People Who Are More Cool Than Marie Antoinette

In preparation for the completion and unveiling of the France Dress, I've been doing some research on and around 18th century France and 18th century European culture. Just wait until I get started on the tea! But first, a public service announcement.

One thing I really love about being a historical costumer is getting to make a connection with people who really lived. Feeling a deep and passionate connection to a fictional character is one thing, but a person who actually did great things that have shaped the world we live in? Nothing can compare!

This was part of my issue with the 18th century up until now, because to hear some people speak, you'd think no 18th century woman had done anything more exceptional than get her head cut off.

You Should Probably Know Who This Is

Marie Antoinette is incredibly famous for... well, what, exactly? Being pretty? Getting her head chopped off? Being a scapegoat - which she almost certainly was? Being the subject of some truly atrocious films with excellent costume direction? She had almost no political power during her entire life and on the rare occasions she did, spectacularly failed to do anything of worth with it. According to the evidence we have disproving many of the rumours (although, I must point out, I question how much of that 'evidence' there actually is), she didn't even manage to have a proper scandal in her life, which from my point of view is completely intolerable. If you can't be a good Queen, you might as well be a spectacular bad Queen.

Honestly, a whole century to choose from and the number one name on everyone's lips is a wet-blanket miss without a single notable accomplishment to her name.

Even Marie Antoinette's sister, Marie Christina, Duchess of Teschen, managed better --  she was known to be intelligent as well as beautiful, manipulated their mother into allowing her alone of all the siblings to marry the man she loved, and had a quiet life patroning the arts and governing the Austrian Netherlands

So without further ado, have a series of fabulous, brilliant, scandalous, dangerous, powerful women who deserve more recognition!

Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, painter, Self Portrait In A Straw Hat

 Vigee Le Brun is not just one of my favourite painters - her self portraits in particular are incredibly touching, of which the one above is probably the most famous - but she was almost singlehandedly responsible for Marie Antoinette's public image, painted the King of Poland, members of the Russian royal family, and Lord Byron. Although she fled the Revolution with her daughter, she did eventually return to France under Napoleon I - although remaining a staunch royalist.

Adelaide Labille-Guiard, painter, Self Portrait with Two Pupils

A contemporary of Vigee Le Brun, so much so their work was often compared (I have to admit I like Le Brun better, but I think Labille-Guiard is more talented - there's such crispness in her work!) Adelaide Labille-Guiard remained in France throughout the Revolution and until her death, campaigning for women to have general admittance to the French Royal Academy. She painted members of the French royal family before the Revolution and members of the National Assembly, including Maximilien Robespierre, after.

Catherine II, Empress and Autocrat of All the Russias
Also known as Catherine The Great
Also known as BADASS

Born Sophia Augusta Frederica, daughter of a Prussian general and member of the Anhalt ruling family, she almost didn't marry the man who would become Peter III of of Russia. If she hadn't been so determined to make herself agreeable to the Russians - relentlessly drilling herself on the language and converting to Orthodoxy, taking the name 'Catherine', alienating her own parents and endearing herself to the current Empress of Russia in the process - she might never have pulled it off.

A damn good thing she did.

Peter III of Russia reigned for about six months before being disposed in a bloodless coup by supporters of his wife. Less than a week later he was dead, with no evidence to suggest Catherine had any hand in the assassination. Catherine had no technical claim to the throne of Russia and only the most tenuous legal standing for holding onto it - but hold onto it she did. For thirty four years.

Catherine the Great was a wise, capable and powerful ruler, revitalised her country and helped it be recognised as one of the Great Powers of Europe - as well as being fiercely sexually independent. Among her long string of lovers, the last was forty years her junior, and there were rumours her ex-lovers helped pick out candidates of suitable physical beauty and intellectual merit to warrant her attention.

Olympe de Gouges, playwright and political activist

Olympe de Gouges wrote political pamphlets and plays espousing abolition and the rights of women. During the Revolution she became deeply embroiled in refuting all kinds of inequality, became disillusioned when egalite was not extended to women also, challenged the Revolutionary government, and eventually maintained her conviction all the way to the guillotine. 

Her most famous work, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, is an exceptional piece of writing and a key early text in feminist theory.

Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, poet and writer

Whether it was letters from Constantinople (described as “the very first example of a secular work by a woman about the Muslim Orient” and an inspiration to all later female travel writers) or the latest instalment in her attributed poetry feud with Alexander Pope (Which I can still only see as an 18th century rap-off of epic proportions), there's no doubting that Mary Wortley Montagu was a skilled writer and a passionate traveller.


What makes her even more awesome is that she brought back the Ottoman practice of smallpox inoculation to Britain and helped promote it's adoption despite the scepticism of the medical establishment.

Mary Wollstonecraft, writer, philosopher and feminist

 Mary Wollstonecraft wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, one of the founding texts of feminism. For some people, that would be enough. But Mary Wollstonecraft also wrote educational works, novels, letters from travels, her other Vindication, A Vindication of the Rights of Man, and translated works from French and German. Her husband published a memoir after her death, detailing illegitimate children, affairs and suicide attempts, which lead many early scholars to discredit her work - I say if you can lead a life so full and so passionate and still write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, you must be some kind of super human being.

She died eleven days after the birth of her daughter, Mary Wollstonecroft Godwin, later Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour

Intelligent, beautiful and refined, Jeanne Antoinette Poisson founded her own salon, became the King's Mistress (which was a proper role at court in France, or as good as), earned herself a title, and held on to all of it until her death. Despite being a commoner and having many enemies at court, and less than politically able (Or active), Poisson was accomplished, independent, a patron of the arts, and a master of dealing with people - a skill that is all too easily overlooked by the shallow.

I like this portrait of Reinette, as she was known, because I think it's the only one where she really looks her age instead of an 18th century photoshopped, airbrushed version. In almost all of her paintings, however, I think she looks like she's having fun!

Sarah Siddons, actress

One of the best known actresses of the 18th century, Sarah Siddons's fame was almost unbelievable in scope. She was the darling of Drury Lane for twenty years, and her power and skill was such that she left her leading men speechless and audiences believing she really had fallen dead on stage.

Her most famous role was Lady Macbeth, and in her final performance before retirement, the audience were so overwhelmed by her performance they didn't allow the play to continue beyond the sleepwalking scene.

The Chevalier d'Eon, diplomat, solider and spy

Charles-Genevieve-Louis-Auguste-Andre-Timothee d'Eon de Beaumont (blimey) is one of those wonderful people I think you can quite happily list under 'great women' or 'great men', having lived for the first half of their life as a man and the second half as a woman.

A spy for the French crown and an Ambassador to the British, d'Eon fought in the Seven Years War, effectively blackmailed the King of France, lived in London as an exile, demanded the French crown allow them to return and live as a woman, offered to lead female soldiers into battle, and fenced almost up until their death. I don't think I've ever encountered someone so fabulously scandalous.

Kitty Fisher, courtesan

Kitty Fisher was a bright, brilliant socialite with a flair for self-promotion. Her reputation was such that she belittled women of high social standing in public (and flaunted the rumours of her affairs with their husbands), dressed and lived with unbelievable extravagance, sat for Joshua Reynolds and half a dozen other portrait painters, and was rumour to have eaten a thousand-guinea note on bread and butter. Rather suitable then that she's been painted as Cleopatra, dissolving pearls in vinegar!

Although she died just four months after her prestigious marriage, if you've ever heard the rhyme - 'Lucy Locket lost her pocket...' - then now you know who found it.

Maria Theresa of Austria

And finally - Maria Theresa Walburga Amalia Christina, Empress consort of the Holy Roman Empire, Queen consort of Germany, Queen of Hungary and Croatia, Archduchess of Austria, Queen of Bohemia, last of the Hapsburgs, who ruled for 40 years over the Hapsburg Dominions (the only woman to do so) while refusing to cede power to her husband or her son, the Holy Roman Emperors, reorganised the military, enacted financial and educational reforms, developed commerce and agriculture, and inspired respect and adoration from her subjects. She was also the mother of sixteen children including two Queens, two Holy Roman Emperors and the Duchess of Parma. The woman was incredible.

This is the very same Maria Theresa who oversaw the War of Austrian Succession and the Seven Years War. She's so cool, she has a cameo in Axis Powers Hetalia.

Yes, this is the same Maria Theresa

And guess what? She's also Marie Antoinette's mother. So the next time someone wants to talk to you about Marie Antoinette, feel totally justified in responding with "Your Mum!"

Knit One, Purl A Dozen...

It started, as so many of these things do, with a costume.

i dont evven knoww wwhat youre talking about thats not my pail 

The costume in question - Eridan Ampora from Homestuck - was fairly simple compared to many of my projects and I'm thoroughly pleased with how he turned out. Even though I had to make a floor length purple velvet cloak, the most time consuming part of the costume was the scarf - especially since I had more or less never knitted before. It was thirteen alternating 10cm sections of plain knit in two colours, and - sometimes only getting an hour or two of knitting in each week due to university obligations - took me around three months.

The pink, yellow and orange at the back are mine - shipped all the way to Japan at Christmas

My mother is a knitter - socks are her particular favourite, after felted slippers - and she'd been trying to get me into it for a while. I honestly wasn't all that interested! I am firmly in favour of stockings - the longer, finer, and tighter fitting the better, and thanks to my oddly shaped feet, punishing shoe preferences and general clumsyness I wear through them extremely quickly. Producing a pair of socks I would actually want to wear would take an obscene amount of time and skill, and then I would ruin them in the space of a day or two.

 Interesting, accessible patterns for anything else were hard to find. Anyone who's seen my sewing will know that I also find it very hard to stick to patterns! It was a toss up between a lot of old lady frumpiness (Knitted doilies! Egg cosies!) or faux-trendy 'crafter chic' which is all rather useless (Apple and banana cosies!). I hadn't learnt how to purl yet, and wasn't at all sure I could actually cast on on my own.

But probably because I had been knitting this scarf for so very long, my older brother got me this for my birthday;

I still haven't taken the obi off this book,
and neither have I taken the time to figure out what people call an obi outside of Japan

I have to admit I was a little bit horrified - what if it was full of socks, egg cosies and knitted place mats? - but this is actually a very sweet book with a very interesting range of patterns. There is a whole range of things, all presented to look very appealing, achievable, and inter-spaced with handy information and the odd titbit. One sock pattern even comes with a wine list. There is an emphasis on knitting for fun, so many of the scarf patterns seem to contain the instruction 'repeat pattern until you have used all of yarn A' and gauges etcetera are approximate. But there is also an excellent variety of patterns, rather than shapes (cables, ribs, chevrons, waves, brioche...) and it gets surprisingly technical at times. This is the perfect antidote to a flaw I've found in 'crafter chic', where many of the patterns just turn out to be stocking stitch in an unusual material or quirky shape.

The siren-like appeal of lace Habu wraps aside, I decided to set my sights on something achievable to begin with

The finished product, beautifully modelled by Alfred

I used Brocket's washbag pattern with a slightly larger needle size (It didn't make sense to me to buy a pair of 3.75mm needles when my other projects - and the wool - requested a pair of 4mm, and it seemed to work fine) and Cygnet Silcaress DK in Dove, with stripes of same in Thistle. I love purple and grey together! The ribbon is stash sourced, leftover from a last-minute Christmas party ensemble - coincidentally, that was also purple and grey (and copper) - purple ribbons and a fluffy, cable knit jumper. This seems appropriate somehow.

The first ten rows, modelled by Percival

I went shopping for all this yarn in one go, and nearly decided not to bother with the quirky little shop down a side street that I occasionally find the most delicious things in. I was glad I did! I stumbled across this beautiful Portuguese Rosarios 4 Bio Bamboo in the most stunning pink (Officially, it's colour 11) - and in the sale! I had a pattern from the book in mind - the buttercup and mustardseed fluted rib scarves - but both of which were done in chunkier wools with chunkier needles.

I started this morning. I'm knitting to the buttercup pattern (they're actually identical except for the end sizes, and the mustardseed is one repeat narrower) which will still give me rather a thin scarf in this gauge, but I'm quite happy with that. I think the pattern would be clearer if I was a little more consistent with the tension and didn't keep losing count when doing the repeats, but it's already starting to form the characteristic waves.

King Cole Bamboo Cotton for the sea glass chevron scarf,
modelled by Randolph

Even though it's a bit of a stretch for my abilities, the sea glass chevron scarf immediately caught my attention. It's a beautiful ribbed scarf with flowing chevron stripes. The yarn I liked only came in 100g balls - very annoying when you're supposed to have 10g of six different colours - so I went with a base and three contrasts instead of six. All four yarns are King Cole Bamboo Cotton - 50% bamboo, 50% cotton! I'm a great fan of bamboo, one of the most versatile plants on the planet (Except for hemp, possibly the most versatile) and the soft, smooth texture of this kind of yarn is perfect for a scarf for me. I'm terribly fussy about fluffy things around my neck. The base colour is going to be the rich purple 524, with accents of white 530, mauve 528 and bright pink 536.

I was also very keen to try out some blanket patterns. I'm likely to be spending another winter at my parents and the house - particularly my room - gets very, very cold due to some intriguing thermostat shenanigans. I love the fat plaited bread cable blanket, and although I'm a poor and uneducated knitter I am passable at crochet, and the art deco blanket looked lovely (With a colour scheme tweak, of course)! However I quickly realised how obscenely expensive yarn is and just how much I would need to make up a blanket of any reasonable size - I might just be able to afford to do one of the smaller patterns in cheap acrylic, which rather defeats the point. My solution to this problem, however, is something I'll tackle in another blog.

Alice's Crinoline

It was Tuesday evening, and I had known for four weeks that the coming Saturday was 'Alice Day' in Oxford. I had four weeks to mull over the idea of making a dress for the event and decide against it.

Then on Tuesday night it all went horribly wrong.

I've had about ten metres of blue polished cotton lurking around for a little while and had already settled on making a crinoline from it. I also have a lot - a LOT - of OTHER stash fabrics in the offing, not to mention trims etcetera. I also don't have a lot of money at the moment.

To cut a long story short, I've set myself an unlikely task - to make the 1861-1863 Crinoline Day Dress from Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 2, using only fabrics, trims etcetera I already own. I've set myself a strict budget for inevitable extras - thread, boning, the odd bit of lining or ribbon - of £30. I've also set myself a strict deadline for the first part, of Saturday, as sprawling project creep is my nemesis. I'm not crazy enough to think I can have an entire crinoline done in three days, so I've organised the project into three phases and laid out exactly what I plan to have done in each. Phase three is highly optional but somehow, strangely inevitable.

Phase One - to be completed by Saturday:

Elliptical Crinoline
Using the Laughing Moon pattern that is my best friend ever, some red and black striped fabric that I bought online and then didn't really like that much in person (It happens, more often than not), left over fabric tape and - more than likely - plastic tubing. The plastic tubing may swallow an unexpectedly large amount of my budget.

Petticoat
ONE petticoat, and it's not even allowed to be a fancy one! I haven't yet decided what fabric to use, but it may well be some sheeting I have lying around.

Crinoline Skirt
From the Arnold pattern, blue cotton with inserts at hem. I'm unsure of what fabric I'm going to use to make the inserts at the moment. Also unsure if I'm actually going to line it, or merely face the hem - the original silk fabric would have needed the structure, whereas I'm using upholstery weight cotton, which probably will not. I think I'm also going to leave out the pocket, which looks complicated, at least until Phase Two.

That's it! Not too bad, I think - the two skirts are one day projects each, I think (Although I say that now...) and I can usually run up a petticoat in a couple of hours. This will be worn with a corset and chemise I already own, a modern shirt and hat, and possibly a shawl. Not very historical but it will give me a sense of achievement.

Optional to Phase One otherwise Phase Two

Bloomers
Split legged drawers will make this dress masses more convenient, but they're not essential for first time wear as I dislike public toilets immensely and avoid using them at all costs even when not in hoops and petticoats. These will probably again be cotton sheeting, and may well end up being significantly re-trimmed in Phase Two if made in Phase One.

Phase Two - to be completed by a week Saturday

Chemise
The chemise I plan to use for Phase One is my Phantomhive Strip Tease chemise, and as such is sleeveless and short with a very fancy yoke. Really, I would prefer a full length chemise with sleeves. Probably loosely based on the Simplicity Civil War Undergarments pattern, I'm going to avoid getting bogged down in trims but a little whitework on the yoke may be inevitable at a later stage...

Pagoda Sleeved Bodice
Also from the Arnold pattern, in the blue cotton. I'm tempted to use some vintage white rayon velvet ribbons I picked up to do the pleated trim but I have a feeling I just don't have enough - only about six metres, whereas I have a sneaky feeling that when Arnold asks for 112" of trim for the bodice she means just the bodice. I also have some vintage silver Italian buttons I think would look great down the front.

Second Petticoat
What, you mean other people only wear one petticoat? This will also include the Trimming Of The First Petticoat.

Engageantes
Although I love the embroidered and drawn work engageantes in museum collections - as well as my own (I have a big of a thing for undersleeves) these are likely to be quite plain, at least for now.

This should, in theory, make up a full working outfit by the end of next week. Not bad for ten days work!

But of course, there is also;

Phase Three - indeterminate finish

Evening Bodice
Likely based on the evening crinoline the next page over in Arnold's Patterns of Fashion 2. In blue cotton with sleeves to match the inserts.

Corset
Every outfit needs a matching corset, right? Right? I'm actually very tempted to make this the ribbon corset I currently have many metres of blue ribbon with white hearts lying around for.

Extra embellishment
Of all of the above.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves - first things first, and that means the elliptical crinoline.