A Florentine Dress Diary

1/21/02
The camicia:

Although there are many patterns for chemises floating around on the web, I have always been unhappy with the results of most of those instructions. One of my biggest gripes is that most versions use raglan sleeves, which I find to be uncomfortable and historically incorrect. But then I was told about Kass McGann's wonderful article, A Reconstructed Chemise, which is based on a surviving 17th century Italian garment. Although this article gives instructions for an excellent chemise just as it is, I decided to modify it just a little to make construction easier and to adapt it to work better with early 16th century Florentine styles of clothing.

The brilliant thing about the pattern on the Reconstructing History site is that it has underarm gussets, which provide a wonderful range of movement with a period method of construction. However, I prefer to make my undergarments with French seams, and I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to set in the gusset to a slit using this sewing technique. To make things a bit easier, I decided to create a side seam and split each square gusset into two triangles, so that the entire garment could be assembled into the big cross-like shape shown to the right, then simply folded in half and stitched up both sides.

With this side seam, it is no longer necessary to have four panels for the body, and you can simply make the front and back sections as wide as your fabric will allow. With my chemise, I ended up with 46" wide panels because I cut off strips from both selvage edges of my 56" wide linen to use for ruffs and embroidery. Also, Kass's article shows the top of the front and back panels lined up with the top of the underarm gusset, but I shifted these panels up a little to raise the neckline and reduce the bulk of the seam where it would be gathered into the neckband. The front section is raised two inches from the top of the gusset, and the back is raised six inches, and to compensate for this, the back panel is four inches longer than the front so that they will still line up at the hem.

the finished camicia

I also needed to make the sleeves wider and longer so that I would be able to create the large shoulder puffs seen in Florentine gowns. My sleeves are 30" around, and this seems to be a fairly average size. Many depictions of Italian sleeves appear to be a good bit wider than this, but 30" was full enough for the look I was trying to recreate. However, it is even more important to make the sleeves longer than your arm length--at least 12" longer to be able to make nice "poofs". My sleeves are a foot longer than my regular arm-length, but now I wish I had added 18" or more!

And finally, I discovered that the 10" gussets shown in the original article were too big for a Florentine chemise. The gussets stuck out from the arm-holes of the bodice and made the shoulder puffs just look weird! I reduced my gussets to 7" and was much happier with the results. It still allowed for unrestricted movement, but fit closer to the body and didn't affect the look of the sleeves.

The rest of the modifications are just a reflection of Italian fashions from the first quarter of the 16th century. I decided to leave the sleeves open at the cuff, since this seems to be a more popular choice at the time. Numerous paintings show these open chemise sleeves on both upper-class women and servants, who often have them pinned up at the shoulder as they work. Although I thought about making some blackwork embroidery for the neckband, I eventually decided to keep it simple with a bit of hand-gathering as the only embellishment.

• Intro, research and planning
• Bodice construction
• Italian undies
• Putting it all together
• Finishing touches
• An Italian Doublet