Research | Undergarments | Dress | Bolero | Accessories

Although I didn't have time for an in-progress diary while constructing my latest Victorian gown, I decided to go back and write up a little post-script article about the process. So here are all the gory details about the research and construction of this outfit. I hope it proves to be useful to somebody!

Research: a question of authenticity

As I mentioned on my gallery page, this dress was loosely inspired by the rehearsal dress in the movie, Moulin Rouge. After asking around a bit to see if anybody had made a reproduction of that particular costume, I was directed to SisterSola's website. I was really impressed by her gorgeous recreation, and I'm going to direct all of the hard-core Moulin Rouge costume fans to her site since she did a much better job of staying true to the movie costume.

But since I'm a big history nut, I wanted to see if this dress could actually be authentic for 1899. I spent several weeks pouring though late Victorian fashion magazines and photographs, and the results are a bit mixed. Parts of the gown are totally documentable for 1899, like the wrap-over closure of bolero, which can be seen in the illustration on the left. Exoticism was a popular trend in late Victorian fashions, so elaborate Eastern-influenced embroidery on a jacket is easily documented as well. The square hanging sleeves of Satine's bolero proved to be more troublesome though. I did find some examples of similar hanging sleeves on late 1890's dresses, like this one, but I could only find that type of sleeves on loose Aesthetic Movement dresses, which were very different from the high-fashion hourglass gowns that Satine was wearing in the movie. But if you move forward in time a few years to 1900-1902, pagoda-shaped sleeves started to come back in fashion, and I did find several examples of bolero jackets with flared sleeves and a second set of tight sleeves visible underneath. Ultimately, I decided to make my bolero sleeves more like the 1900's bell-shaped examples because I thought that would be more historically documentable.

So mainly due to of the shape of the sleeves, my final outfit would probably be more appropriate for the year 1901 than 1899. By 1902, straight-front corsets had almost completely taken over, so an hourglass-shaped gown would be out of style by then. But 1901 was essentially a transition year between the Victorian and Edwardian periods, and hourglass corsets were being shown right next to S-bend corsets in the fashion magazines of that time. So basically, this gown could be an example of the very last gasps of Victorianism with a touch of trendy Edwardian fashion thrown in as well.

While researching the authenticity of the undergown, I noticed that princess-cut dresses were very popular for these years, but dresses with center-front buttons like you see in the movie costume were unusually rare. Most closures were either asymmetrical or in the back, so my original design sketches were based on a variety of 1899 fashion plates which used the more common side closures. I did eventually find one nice example of a gown with a center-front opening in a 1900 edition of Harper's Bazar, which you can see on the right. This one was really close to Satine's dress since it had the split-front skirt with an underskirt/insert that matched the bolero. This made me feel much better about creating a dress in an unusual style since at least I could prove that it was worn occasionally. Unfortunately, the small, closely-spaced buttons down the front of Satine's dress appear to be pure fantasy, but I decided to keep them anyway just because I thought they were pretty.

Finally, the Art Nouveau-style headdress that Satine is wearing in the movie is right in line with what you see in fin de siècle art and theatrical photography (for example, check out the headdresses worn by Mata Hari, who was a real dancer and courtesean living in turn-of-the-century Paris), but I decided to substitute a more typical late Victorian hat to make this outfit appropriate for everyday wear. The shape of my hat was based on various fashion plates, as well as some antique Victorian/Edwardian hats that I was able to see the Victorian Elegance Show. The size of hats during this period grew bigger and bigger with every passing year, but I decided to keep mine relatively modest in size so that it would still be appropriate for any year between 1899-1901.

Undergarments: making the most of what I have

I was really lucky that I already have a full set of Victorian undies that could be used for this project. I was a little worried at first that I would have to make a new corset since my current Victorian corset came from an 1860's pattern - which is a pretty big gap time-wise. But after poking around a bit, I decided that I could probably get away with what I had. I found some corsets from 1900 like this one that still had a very hour-glassy shape, and even though the construction is different, the shape isn't too far off. The only thing I did different is add some additional boning to the sides of my corset. I noticed that it had a tendency to bulge out in the non-boned areas, so the extra stiffening made it smoother, and my waist looks smaller from the front as well (always a good thing!).

The only new undergarment that I had to make was a small skirt pad to round out my bum a little more. Now believe me, I've got more than enough bum on my own, but I noticed that my skirt looked strangely limp with just a petticoat alone. Maybe some women could skip this padding due to differences in body types, but my backside happens to be a good bit down from my natural waistline, so I needed some help to get that high, pronounced bootie-curve that you see in period photographs and fashion plates. It seems that a wide variety of skirt pads were around in the 1890's to help women achieve this shape, and you can see a few examples here and here. I saw a small wire mesh skirt pad that was similar to that second picture at the Victorian Elegance show. The dealer was saying that it was a child's bustle, but it seemed obvious to me that it was one of these small 1890's pads. I think that most people just don't realize that small "bustles" were still being worn so late in the century.

Anyway, I took a very low-tech approach to making my pad, and just stacked graduating layers of cotton batting so that it was thickest in the middle. I then slipped this into a plain cotton cover, and attached a waistband. You can see the final results above. The pad is only an inch thick in the middle, and hopefully, it just makes me look a little more hour-glassy without being too obvious.

The Dress: I swear, it looked easy!

The pattern for the dress came from a 1901 diagram for the "Rational Dress Princess Robe" that is webbed on one of the pattern archives of the fabulous La Couturière Parisienne website. I copied the pattern onto transparency film, used an overhead projector to enlarge it to my height, and then traced all of the pieces onto banner paper. I thought I'd have to do a lot of alterations to make it fit, but the size was absolutely perfect for me as it was. Here are the alterations I made to the original pattern:

• I made the back skirt pieces a little wider at the bottom so the hem would be fuller
• I cut a few inches off the train to make it more manageable (but now I wish I had left it like it was!)
• I used two darts on the bodice instead of one
• I omitted the contrasting fabric at the top and merged the two pieces into one

The dress itself was pretty simple to put together, but I made a bunch of stupid mistakes that ultimately made it much harder than it should have been. First of all, I didn't have anybody to help me mark the length of the skirt, so I did it on my own and screwed it up royally! It was a good 4" too short in places, so I had to cut 24 extra pieces of fabric (silk, flatlining, and canvas stiffening) and add these to the bottom to make it long enough. I hid the join in the fabric with some wide braid, and you probably wouldn't spot it as a mistake unless I pointed it out, but it was a HUGE pain to do, and the whole mess set me back by a full day.

I also had a horrible time setting in the collar and sleeves. The neckline of the dress was too high in the front and too low in the back, which was not something that I noticed when I was doing the dress fittings, but it made the collar choke me like crazy when it was finally attached. I eventually got it to work by cutting the neckline much lower in front, but now the collar never will hug my neck tightly like it should. I also couldn't get the gathers even on the sleeveheads, so I plan to rip them out and reset the sleeves at some point. I'm pretty annoyed with myself for making all of these rookie mistakes, but luckily, the bolero hides a lot of it.

The fabric for the dress is smooth doupioni that has been flatlined with cotton sateen. I had a tough time deciding on the color, but my weakness for dark reds finally won out in the end. The front closes with 42 fabric-covered buttons and soutache loops. I bought the kind of buttons with the two part push mold to help you cover them, and they made my life SO much easier! I had planned to sew an additional 3 buttons on the collar and another 40 or so down the backs of the arms like you see in the movie dress, but I ran out of time thanks to the evil hem, collar, and sleeves. I'll be sure to add those buttons before I wear the dress again. Finally, I didn't have enough velvet to make a full underskirt, so I just made an insert of the velvet to fill in the front opening of the skirt. It's not a perfect solution, but at least if gives you a flash of that contrasting color when I walk.

The Bolero: an old man's robe gets a second life

I loved the movie Moulin Rouge, but to be honest, this goal of this project was much more about finding a use for some vintage embroidery vs. making true a movie reproduction. Back when I was in college, I found a beautiful embroidered velvet robe in an East Texas antique shop. You can see me modeling the robe in its original state on the right. It was badly ripped in several places, and even though I tried to repair the torn areas, it was still too fragile to be of much use. Normally, I would feel horrible about cutting up an antique garment, this one was in such a sorry state that I decided that it would be better to enjoy it in an altered form than have it just gather dust in a storage bin.

And just for trivia's sake, here's a little background about the original garment. After doing an internet search on the maker's tag, I discovered that it was actually a 100 year old robe used for a men's fraternal organization known as The Oddfellows. If you look closely at the 7th man from the left of this picture, you can see a gentleman wearing a similar embroidered robe. I've seen these Oddfellows robes, stoles, and hats pop up at flea markets and antique stores around Texas fairly frequently, but I think mine has the prettiest embroidery that I've seen so far.

To construct the bolero, I cut off the strips of embroidery and pieced them back together to make the new shape. (thank god for velvet, which hides the piecing extremely well!) Although this isn't drawn to scale at all, here is a general sketch of what the pieces looked like before joining them back together. The curved shape at the bottom makes the vest fit the curve of the bust without having to run darts through the embroidery. I kept the sleeves the the same shape that they were originally, but I just shortened them a little so you could see my dress sleeves underneath. Since the velvet was a bit fragile and obviously prone to ripping, I flatlined the entire thing with some sturdy cotton twill to make sure it wouldn't rip again.

Oh yeah... and believe it or not, the velvet is not black - it's midnight blue! You can only see the color when the light is very strong, but you can just see a hint of the blue in this picture taken in natural lighting.

Accessories: what you can do with a floor full of scraps and a bit of hot glue

The accessories for this outfit were thrown together at the very last minute, but I was still pretty pleased with the way they turned out. The hat base is a vintage a black straw hat that looks like it came from the 1950's. The brim was originally even wider than you see here, but I cut it down by an inch or two to make it more appropriate for the 1890's. I used a round scrap of the robe velvet to cover the crown, and then I sewed pieces of silk from the leftover dress fabric into long strips to make bows and puffs to decorate the brim. The ostrich feathers came from the floral department of my local hobby store. It seems to be popular to make floral arrangements with feathers right now, which is a great stroke of luck for hat-makers. The entire thing is hot-glued together, but because I had so little time to work on it, I decided that it was better to have a hot-glued hat than no hat at all!