mid 16th century italian courtesan gown (aka my first real dress diary!)

this will be my first historical costuming project (though i have many others swimming around in the back of my mind). i've chosen italian since i can do late-period noble class without a farthingale. also, with bristol being predominantly elizabethan, the italian styles are a little more exotic and fresh to my eye. i've chosen late period since i would like to be able to make and wear a corset with it.

my goal is to have a relatively authentic-looking ensemble. i've been looking at lots of portraits to get a sense of appropriate colors and trims, reading lots of dress diaries for advice on fabric choices and pattern shapes... and i hope to have the janet arnold book soon.

if you have questions or comments, please feel free to email me (qylaar67 at yahoo dot com).

5.1.04
i'm still in the very early stages of research for this dress. i'm picking up where i left off last year -- reviewing all the portrait images i saved and reading all the sites i bookmarked. i'm still sorting out my venetians from my florentines but it's starting to come back to me.

first, let me show you my first two reference images, and i'll point out what i like about each dress. (to see an enlarged version, please click on the image.)

moretto da brescia portrait of a lady (1535) last year when i started looking, this was the first image that i really got stuck on. which figures, since it's not a very typical dress. i absolutely love the rich green velvet sleeves and velvet ribbon or bias trim on the bodice. at first i wanted to recreate the dress semi-exactly (without the fur though!), but there are two huge problems with that. first, i really don't like salmony pink that much so the prospect of working on and wearing a dress that color is yucky. second, that is like the weirdest bodice ever. (well, not exactly -- after realizing that strange, cardboardy, open-without-ties front were not the norm, i started collecting other images of dresses with weird bodices, and some of them are kinda crazy.) or at least, i would have a hard time making something like that work with my body shape, and in the end it would look like a mistake on my part, rather than a recreation of a weird dress. but about those sleeves... i think i may borrow the sleeve concept from this dress -- copying the bodice trim onto a small upper sleeve, with separate lower sleeves in velvet. click on the image for a better view of the light embroidery on them, which might be fun to do (though not in gold -- see below).

agnolo bronzino portrait of maria de medici (1551) now, a nice rich grey is a color i could wear. i have to admit, i didn't pay much attention to this dress until today while looking at the images i'd saved to my hard drive last year. but looking at it now, i think i've found a lot of useful information in this painting. first of all, i love the trim with applied pearls. i've seen ribbon that looks like that base trim, so i know i have a good chance of getting that effect. (as much as i love the velvet trim in the other painting, i would be happy to avoid working with bias cut silk.) another big plus with this dress is that it calms one of my paranoid worries about this whole project -- i really don't like gold, and the metallic detailing on this painting looks much more like silver to me. i was worried that i would look hopelessly wrong if i didn't have gold jewelry etc. the trick will be to make sure any silver detailing i use looks, for lack of a better description, _antique_ like this does. i know i've got some silver jacquard ribbon that looks very tinselly and modern, for example; that wouldn't work.

the moretto portrait depicts a dress from a venetian provice, and the bronzino is florentine. also today i also found some full length drawings that, even though some are from later in the century, they should help with a general silhouette. these are from the cesare vecellio book (which i hope to borrow from the library this week) and are venetian noblewomen. the first is from 1550 and the rest are from about 1585.

i know the dresses in four of the drawings are brocade but i'm thinking of using a solid or changeable silk taffeta (or taffeta-like stuff) more like the pink dress painting instead. velvet, like in the grey dress painting, seems too sweaty for bristol, and on my budget the chance of finding a period-looking natural fiber brocade in a color i like is slim. finding a ribbon like the stuff on the grey dress will be much easier. i just have to figure out how to trim the rest of the dress (guards with or without more ribbon on the bottom, split skirt or not, etc. - i need to find more full-length images and get the arnold book). i already have some black linen for a petticoat and some white cotton velvet for sleeves. since i may have to let serendipity determine my "fashion fabric" i'll wait before choosing a sleeve color and dyeing the velvet. in the meantime i ordered some silk swatches from denver fabrics (a nice way to feel like i am making some progress with materials while only spending five dollars).

well, that's a start anyway. i still have a lot to figure out but right now i need to go to sleep!

meanwhile, i got my taffeta swatches.

three are in the brown/gold family (one is a sort of blackened gold, one is a dark coppery brown, and one is a coppery orange/green changeable). the last is a blue/green changeable that fits in better with my taste in color (and would look best with my presumed silver + black trim and green sleeves) but it's the least exciting since it doesn't have the metallic shine of the others...

also i was beginning to worry that a vast expanse of undecorated taffeta would look sort of boring, even with the trim and sleeves. so i was very happy to find a picture in the arnold book of a statue wearing a very similar dress with a forepart (isabella of portugal, 1564 p. 40). that's where i can add some decadent brocade, without having to purchase enough for a whole dress. i just have to figure out if it's just a front section or a whole underskirt -- i do like the idea of a train of it dragging behind me.

so i guess i am doing a florentine gown circa 1550s-60s with venetian (sleeves) and portuguese (forepart) influences.

i don't really need to make my final decisions on color scheme and outer fabrics yet, since i can make all the underpinnings first. i'm getting impatient though. i'll start looking around, and if i find the perfect trim or taffeta or brocade, i suppose that will start the domino effect of choices.

on the left is the eleanora dress drawing from the janet arnold book. and now that i've been spoiled by the embroidered and couched trim (a remnant from the actual dress is shown on the right) i'm really not feeling the jacquard ribbons that seemed just fine (well, with some pearls added) before. i'd love to make my own trim, although i'm scared at the time it would take. less scared than i was earlier today, when my roommate had me believing that i only had a few weeks before opening weekend of the faire. but it's actually the july 10th weekend, so i have a little time. supporting arguments to this idea can be found in jessamyn's french renaissance gown diary -- look at the section on fabric, and follow her links.

edit -- about five minutes after adding that, i stumbled across this: ohh, pretty. different century, different country, but inspiring nonetheless.

a discussion on the "courtesan" yahoo mailing list provided this very interesting link about giulia de medici: a lady of mixed racial background (like me!) contemporary to eleanora of toledo. her story suggests that she would have been dressing sort of in competition to eleanora, so that's something i will be thinking about while i am choosing my fabrics. i won't be portraying giulia though -- i've no interest in the acting thing, and i want to keep this a courtesan outfit so i can wear some pretty bloomers under it...

i'm killing the forepart option. what i gain in italian-ness by using a brocade, i also lose because foreparts are not typically italian. and i'm not finding any fabrics i love, so why force the issue?

that puts me back to the choice of a plain-fabric dress with trim laid out like the eleanora dress. then, my choices are embroidery (like the eleanora), scrolly ribbon (like the grey maria de medici dress above) or velvet (like the moretto above). i found a lovely wide embroidered trim, but at $20/yd i can't afford it (it's the stuff pictured on the left). today i'm leaning towards the velvet option as it is the most affordable for me. although i'm tempted to run a thin braid along the edges of the velvet to give it some pizazz (and to give me something to sew pearls on) but i don't want it to come out looking too elizabethan. it seems to me that a courtesan would look a little flashy, and plain velvet seems to fall on the side of "simple elegance" that would be more appropriate for a young medici gentlewoman. on the other hand, there is room for embellishment on the sleeves to make up for a relatively restrained dress...

at this point i would really appreciate opinions... if you care to weigh in i can be reached at qylaar67 at yahoo dot com.

the project stalled again, due to my lack of budget -- i spent my paltry discretionary income on something else this month, so no linen was purchased. i was also really worried about my dress fabric options and price, until...

today i won this stuff on ebay! it's hard to tell what the color actually will look like, but i'm not afraid to dye it, and it sounds like it might look period enough that if i don't hate it, i can leave it alone. i'm hoping it really is real silk, and not backed with something weird like some drapery fabrics are. at that price (6 yards for $9.99) i felt it was worth the gamble.

(meanwhile, if you saw my last post before i took out the images, i had been considering this stuff for a forepart... i bid on it on a whim, and won! it's nicer in person. you know how indoor photography puts a yellow cast on colors? so picture it somewhat bluer. i voted against a forepart on this dress but i guess i'll have it in reserve in case the new fabric is not quite enough, although i'd prefer to save it for a future project. maybe one of those german dresses with the pieced skirts, as it's not enough fabric to do much else with it.)

so i still need to buy the chemise linen, which is my remaining major purchase. i'll also need some velvet for guards, as well as some braidy trimmy stuff and dye (for the sleeves at least, if not for the dress fabric). most of the other materials can be pulled from stuff i have (undyed cotton velvet for sleeves, black linen/tencel for petticoat, various pieces of linen, twill, and silk shantung for corset and sleeve linings). i guess that means i can start the corset. it's almost july so i'm not going to be losing much more weight before i wear this.