Questions on a Lower Class Kirtle

[viennabelle]

I'll be the first to admit that I don't know a whole lot about the 16th century construction techniques!

Two weeks ago, I journeyed to Florida to spend the week with my mother. I had a lovely time, though my sister, who also was visiting, was ill. We spent the week laying low and I started--and made significant progress--on a Late 1500s/Renaissance Kirtle. Here's where it's at (click to embiggen):

I'm in a quandry about several finishing points. I've asked folks who came over last night for sewing--but our era is the 18th and 19th c. This kind of work lies outside of our expertise! So, for all my SCA/renish friends (or soon-to-be friends), I wonder if you could click below the jump and offer your advice on some things I am confused about.

1.  Bodice: Since apparently these common women gowns weren't worn with stays, I cut the bodice snuggly and allowed for boning in the back. Is it conceivable that a woman might add a busk in (not stitched) when worn (they did that in the 18th c)? But more immediately, a question for finishing--I see conflicting information about closures. Which is better--worked eyelets or sewn-in lacing loops? Also--did they ever use pins?

2. Skirt trim: All the period images I could find have fairly wide (2-3") bands decorating skirt bottoms. I have a stash of wool twill trim, but its 3/8" wide. It looks ok, but is it still too narrow?

Petticoat gathering: To guage or to pleat, that is the question! Online articles advocate flat pleats, while an article I have by Jill Hall (costume director, Plimoth Plantation) advocates guaging (aka, cartridge pleats). Any ideas which way to go? My plan is to mount whatever I have to a linen tape (folding over as needed for length)  and then to stitch that to the lining of the bodice (positioned depending on the pleating style). Also, I do plan to stitch four worked eyelets in dark brown linen to allow it to be secured closed without straining the bodice--is this ok? Finally--what about plackets? I don't have one--but I can see that it might be nice to have for modesty's sake. Is this totally farby?
Thanks for any advice--I want this to look good, so your suggestions are very welcome!

(cross posted to SCA-garb)

Comments

[virginiadear.livejournal.com]

Right off the top, the answers have to be that there is no one hard-and-fast rule, and, "It depends."
Do you have a specific time (by decade) and place (country, city-state, republic, duchy, city, region) in mind?

It's easier to provide you with useful or helpful answers if you have a specific time and location in mind.
It's going to be easier to make any decisions if you commit firmly to one century or the other (I'm finding your post to be unclear.) I've read that it's considered bad form on LJ or Facebook to correct anyone, but you've mentioned the 15th Century, and the late 1500s. That covers two consecutive centuries.
The fifteenth century is 1401-1500 C.E. Centuries take their "ordinary" names from the year in which they end; there is no year Zero, so if you "start counting off centuries," you'll begin with "One. Two. Three. Four," through One-Hundred. That's the First Century C.E.

During the fifteenth century (1400s) there are a number of changes in fashion which take place, and some of those fashions are quite distinctive. For a lot of the time and geographic designations at this time, a "kirtle" is not something seen outside the home, generally. It is informal wear. Out of doors/in public, something else would have been worn over it. The kirtle in the 1400s also functioned, we believe, as a type of foundation or shaping garment, supporting the breasts.

The closures might change, and the embellishments, too, between 1401 and 1500; between 1501 and 1600; and very probably between 1401 and 1600. However, having said that, I also must say that many will stay the same: a lot depends on the "order," in this case meaning socio-economic status. ("Class" I have been told be one professional historian, is a misnomer. She explained to me why, but I've forgotten, although somewhere I do still have the e-message she had sent me.)

The placement of the placket on the bodice may vary, too, not just by "orders" but by regional/geographic or national preferences and at which point in time. In parts of the Italian peninsula, and especially in Venice, during the mid- to late-1500s, side-back lacing is favored. In much of Italy during the 1400s, side (underarm side-seam or -seams) lacing is preferred.
In Florence during da Vinci's heyday, you'll see the "kirtle" laced up the front with lacing rings, which are essentially concealed by being sewn to the inside of the placket.
There's a portrait of Mary Magdalen (identified by her attribute, the jar of ointment) by van der Weyden, showing what seems to be a Flemish kirtle laced up the front with lacing rings and "narrow wares" of ribbon or cord.
But there are examples in the 1500s of side-back lacing with eyelets worked straight through the fashion fabric, its interlining, interfacings (if applicable), and lining.

There are numerous foreign influences in several countries or "city states," depending on where your "persona" is located and when, and what those influences were, and those you would need to sort out, as well.

Both the importance and the relevance or appropriateness of the skirt trim will be likewise relative, but there is also the question of proportions, e.g., your overall height and your waist-to-ground measurement.

Bet this hasn't helped *at all.*
But you know you can always PM me.

[viennabelle.livejournal.com]

Whoopsie--I meant 16th century! Overall, I suppose I'm veering towards a poorer woman from Italy, since I combined aspects of the Eleanora di Toledo effigy dress with a toile made from Lea Dreed's Elizabethan corset generator. Plus, thinking about it that way takes me back to a very wonderful year that I spent there in my college days...Che memorie!

Thanks for writing, it's good to get your input. I do hope we can get together some time!

[virginiadear.livejournal.com]

Well, if you're saying "poorer," I think right there we can dispense with cartridge pleating or "gauging." Probably pleated into the bodice, or gathered/eased. As I expect you know, cartridge pleating is a means (in the 1500s) of getting a very large amount of fabric into a relatively small space (the waistline seam.) Very large amounts of fabric were a form of conspicuous consumption---showed off how much fabric you could afford, especially if it was more than the garment absolutely needed.
That's not to say a "poorer" woman's clothes would be terribly sparse. (But if she's poor enough not to be able to afford to pay sumptuary fines---and there were such things---then she had to have her clothing fit the amount of cloth she was permitted to have for the type of garment she was wearing. If her *gamurra* was restricted to so many els, well, it was, and if she was on the plump side, this might pose one problem; if she were quite tall, then a different one.
This might be helpful. Try to find it through ILL, or see if one of your friends has a copy you might borrow:
The Clothing of the Renaissance World: Europe, Asia, Africa, The Americas; Cesare Vecellio's Habiti Antichi et Moderni

I'll be very interested (and gratified) to see any photos either as a dress diary, or just of the finished article! :-)

[canter-feet.livejournal.com]

I know even less about the era than you, but I just popped in to say that looks really striking so far! Lovely work! Can't wait to see how it all comes together!

[virginiadear.livejournal.com]

I've been giving your questions some further thought since first reading this entry.

1. Pins might have been used, but if the bodice is very snug (and based on a more recent entry, today's in fact, your bodice is going to be *very* closely fitted, pins just aren't going to give you what is wanted, which is a bodice closed without gapping. Lacing *rings* might have been used, depending on how early in the 16thC this kirtle represents, but I think lacing eyelets is the surest way to go.
Regarding a busk: you're talking about a member of a non-noble order, and since you have said "poorer," that suggests perhaps not so much poor as a peasant, perhaps, but someone who needs freedom of movement in her clothing, which a busk will hinder. Besides, a busk is doable only if the bodice laces up the back. It was not at all unusual for a bodice to have been stiffened with buckram, or with a linen or hempen canvas. It should fit snuggly over the breasts, but while it ought to be close everywhere else, it shouldn't show *strain.*

2. 3/8" sounds narrow to me, but if you have enough of the trim, you can make multiple bands of it to give you an inches-wide/deep trimmed area at the bottom edge of the skirt. People at the time had to make the best of what was available to them.

3. Petticoat pleating: Ms Hall is right to advocate gauging---for Plimoth Plantation. That's an English settlement, and it's the 1600's. Cartridge pleating would have been used. People kept their clothes for a long, long time: as long as they could, usually. New clothing, even second-hand new clothing, was a necessity or a treat, depending, and something brand new would be very, very special.
The modern mindset of what to us is reasonable life expectancy of clothing would have been to the Elizabethan or Jacobean mind "disposable clothing"---which just didn't happen. Wasteful! Madness! Decadence! Sinfulness!
But in the Italian peninsula's various duchies, provinces, republics, city-states and kingdoms (Naples and...Sicily, I think) in the 16thC, *not* all skirts got cartridge pleated as a matter of course.
I'd pleat the skirt.
The method of attaching skirt to bodice which is familiar to me (and documentable) is stab stitching the skirt to the bodice, and then sewing a tape (usually linen), flat, over the seam to protect it.

I'm assuming the dark brown linen is a waistband to the inside? And you are planning on lacing it closed?
It's okay.
Hooks and eyes---quite large by our standards of clothing---were known and used by then, including for front-closing "bodyes," meaning in this reference another bodice (rather than a supportive undergarment), with or without a skirt: probably intended for support and/or warmth. But even peasants had access to hooks and eyes; one of Durer's drawings of a peasant shows a hook and eye at the collar of his jacket/jerkin.
Placket. You mention modesty. If we're still talking about the skirt, I shouldn't worry much about a modesty piece under the placket if the skirt's at all full. If you arrange the pleats cleverly, they'll cover the placket pretty well. If the skirt opening is off-set to the bodice opening, you get what's called a dog-leg, which we think was one method of concealing the opening in the skirt.
On the other hand, if you're at all uneasy about an under-petticoat being glimpsed, then by all means have one. As far as I know, no one in period would have worried about it (possibly not even about the chemise showing through the opening, but personally I'm not in favor of displaying my underwear where it's not meant to be seen in ways it's not meant to be seen) So, the answer is, there's no evidence for them, but that may fall under the umbrella of "...can't prove it was never done."

Hope this has been more helpful than when last I wrote on this particular set of questions. ;->

[virginiadear.livejournal.com]

Also meant, when I wrote that I'd pleat the skirt, "I'd flat/knife-pleat the skirt," as opposed to cartridge-pleating it.