked a
stem stitch over the pleats, and these ended up being my favorite rows.
I used a really thin cotton crochet thread for the embroidery, and I'll
never do that again! That stuff didn't drag through the pleats and
against itself easily, so I spent a lot of time keeping it from
knotting up. Ugh!
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