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Finding Your Inner Courtesan
Like I mentioned in the previous courtesan-themed diary a few weeks ago, I'm a late comer to the whole courtesan phenomenon. When your true love is later Tudor and early Elizabethan, nothing much can tempt you away from it. However, there comes a time when you need to branch out a little and sample other styles, just for the fun of it. 6-20-04 This won't be a diary of the making of this gown from start to finish. I made the decision to work at my own pace with this outfit, so I wouldn't be hampered by the whole diary process. What people may not realize is that it's hard to sew and keep an up-to-date journal of the process. I didn't want to start yet another diary and then get distracted away from sewing by the pressures of having to keep the diary updated and thereby ensuring that the costume would stall and the diary would remain unfinished. So, I just went ahead and got far enough along in the sewing process before starting this page. Anyway, the inspiration for this gown is mainly from the above portrait, Titian's "Girl In White". This seems to be a popular source of inspiration for many other costumers doing this particular style of gown, but it also has become evident that there's not a lot of variation in clothing style in Venice during the years of 1550-1570. They seem to stick pretty closely to one particular style of sleeve and either a front opening, ladder laced bodice or what is presumably a back or side-back laced bodice. That kind of uniformity always makes things stressful for me, in that I don't want to be percieved as "copying" another costumer's work who has done an outfit from this particular region and period. At any rate, I decided to chose a very distinctive fabric for my gown, partly to create a bit of individuality and partly because I am unable to resist the power of 100% silk jacquard. The Fabric:
The history of this fabric goes back over a year ago. I made a random trip to Calico Corners at some point in 2003 (can't remember exactly when) and discovered an absolutely gorgeous silk jacquard that was $50/yard. Being the broke college student I am, I walked out of the store before I died of sticker shock, but that silk stayed tucked away in the back of my mind. I decided to save a little money here and there for the possibility of one day owning this stuff. Well, fast forward to last week when I had a wild hair to return to that same Calico Corners store and see if the fabric was still there. I searched high and low for it and finally found the bolt tucked in the back along with other "bolt ends" and marked 50% off! Okay, so $25/yard is still pricey, but I didn't want to let this stuff go a second time. I bought the bolt, the entire 6 yards and laughed my arse off the whole way home. People passing me in their cars must have thought I was insane. Maybe they're right, but I had my silk. The Bodice
Having gotten the fabric of my dreams and the basic style of outfit I wanted to recreate, I used a basic pattern I'd drafted up according to my measurements for the bodice. It's lined in a beautiful black cotton twill called "china twill". Love the stuff! It's boned along the front opening edges and another line of boning is angled beside it for reinforcement. The boning presented a small problem, in that you need to anchor all layers of fabric around it to The lacing "holes" are made from heavy-duty hook & eye tape, using just the "eyes" on either side. Another small problem has cropped up, one that I'm not sure I know how to solve. It deals with lacing tension: You can clearly see in the above photo that my ladder lacing is uneven. This is something I've noticed in other ladder laced bodices, but is not apparent in period portraiture. So, either we've got the ladder lacing thing down wrong, or the artists are telling little white lies. Having played around with the tension in the bodice, I've noticed that at the top and bottom, where the tension is the greatest, the lacing is the most skewed. At the waistline, it's the most parallel. I'm trying to convince myself that this is no big deal... Of all the times my OCD is the most obvious, it's when I'm costuming, unfortunately. I want everything to look as perfect as possible, so we'll see if my common sense will ultimately prevail over my anal retentiveness. The Skirt 
I think anyone who is familiar with this website knows by now how much I hate sewing skirts. This one is no exception. Despite the fact that it's a simple rectangular skirt, with no more than three yards of fabric in the hem, I managed to do enough screw-ups on it to last a life time. First I cut the lining too short, which required a rethinking of the pattern that ultimately made it a yard narrower than I'd wanted. Then, I miscalculated the width of the outer fabric to the lining fabric, so that the lining fabric was a full 3 inches wider. After all that, I discovered that the whole thing was still too short, so I added a four inch wide gaurd of black cotton velvet at the hem, partly to act as a dust catcher and protect the silk, and partly to add about an inch of length to the skirt. That solved, I did small cartridge pleats and sewed the skirt directly to the waist of the bodice.
8-4-04 The rest of this diary is written in retrospect. At the two week mark, I abandoned almost everything else in my life that wasn't directly involved with sewing and hunkered down to finish all of my projects before it was time to leave for Wisconsin. Hence, the lack of updates.
Now, remember how I was having some issues with the ladder lacing being uneven? Well, Jen Thompson came up with a brilliant solution that worked perfectly to keep the lacing parallel. She discusses it in her Venetian Dress diary so I won't belabour the point any more. Suffice it to say that it really does work. But it also meant I had to take out the eye tape I'd put in originally and hand stitch four rows of grosgrain ribbon down before I could test it out for myself. ;) The chemise (or camicia, in this case, I suppose) is from white habotai silk. The neckline is a wide, scoop neck gathered and stitched into a sort of square-ish shape. The cuffs are built into the chemise sleeves. No great shakes there, but I thought I'd mention it to be thorough. The jewelry I wore with this outfit is the same as what I wore for the Norris Gown. It's nice to have interchangable accessories. ;) My hair is done with two braids of fake hair, wound around my head and disguising my shoulder length hair. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Fake hair is the way to go. Even though I'm in the process of growing my hair out again, I've come to appreciate the fact that my natural hair won't do what fake hair will. Pretty much no one's will, for that matter. So, you want to see the finished product? Click here!
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stabalize the opening for lacing. Usually, in the case of back opening bodices, I rely on the lacing holes to provide this anchor around the boning, which saves me from having to top stitch along the inner edge of the boning. With front opening bodices that don't have eyelets worked directly into the fabric, such as this one, the top stitching is necessary. Thankfully, Titian came to the rescue and provided enough evidence that this top stitching method was used back during his time as well. I top stitched around the boning by hand, using black silk thread. I was careful to make small stitches, but you'll notice that the end result bears a striking resemblence to the portrait. 
So, where was I? When last I wrote, I had yet to start on the sleeves... They were easy. Simple, basic straight sleeves with a back arm seam. At first I had them attached to the bodice at points, secured with 12mm glass pearls and white silk habotai pulled through the spaces. However, I wanted to do something a little different, so I removed the pearls and the silk poufs, and made a set of shoulder ruffs from silk organza. The ruffs were then sewn between the shoulder of the bodice and the sleeve head. It was a really bizarre look, but then again, courtesans had some bizarre taste. 
I then figured I'd need a partlet of some form. Again using silk organza (I'd bought a huge roll of the stuff from Dharma Trading Co. for ridiculously cheap) I futzed around and came up with a workable pattern, which I then proceeded to hand sew. Organza is a fussy fabric to work with on a machine, but by hand, it behaves nicely. I then stiched down some gold lace I'd had hanging around for years and years, to give it some sparkle. Once I'd put it on under the bodice, however, I realized that the bodice shoulders were set too widely apart and the edge of the partlet showed. So, I did what any sane person would do and stitched the partlet to the bodice. It made getting in and out of the dress more difficult than it had to be, but it solved the gapping problem.