Wednesday, August 31, 2011
When making an 18th century dress (or any historical garment before the advent of synthetic fabrics) you have essentially four options: wool, silk, cotton, and linen. Of course, the most common of these today is cotton. But most cotton isn't appropriate for 18th century clothing because of the print. So what cotton prints are appropriate?
I did some research. All the gowns in this post are cotton.
First we have the most common kind of cotton print. White or cream background with some sort of floral, viney pattern.
From UK Fashion Museum
From Meg Andrews
From Historic New England
These are really the quintessential cotton gown. Some of the patterns are more dense but follow the same basic principle:
From LACMA
And here is another example of the floral-on-white pattern:
From MFA Boston
There are other floral prints that aren't so viney but are more spaced out. Prints like these are easier to find these days. These prints remind me of a garden tea party.
From the V&A
And there are also some ridiculously big floral splotches on white, like these two:
From LACMA
From the Met
That first one is a little ridiculous! It's like, neon fruits. Almost graphic! Also, check out the border print on the second one.
Then we have stripes. It appears that stripes, when used on cotton, were more for work dresses or for middle- to lower-class gowns. You probably wouldn't see Marie Antoinette at a ball in a cotton dress of any print.
This gown is the only cotton striped gown I could find online.
From the Philadelphia Museum of Art
It's hard to tell, but it's got tiny blue stripes all over. The pattern is: wide white stripe, narrow blue, narrow white, narrow blue, wide white, etc. The page says that it was a middle-class woman's gown.
Finally, there are some surprising prints that don't really fit into any of these categories. This is the weirdest 18th century dress I have ever seen.
The print looks way more 1840s-1860s to me than 1780s! Here is a close-up of the fabric;
Weird. But it's comforting because I can so see this being in a store today. These are from the V&A.
So, you ask, where can I actually get a moderately accurate looking fabric to make a cotton gown out of? There are online stores that specialize in that sort of thing.
I haven't personally ordered from any of these so I can't really tell you which are good.
Some other articles on the topic:
(She has fabulous articles on everything 18th C.)
