I first stumbled across this Veronese painting over 3 years ago while browsing through art books at my local library, and it has been lingering around my subconscious ever since. Although I usually tend to gravitate toward Florentine and Lombard fashions, I also have a secret love for Venetian clothing as well. I've been a bit hesitant to make a Venetian dress up until this point because so many other great costumers have already made gorgeous gowns from this region. But when my buddy Sarah decided to make a courtesan gown last month, I finally gave in to the peer pressure and decided that I needed to take the plunge as well!

This is probably going to be a very short and sweet diary because I already have most of the dress done. I started working on it less than a week ago when I decided to make a cooler outfit to change into if it's too hot while we are at Bristol next weekend. (we're driving up to Wisconsin for our summer vacation - woohoo!) I thought I could wear it as a sleeveless, courtesan-style gown similar to Oonagh's pink dress. And then I could add some sleeves and a partlet after we get back... or possibly before we leave on Thursday if I finish everything else.

Most of the gown construction is pretty standard, so I don't think you'll be missing much if I just hit a few highlights. The fabric is velveteen that I got for a steal since it started its life as a nasty hot pink color. But thanks to 2 1/2 bottles of dark green and a bottle of scarlet Rit, it is now a lovely wine color that looks very similar to this Venetian frock. The Veronese painting that first inspired this project seems to be a bit more brown than my velveteen, but I'm not trying to make an exact copy with this outfit, so that's not a problem.

The bodice is has in interlining of canvas and a lining of linen, and it is boned fairly heavily with cable ties so that I won't have to wear a corset with it. Here's a picture of the bodice laid out flat before I sewed it together so you can see the general shape. I included the pointed waistline in back and the low square neckline that are both extremely common in Venetian dress. The skirt was based on one of the fuller skirts in Patterns of Fashion with gored side panels, and it was cartridge pleated to the bodice. The entire gown and sleeves were made from 6 yards of 45" wide fabric.

The most interesting tip that I have to share so far is my method of lacing. Most costumers have a horrible time trying to keep ladder lacing for going all crooked once you tighten it up, so I tried a new idea in an attempt to solve the problem. To start, I decided to lace my cord though ribbons attached to the lining instead of rings because this seems to hold it quite secure and keep the cord from wobbling around quite as much (see the peasant diary for more info). But then the real secret seems to be adding another row of ribbon further in from the edges to lace through as well. This transfers the tension to the outer ribbons, and then the row next to the edge just guides the cord straight across. In the picture on the right, you can see what the inside looks like when it is laced, and here's a comparison shot so you can see the difference that an extra row of lacing anchors can make. Pretty nifty, huh? My only word of advise is to pre-lace your bodice with a very long cord before you get dressed. It's possible to lace it once it is on (I used a tapestry needle for mine), but it's a bit more difficult than usual since you are going further under the edges.

So anyway, here's a few quick pics of the gown for now. I'm already working on the accessories, so I'll have more posted about them tomorrow.

7/26/04
Fun with flag fans:

Since this dress is so simple, I want to put some extra effort into the accessories to jazz it up a bit. I've always loved Italian flag fans, so I figured that would be a perfect place to start. I think most of the evidence suggests that they would have been stationary during the 16th century, but we used rotating fag fans in printmaking when I was in college, and I was always amazed at how much of a breeze those things can produce! Tammie Dupuis has written a great article about constructing this type of fan, so I took most of my cues from her. The fabric came from a vintage sash that I picked up at an antique shop a few years ago. The finials on my handle are made from polymer clay, and I used rub-on metallic wax to make it gold.

Oh and let me add one more point about the lacing trick I mentioned in the last entry. This method only works if you use full boning in the area beneath the lacing points. If it isn't boned there, the fabric will wad up between the two rows. And before anybody starts nit-picking... no, I don't have documentation for this technique, and I'm sure it's not the only way to make your ladder lacing stay straight. But it does work great for me.

7/27/04
Girly stuff:

I've always been amazed by the way doublets and high-necked noble gowns can make you feel so powerful and imposing, but now I've experienced the other end of the spectrum with Venetian dress... which feels like the most girly clothing in the world! I guess those courtesans really knew what they were doing. So anyway, I needed to priss this outfit up a bit, so I started by adding some Venice lace to the neckline and cuffs of my big Italian chemise. Next I made a necklace and set of bracelets. The choker necklace was based on the one you see in this painting by Francesco Montemezzano. (and don't you love her cute little jacket?) It is made with glass pearls and some dark coral-colored glass beads. I already had one pearl bracelet that I got from Mike's aunt, but the Venetian women always seem to have matching pairs of bracelets instead of just one, so I strung up another to match it. I used the wonderful instructions for stringing pearls from Jessamyn's diary, but a friend of mine also told me about this method after I was done. I'll definitely have to try that next time!

8/6/04
Girdle:

The dress has already had it's first outing as a slightly undressed courtesan look, so now I just need to make the sleeves and partlet to look like a proper Venetian lady. But first I thought I'd back-track and tell you about my girdle. Most of it is just glass pearls and some large gold beads from the craft store, but I also wanted to include some "ouches" (little jewels in a gold setting) that would be used both in the girdle and to attach the sleeves. I've been impressed with the success several other costumers have had with using polymer clay for these things, so I decided to try it for myself. I started by finding a vintage earring and popping out the stone so that I could make a mold of the metalwork. I dusted it with baby-powder and pressed it into a lump of polymer clay. Then I baked it while still in the clay, following the baking directions on the package. When it was done, I removed the original earring, dusted the mold with powder again, and pressed a ball of clay into the mold. I made sure the back of the lump was flat and trimmed around the edges, and if I was smart, I would have embedded a tube bead in the clay at this point to string my thread through... but since I didn't think about it at the time, I just glued a tube bead to the back with jewelry cement when they were done. Next, I baked the clay while still in the mold, then popped it out when it was done to let it cool. I used black clay for the bases, but it really didn't matter what color I used since I was painting them gold as a final step. Gold polymer clay looks pretty crappy and fake, so I decided to paint them with a mixture of gold leafing powder and acrylic gloss medium, which worked great. You can see the original earring, the mold, the clay in the mold, an unpainted ouch, and one with gold paint in this picture . To finish them off, I rubbed some highly diluted brown acrylic paint (mixed with water and gloss medium) into the recesses of the gold work, and then filled in the center square with glass paint (used for fake stained glass) to give it an enameled look. I could have glued a stone in this setting instead of using faux-enamel, but this was cheaper and easier. Here's another picture of the ouches when they were finished, and you can see the girdle next to this paragraph. I made it slightly too long, which is why it looks funky at the point, but I'll fix this by taking off a few beads and making a better clasp before I wear it again.

8/7/04
Sleeve research:

There's a particular style of sleeves in many Italian portraits from this period that I've been fascinated by for the past few years. Although the term "cutwork" usually applies to a type of lace, I've also been using this term to describe patterned cloth that is created by cutting through the material to reveal a contrasting color beneath (if you know of a better word for this, please let me know!). I've heard a few people claim that these sleeves are just brocade, but there are several reasons why I stick by the cutwork theory. For one, the designs look very different from typical 16th century woven brocades, and it is notable that each white space is isolated from the one next to it, which would be necessary for a piece of cutwork fabric to hold together. Also, the main color of these sleeves always matches the color of the gown exactly, and white is used in every example to form the pattern. If this was a brocade, it would need to be specifically woven of the same dyelot of threads to make sure that it matched the fabric of the gown, which would be an expensive and cumbersome process. But with cutwork, you could simply make your design with the same fabric as the dress and have the white of your chemise (or a "fake" chemise in the form of white ground fabric) provide the contrasting white areas. At least to my line of reasoning, this seems like a much more obvious solution considering the cost and complexity of the brocade manufacturing process at this time.

Here you can see several examples of what I believe to be cutwork sleeves in Venetian dress. The three on the left are by Veronese, and the one on the right is from a fresco by Veronese's former pupil, Giovanni Antonio Fasolo. Before I go on, I wanted to give a special thank-you to Bella of The Realm of Venus and Deb of Oonagh's Own for helping me assemble these images. Both of their sites have been invaluable to me while researching Venetian fashions, and I am grateful for all the work they have done to share their resources with us all.

At first, I thought about creating an exact copy of one of these examples, but the first two patterns would be difficult to chart since they don't appear to have obvious repeats, the third was a little too busy for my taste, and the flowers in the last set of sleeves looked so modern that I was afraid that the average viewer might not believe it was historically correct. So I went searching for other examples of cutwork and found this painting by an unknown Italian artist. The pattern is slightly more geometric than the other examples shown here, but if you look again at the lighter blue Veronese gown, you can see a little stylized flower near the top of her left sleeve that appears to be a close match to the flower shapes in my black and white image. I'm not sure if this unknown painting comes from the Venetian Republic or an Italian state further to the south, but the similarity of the flower designs made me think that it would be an appropriate choice for this style of gown.

Before I started hacking my sleeves to bits, I thought it might be a good idea to try a few test pieces first. Just for the heck of it, I started by cutting the design on a scrap of velveteen without using anything to seal or stabilize the cuts. It actually held up better than I expected, but I think I would constantly be worried that the cuts would get caught on something or rip while I was wearing the sleeves. At least with the more complicated designs, it seems more likely that the cutwork fabric would be appliqued onto a layer of white linen or silk, similar to the technique used on the cutwork doublet and trunk-hose shown on page 30 of Patterns of Fashion. Next, I made a test piece using reverse-applique. For that one, I stacked the velvet on top of some white fabric, sewed over the outlines of the design, then cut away the velvet in the areas that I wanted to be white. I think I was on the right track with this one, but it was pretty hard to cut out such small shapes without nicking the bottom layer, and the edges tended to fray a bit more than I would like. For the last test piece, I stole an idea from the amazing Sempstress and traced the outline of each shape on the back of the fabric with white Sobo glue before making the cuts. This keeps the fabric from fraying when you cut it, and it's a nice modern substitute for more period techniques such as sealing cut edges with wax or coating the back of fabrics with gum arabic to work as a stabilizer. Anyway, after I cut out my entire design, I then laid it on some white fabric and stitched around the cut shapes by using a darning foot on my sewing machine to help me around the curves. If I was really insane, I could do this all by hand, but the machine stitching disappears into the pile of the velvet well enough that it shouldn't be noticeable from more than a foot away. So now it's on to the real deal - wish me luck!

8/8/04
Dude... that's a lot of cutting!:

Well, it took me a day and a half of work, but I finally got the design on one sleeve cut out. I still need to applique it to a layer of white fabric, but I don't even want to think about that part yet. I think I might start crying if I did. I realized after the first few rows that this would have been a lot easier if I had kept the pattern more bold and simple like those first Venetian examples, but it was too late by that point since I didn't have enough fabric to start over. Oh well... I think it'll look cool if I ever get it done. This delicate design gives it a really nice lacy look, which is highlighted by the beautiful reproduction reticella lace that I bought from Ninya Mikhaila. This is going to be my uber-girly outfit.

Unfortunately, I have to go back to work tomorrow, so my progress will be slowed down quite a bit. But I'm hoping I can try to get the second sleeve cut out next weekend, and then maybe assemble the sleeves the week after that. (knock on wood)

8/15/04
More Venetian pictures and various tidbits:

I finished the cutwork on the second sleeve yesterday, so I decided to reward myself by playing around with my partlet and adding some more info to my diary today. The partlet is going to be made with some wonderful open-weave silk organza that my friend Tish found for me out in California. It took me awhile to choose a design, but I finally decided to embroider it with whitework stripes of little flowers on vines. I seem to have a flower theme going with the sleeves and lace, so I thought I might as well go all the way with it.

And just for fun, I also wanted to share a few more Venetian pictures and bits of research that I've found while working on this project. First of all, even though I was a bit worried that my cutwork pattern was too small and geometric when compared to the other Venetian examples, I think I actually chose pretty well after all! First, I found this print by Hendrik Goltzius that shows two Venetian women with much smaller and less flamboyant cutwork patterns on their sleeves. I know it's hard to make out in the scan, but the woman on the right even looks like she may have a diamond pattern that is similar to mine. Next, I was flipping back through my copies from Storia del Costume in Italia by Rosalia Levi-Piszetsky, and I found a picture of the brown Veronese dress that I'm basing this project on. Beneath this portrait, she writes, "Note the cuts to the sleeves that follow an elegant design contrary to the sumptuary laws that permitted only straight." (Notevoli i tagli alle maniche che seguono un elegante disegno contrariamente alle leggi suntuarie che li permettono soltanto diritti.) This gives me two really cool bits of info. For one, she backs up my theory that this is cutwork instead of brocade. Secondly, we learn that there was a sumptuary law that forbid these elaborate cutwork patterns on sleeves... and as many of you already know, if a fashion was outlawed by sumptuary regulations, that just guarantees that people would go out of their way to break these laws just so that they could prove that they were wealthy enough to get around them. For example, when Venetian laws at the beginning of the century forbid women from using excessive amounts of fabric in their sleeves, you suddenly notice a trend of enormous dogale sleeves that practically drug the ground. And in this case, if Venetian officials told women that they could only have straight cuts on their sleeves, that explains why they would go to the trouble of cutting out such a complex design like what you see in the Bella Nani painting. So bringing this back to my own project, the fact that my own cutwork sleeves are more geometric just says that I was either virtuous enough to follow the rules, or more likely, my husband was too cheap to pay the fine if I was caught breaking them!

I also wanted to throw in some pictures that I dug up at the library that don't really have anything to do with this project, but they still answered some questions that I had about Venetian dress. First of all, I found this print of a masked festival that has a few interesting elements in it. The woman on the left has a large lion's head brooch that reminded me of the jewelry in the Bella Nani painting. Some people have doubted the reality of her girdle and brooches because they are so large and unusual, but this print seems to back it up a bit. It also makes me wonder if the Bella Nani dress might have been made specifically to wear to carnival or masque celebrations, which might further explain the odd accessories and over-the-top sleeves. Also in this print, you can see a hand-held parasol, which is something that has been pretty hard to document for this period. I've seen depictions of large parasols for horseback, but it's great to see smaller versions as well.

Next, I found a picture of something that I was convinced didn't exist in Venetian fashions: a split skirt with a ladder-laced bodice. "Portrait of a Lady" is by Giovanni Antonio Fasolo, it dates from 1565-70, and it is located at the Art Institute of Chicago. And then I also stumbled across a another Fasolo mural that you can see on the right. I know the picture is tiny, but this is the first time I've seen the whole dress (you can find detail shots from the waist up on several other sites), and it looks like she has a split skirt as well. That's pretty cool. I really didn't think this was ever done with a front-laced bodice, but I was happy to discover that I was wrong.

These last three don't have anything to do with anything in this project, but I just thought they were interesting. Here's a Bordone Portrait of a Woman with a Child from a few decades earlier that reminds me a lot of this dress that people always freak out over because there are no ties holding it closed. The two dresses are so similar that it leads me to believe that the Moretto dress originally had a method of closure that was similar to what you see in the Bordone painting, but it's easy to see how those tiny little ties could have been overpainted or accidentally removed with later restorations.

I also thought this portrait by Montenezzano was especially handsome. I love the little stars on her partlet and the embroidery on her dress. It also shows us how those ridiculous shoulder ruffs from later in the century might have gotten started. And speaking of shoulder ruffs, check out this beauty by Paolo Fiammingo. It is a 1590's painting called Dame Veneziane that shows a range of Venetian fashions of women from various stations. What a great painting! Anyway, I hope some of that was useful to somebody out there.

8/22/04
One down, one to go:

I spent most of the afternoon yesterday sewing the cutwork layer of one sleeve onto a backing of hanky-weight linen. And since I'm the type of person who likes to open her presents before Christmas, I decided to try on my single sleeve with the dress to see what it looks like. I still need to line it and figure out how I'm going to attach it to the shoulders, but I was pretty excited to see the general idea.

So here's a few thoughts and suggestions about appliqueing cutwork on the sewing machine. Topstitching on velveteen can be seen from about a foot away or less, but it completely disappears if you are farther away than that. A lot of my stitching isn't perfect, but the high contrast of the design makes my mistakes unnoticeable unless you are specifically looking for them with your face a few inches away. I'm sure A&S judges would turn up their noses at my machine stitching, but I was able to do this in a couple of hours instead of a couple of months, so that's okay with me. I did notice that the topstitching is more noticeable when you have the pile running down instead of up, so you might want to think about that before cutting out your dress if you are going to use cutwork (luckily, mine was already going up). I used fabric spray adhesive to stick the two layers of fabric together before sewing, and I sewed a whole row or area at a time before clipping the threads between the shapes (I clipped on the top of the fabric, but not on the reverse). The darning foot was wonderful for going around curved shapes. It's what you use for free-motion embroidery, and it worked great even though I'm not able to lower the feed dogs on my sewing machine. I didn't put the fabric in a hoop or use a stabilizer - I just held the fabric on either side of the needle and steered it around the shapes with my hands. This is one of those things where "practice makes perfect". My first few rows have some mistakes in them, but by the end of the sleeve, I was free-stitching like a pro.

Okay, back to sewing now. I'm going to try to get the second sleeve appliqued today, and then I should be able to finish the dress by next weekend. The embroidery on the partlet will probably still take awhile to do, but I have two months before I wear this outfit again, so I can take my time with that.

9/21/04
A non-update:

Well, a month has slipped by, and I'm sad to say that I haven't accomplished much since the last entry. The real world has been kicking my butt lately, and I haven't had a lot of time or energy for sewing. I did applique the second sleeve and added the silk linings, but I'm going to have to make some more minor revisions before they are wearable. My original plan was to pin the sleeves to my shoulders with some clay ouches, but the pins keep popping off and I couldn't move my arms as much as I would like. So I've decided to add ribbon ties to the sleeves to make it more secure. It's not as accurate for this specific style, but I doubt if many people would know the difference. Anyway, I hope to get around to that in the next week or so.

I also discovered that my chemise sleeves are too full to be comfortable. I had a feeling this might happen, but I was just praying that I would be wrong. Anyway, I'll either have to alter my lower-class chemise or make a whole new one. Oh well... I just thought this would be a quick and easy project.

9/25/04
Trial run:

I went back and added ribbon ties to the sleeves and tried it on again with my lower-class chemise. It felt much more comfortable, but the ties kept coming undone (as you can see in the picture). But maybe I can knot them or stitch the bows in place or something. I do like the way they look though. So anyway, this isn't the best picture in the world, but maybe you can get an idea of how it's all coming together.

So here are the things remaining on my to-do list:

• Assemble the partlet
• Re-string my long pearl necklace and girdle (I'm going to take the pearls off and replace them with more gold beads)
• Make a decent clasp for my girdle
• Set new stones in my brooch
• Attach the lace sleeve cuffs
• Make the neckline on my chemise square instead of round and add lace

An odd little fact that I noticed about Venetian girdles is that they are almost always made of gold beads instead of pearls. I tried to follow this rule with my first girdle, but I really didn't like the way it turned out. But since my new shoulder points aren't documentable for this decade either, I decided to quit being so anal and make the belt look like I originally wanted. I don't think many people would know the difference anyway. This newer version is more like English girdles, and I used real metal ouches this time instead of the clay ones. Here's a picture. The "ouches" are vintage clip-on earrings that cost me .75 cents a pair. I also added real garnets and pearls to my brooch. It started out with fakey-looking plastic turquoise stones in it, but I just popped those out and glued in the nicer stones. Not too shabby for a $10 flea marker find! I think the total cost for all my jewelry was right around $25.

10/10/04
Finally done:

Well, it's the week before we go to faire, so I guess it's about time that I get this silly dress done! I finally forced myself to finish the partlet yesterday. I ended up just doing simple silk thread stripes, and I'm actually quite happy that I skipped the fancy embroidery. I think that would have been overkill. The ground fabric is a stiff open-weave silk organza, and it is pieced together at the shoulder seam with some insertion-style lace. To keep it from shifting around too much, I decided to stitch it directly to my chemise. This is working really well so far. It keeps the partlet tucked in and keeps the chemise from slipping down below the neckline.

The only other thing that I have to report is that my new best friend Jennette sent me a picture showing a pearl girdle with this style of gown. That's so cool! Now I don't have to feel guilty about my girdle anymore.

And now, check out the pictures. I should have a few more full-length photos after we get back from TRF.