Happy New Year

We've been having a bit of R&R&R around here over Christmas: rest, relaxation and recreation and as 2010 draws to a close, I'd like to wish you and your families

Happy New Year!

All the best for 2011.

Thanks for reading, and I'll be posting soon...

Terri

Extreme styles#2 Drape

These designs, available from Chicago Woolen Mills in their 1943 booklet should make you give your head a shake! There's a lot of online discussion about drape so this should add fuel to the fire.

Above you can see the basic drape model in full colour along with the description

NOTE: when ordering, observe that these DRAPE MODELS have extra wide shoulders, fullness across chests and in sleeve heads. They tailor best in the softer fabrics.

Not too extreme a look- broad shoulders, nipped in waist, strong and ready to take on the world kind of look.

Then we have these two pages of Extreme Drape Models for Young Men. Interestingly, they come with warnings that you may not order trousers wider than specified in the chart because of the War measures in effect, but wow, I guess the jackets were exempt- maybe they could lay them out with a narrower trouser and use the same amount of fabric as in a regular suit- I don't know.

Quite the silhouette though, don't you think?

I'm out of town for a week so I'll catch up with you later.

Snowmageddon

Wow, there's been a lot of snow in the area although we only received a measly 20cm or so. The picture of the parking meter was taken in London, and the city was basically shut down for the last two days.

The winner though, was Lucan Ontario, just northwest of us about an hours drive away with snowfall accumulation of ............wait for it..........177cm........... seriously.

As I mentioned yesterday, we missed the brunt of the storm.

When the sun came out this morning, I put all other tasks aside, put on my skis and took advantage of the balmy -13C temperature and went out for a little glide close to home. It makes winter more bearable when you can go out and enjoy it.

Extreme styles

I have been collecting reference materials for a number of years now and as I was organizing things the other day I stopped to leaf through some of these catalogues and books.

I try to photograph or photocopy the more fragile examples so I don't have to worry about them becoming more damaged and I thought I'd share some of the things here with you.

We often think of extreme fashions as being something limited to our own present time because we don't often see examples of earlier times.

I wonder what people thought of these possibilities that were available to order in this 1914 Bannerman Tailoring of Chicago catalogue.

Obviously someone used the book as ascrapbook and interestingly they seemed to paste over most of the really interesting fashion plates and left the basic looks untouched- co-incidence? Who knows, but you can see some of this look developing earlier and I think the "novelty" drafts in The Blue Book of Men's Tailoring shows evidence of this direction in fashion.

Enjoy and I'll post more later.

It's all talk

No pictures for today and it has been a while since I last posted. So it's all talk.

We finished up this morning with one last jacket fitting that was delayed and I have been going over the past month's teaching and learning process in my mind.

I think that we made real progress in drafting and fitting the trousers and waistcoats and it's true that Lela had some experience there already. Jackets presented different challenges.........in the drafting and fitting and styling.

All drafts on the page are the equivalent of all talk and no action. You can read things in books and follow written instructions until your head is about to explode with information but it means very little until you actually put it on the body and see if and how it works. (then your head really explodes!)

It is always a bit of an eye-opener for junior cutters. You can tell people that the draft is only a starting point but it takes doing a fitting for that to really sink in.

Our fit volunteers presented us with a variety of fitting challenges. We encountered sloping shoulders and very square shoulders. We dealt with built up athletic backs, figure irregularities caused by the person's occupation, we had a guy with a waist to hip difference of 8" and another with a chest to waist drop of 8"......They were tall and not so tall, stooping and erect postures, hip forward....... the list could go on and on and I think what is a real eye opener is that there was not a single average, totally proportionate model in our group and everyone needed something adjusted -most often there were combinations of adjustments to be made. It was a great learning experience because of these challenges.

On top of the basic fitings, we have to deal with the styling and I think it takes years of practice to "get" the nuances that define the silhouette and the style lines of different periods of menswear. We managed to cover quite a bit of the twentieth century, and I think Lela is off to a good start, but it all takes time to practice.

All in all, it was a very productive if mentally tiring month, and as I have said before, very instructive for me as well....

I'm heading off in a week to another theatre to work with another junior cutter, so I'll be talking even more in the weeks to come.

As for next season, I've seen some of the drawings and I know the shows I'm assigned to so I'll be doing some research into the 1840's and the medieval periods before I get back to my regular job in January.

I'm going to take the rest of the day off to clear my head and get ready for the next week- have a cup of tea and stare at the snow that is still coming down outside my window.

(the big storm has missed us for once and dumped 1 metre of snow just west and south of us)

Cheers.

Further Blue Book thoughts

I was going to title this "final thoughts" but that sounds:

a) too morbid and b) too final- there are always more thoughts.

On the left I have pinned out the excess length along the neckline. It is about 1" (2.5cm). That amount would need to be shrunk in to get the neckline to lay flat against the body. It does create a full chest which is the fashion of the day. I have concerns about being able to shrink that much in with the fabrics we usually are given to work with.

On the right, I have unpinned that dart and smoothed the neckline flat to show you what happens then at the shoulder. This of course throws all the excess fabric from the neckline into the armhole-(sorry, no picture). Not the best look either.

As I have said, I don't use this draft as a basis for my work but I wanted to show what results you can expect to get from it.

I think it is important to understand the mechanics of a draft and then you can make an informed choice about what you would want to use for a project. You may want to use it as is or you may want to adapt or modify it to work for you.

Further, thoughts/modifying options:

This basic draft is shown without a front chest dart, and I think that is a nice period look, but some of that excess in the front neckline could be transferred to a chest dart, which would be acceptable (front darts are indicated in the "novelty vest" section).

You could move the neck point closer to the centre front line, reducing the length along the front edge and opening up the armhole a bit. That would mean less shrinking required in the neck and maybe requiring a little shrinking in the armhole.

Or you could use a bit of both.

Whether you choose to use one draft or another, my purpose in teaching is to look at different systems of drafting, analyse their merits and deficiencies, and to look at the styles of the day.

I try to teach a bit about the mechanics of the drafts so that the student can understand and develop their own framework for drafting and apply it when interpreting costume designs.

On top of all this, just in case you think we've been merrily drafting away just for drafting sake, we've been drafting different period styles for our fitting volunteers and making up toiles and trying them on real live people.

I can't thank them enough for doing this- coming in and being measured and fit, standing there patiently while we fit and discuss their body shape and how to make the alterations required.

Thanks to Steve, Kon, Blake and Matty.

Blue Book waistcoat cont'

Continuing on with the Blue Book waistcoat, you can see that the balance is off . In the top photo the fronts are short and are pulling up causing an excess of fabric in the back armhole, a diagonal tension from mid back to front of armhole and if you can see it, my waistline is tilted upward.

In this photo, I have unpinned the shoulders and pulled the front of the waistcoat down so the tension line disappears and the waistline drops into a more pleasing line. The CF stays on the CF line in doing this. This reduces the excess at the back armhole, and releases some fabric below the shoulder blade which I have pinned (a belt at the back waist would be used to draw this excess in)
I have tried to keep the shoulder in alignment so that I have not changed the neck point position yet. You can see that it has dropped a full 1.5cm (5/8").

If you look at the fronts in profile you can see there is still an excess of fabric in the front neckline that needs to be dealt with somehow. The question is how. The answer depends a lot on your fabric. Can it shrink in enough?

Honestly I would love to get a good wool that would, but it is a lot to shrink in- almost a full 2.5cm (1"), so it seems unlikely. Besides, we're as likely to get something strange like- well, I don't know- lame, or velvet, so another way of dealing with it is necessary.