Diario
Del Vestito
Ginevra's Dress Diary
A Re-Creation of
Beatrice d'Este's Dress as Depicted in the Pala Sforzesca, Milan
(c. 1496-97)
© 2003 Karen Lee. All rights reserved.
July 28, 2003—It Begins!
I have been intrigued by this dress since I first saw it, a close-up in the book Renaissance Dress in Italy 1400-1500. As that was a black and white image, you can imagine my surprise when I saw a color copy of it! Bright yellow, blue and black, with peach ribbons! Tastes in colors have certainly changed.
For the past couple of years, I have been collecting materials to make a version of this gown. I have decided to use a cream-colored silk for the background, and blue and dark green cotton velveteen for the stripes. The ribbons will be a bright green.
Yes, that's right, I'm going to create the striped embellishments. If you look closely at copies of this painting, the blue stripes definetely are painted with a different texture. Alison Cole, in Virtue and Magnificence, Art of the Italian Renaissance Courts, writes, "A surviving document relating to the Pala Sforzesca asks for the painter to supply the duke [Ludovico Sforza, Beatrice's husband] with a detailed description of the way he intends to treat the subject. In particular, the writer wants to know how much gold and costly pigment will be used and what details of the ducal family's garments will be included. Beatrice's rich beribboned dress, with its alternating bands of gold and deep blue and black velvet, together with her braided and bejeweled hair (hanging in a long pigtail encased in cloth down her back) reveal her as a figure of high fashion in the latest style alla castellana (from Spain)."
Also, Jacqueline Herald, describing the dress in the aforementioned Renaissance Dress in Italy, says the "dress is decorated with liste" - liste she defines as "a strip of cloth applied to a garment to give a bold striped effect..."
I've elected to use cotton velveteen, rather than silk velvet. Most silk velvets are rayon pile with a silk backing, and they tend to be expensive. The rayon will likely make the fabric difficult to work with for my purposes, that is, cutting strips and sewing them to the base fabric. I also happened to find a great bright blue velveteen at a going-out-of-business sale at a fabric shop a few years ago, so, velveteen it is!
There are no extant garments from 15th century Italy, according to Dressing Renaissance Florence. Therefore, all our attempts at re-creating the fashion are speculative. (I know there are some tailors' books out there, but the ones I know about are from the next century.) From looking at the painting, it's clear that the garment does not lace in the front. So I'll be making a side-lacing garment. Side-lacing gowns can be seen in various paintings— as soon as I find my Ghirlandaio book, I'll be posting at least one example. The back will be a V shape at the top; the waistline will be near but still above my natural waist. (I should add here that my figure is nothing like Beatrice's. Her gown looks to be at about her waist. Since I'm tall and have a long torso, raising the waistline slightly will keep my re-creation in proportion to the painting.)
Soon I hope to have available a pdf of the worksheet I use when making this style of bodice. Later this week I'll actually cut into the fabric!
August 10, 2003 — Cut It Out
Cut out the bodice front and back, interlining, and lining. I found a bit of off-white silk dupioni that I thought I'd use for an interlining. However, it's a bit wrinkly and the wrinkles are showing through on the front of the bodice pieces. Lots of ironing seems to help, maybe I can get it in shape. I want to use as many authentic materials as possible in this project. I've got linen, but that doesn't seem to have much body, and the bodice will need extra support to handle the velveteen applied stripes.
I've also decided to line it with the same fabric as the gown, a cream-colored silk twill fabric.
As promised, here is a PDF of the worksheet I use to draft my bodice pattern. It is similar to the directions over at Italian Dress of the late Renaissance (1470-1540) , which is an excellent site.
August 13, 2003 — Little blue fuzzy bits
You probably can't see them in the picture, but the turquoise velvet leaves little pills all over. I finally got the dupioni interlining smooth. Then I cut a strip of velvet 3 7/8" wide, using my rotary cutter and Omnigrid ruler. I highly recommend Omnigrid rulers; I have them for quilting, but they're perfect for pattern drafting and such. I have a bias tape maker that I thought would be great for making the stripes. However, it was designed for calico, not velveteen, so the strip of fabric got a little wrinkled and was difficult to feed through the thing. So for the rest of the strips, it looks like I'll have to press them without any help.
It just hit me, when I started pinning the first strip of velvet to the back, how very accurate and careful I need to be with these stripes! And this is why I'm not starting the hand sewing of the first stripe tonight! Looking at the picture, the stripe looks uneven at the top, yet it isn't as I've measured it a few times. Hmmmm.
August 14, 2003 — Another Way?
Via Live Journal, Jen Thomspon (of Festive Attyre fame) suggested that I piece the fabric, rather than sew strips on the base fabric. At one point when I was planning this project I thought about this option, eventually deciding not to as I feared it might waste fabric. Now I'm reconsidering the notion. It would be faster, allowing me to spend more time on hand-sewing the actual garment together, as well as get to the accessories, shoes, etc.
Will Ginevra change her mind? Will the dress be completed in time? Tune in tomorrow...meanwhile, I leave you with an image of a side-lacing gown, a detail from Ghirlandaio's Scenes from the Life of John the Baptist.
By the way, there are some cool costumers on Live Journal!
August 18, 2003 — Bananas in Italian Ren
After some thought, I have decided to piece the fabric for this gown for a couple of reasons. Time: I can spend more time hand-sewing the garment and working on accessories. Neatness: I think the end result will look much better than if I sewed the strips onto a base fabric. I just kept having visions of the strips not going on straight. Have no fear, the front and backs that I have cut out of the silk twill can be used as linings. All the seams from the piecing will likely make the fabric stretchy, so extra lining will help. I'm also wondering if I want to line the skirts, this is something I usually skip because of comfort concerns (extra lining frequently = too hot!).
So I'm making fabric, cutting strips with my rotary cutter and piecing them together with the machine. And, as I'm ironing the fabric, I'm struck by the thought that the fabric I'm making looks like the pjs worn by those wacky "Bananas in Pajamas". Well, at least my stripes have two colors! :) I'll post pics of the fabric shortly.
As someone who also quilts, the gown shown in the portrait of Elizabetta Gonzaga by Raphael has intrigued me. If this project goes well, maybe I'll try her checkerboard dress!
March 9, 2004 — we now return you to our regulary-scheduled program
What happened? Well, after a lot of soul-searching, I decided to apply for grad school (English). That required me to study for the GRE, write essays and analytical papers, etc.
But something else was keeping me from continuing work on this garment. At some point, I started thinking that I should construct this outfit by hand rather than by machine. I thought that maybe I should get "hard core authentic" in terms of construction.
While I thought this would be the right way to go in terms of authenticity, the idea put me off. I usually use a combination of hand and machine sewing for my costumes anyway, so I wasn't afraid of the construction technique. What it came down to was, this project is about making a dress that very much resembles the painting in question. I'm already having to make a compromise in terms of creating my fabric by machine, so it seems silly to suddenly switch gears and change to goal to one of process. The end justifies the means, in other words. Process vs. finished product. Hopefully I am making a little bit of sense here.I would like to make a garmet completely by hand one day, out of very authentic materials. But that is another goal.
I hope to cut out the bodice shortly. Sorry to keep you waiting! Real life cut in for a few months there.
