Illustrated entry describing the 1880’s (most likely) chocolate brown dress jacket

Right at the outset, please accept my apology for my poor camera skills.

While at the Vintage Expo last month, I picked up a couple of study garments. I found it amusing that on both items, the seller mis-identified them. It just makes me wonder how many vintage clothiers really know their fashion history. Not that I’m like uber educated there, but at least I can narrow it down to the general century. *chuckles*

In the case of the brown silk jacket, the seller had is labeled as Edwardian. That’s, roughly speaking, early 1900s. Eyeballing the garment, I think it’s made for a modest bustle, or at least a woman with a huge butt. heh

The material itself is in excellent condition, though of course it does have some spots on it and one section on the waist that looks a bit worn. It feels like a silk or a silk blend of some kind. No, I’m not going to cut off a piece for burn testing so this guess is as close as I figure I’m getting to what the fabric really is. The color is a rich, dark chocolate brown, though my really shoddy camera work makes it look more coppery in color.

Here’s another one of the front of this piece, while the jacket is wearing a pillow.

As you can see, the center front and the top side of the cuffs is embroidered with a floral pattern in a coarse thread with a slightly darker shade of brown than the jacket itself. The entire embroidered sections are bordered by a thin piping. It was originally closed up the center front by visible buttons, though they are long gone by this point. Not a single button remains on the garment, so perhaps they were cannibilized for something else at some point.

When you look into the bodice, there are 3 hook-n-eyes right at the stress point of the waist. It was also interesting to note that on this garment all the structural boning was attached to the open hems. One side of the bone channel is sewn down on one side of the hem, and the other on the other. Looking inside this piece, there’s a lot of hand sewing going on here. Unlike the other study garment I purchased at the time I bought this one, this one is not pinked but rather all the edges have been “sealed” with an overcast stitch, while all the boning channels were put in with a tiny running stitch. No stitches, save the embroidered ones, are visible on the outside of the item, and even inside most all of the stitches are ultra tiny.

Here’s a later picture, and the colors in this are more accurate to the true richness of the colors in this piece. This image was taken with half the jacket closed and the other half open, so you can see the pieces. There are 4 short bones per side, 3 in the front and 1 on the side. Interestingly, the first seam running down the side of the back, just to the inside of the side seam, is taken in considerably — 3 different times no less! It looks like this is the seam that is used to actually get the snug fit when wearing the corset. You can see this adjusting seam with its multiple take-ins very clearly in the above photograph.

The bottom edge of the garment features the same tiny piping that lines the center front and the cuffs, but attached to the bottom edge are what I know as pecadils – the little square flaps of fabric so vogue in the Elizabethan period? They may have another name by this time, but I don’t know it. I don’t know how they were accomplished in the earlier period, but this late 1800s example features a length of material folded back on itself and pressed. It looks like they took a 5″ strip of material, folded it in half width wise (for a 2.5″ width), hemmed it, then folded it in half length wise and put the open ends of the fold into the seam along the bottom. When I run my fingers through these loops, the silk material goes all the way through, giving the material free play and fully mobility.

The cuffs are embroidered and edged in the same manner as the center front. The style of embroidery looks like a very simple straight stitch with the stitch running from one edge of the shape to the other and back again. No couching, no knots, no .. nothing. Just a very simple but masterfully executed embroidery.

The cuffs are edged with a square pleat.

You know, looking over this thing in further detail, it looks as if the entire thing has been hand stitched, but by someone who REALLY knew what they were doing. I can barely see these stitches, and I see tons of references for this time about tiny stitches being the hallmark of a truly skilled embroiderer — not just in terms of the “embroidery” but also in terms of the garment construction. I’m beginning to think I’ve gotten a much better deal on this garment that I originally thought!

Another truly nifty thing about this garment is the treatment they’ve given to the center front bottom. You can see the whole lower part of the center front in the images above. The pecadils here are wider, matching the width of the embroidered part. Under the fold of fabric that makes up the pecadil, they’ve added a longer length of unfolded material but it was given the same treatment as the folded ones were, almost as if this band was merely left unfolded. Anyway, the fringe was made by pulling out the horizontal threads, then tying the now free vertical threads into a series of knots. No fringe was added to this garment, it was made out of the fabric itself. Well, I thought that was really cool anyway.

And now for the back of the piece… Like the front, and common for the time, the center back extends down lower than the hemline of the rest of the jacket. In this case, they’ve added a bow on the ass, just in case the bustle didn’t make the woman’s butt look large enough on it’s own. (Can you tell I’m really not a fan of the bow in this particular location?) The tails of the BOW feature the same fringe treatment as the front of the jacket, but the tail of the jacket itself is simply edged with piping like the rest of the bottom edge.

Typical for the day, the back is made using a center seam, flanked by curved seams coming down from the arms. In this case, there’s that adjustable seam mentioned above running between set of seams and the side seams.

I mentioned above that I thought this piece was made for a bustle, and as such it definitely wasn’t Edwardian but squarely Victorian. So instead of the 1900’s, I think this piece is from the early 1880’s. Why do I think this? The back of the garment only hangs correctly if the manequin (in this case set of pillows) has one heck of a butt or is wearing a bustle. Since my pillow is sadly lacking in the butt department, and I don’t have a bustle, I had to make do with another pillow. It’s not a correctly sized pillow, but it’s close enough. You can see below, if the pillow was sized correctly, the bottom hemline would actually be straight around the back.

So there is my very first Victorian study piece. I can only imagine what the skirt might have looked like. Well, I hope this helps someone else somehow. I know I’ve learned a lot more about it by doing this entry. *grin*

Related posts:

Drawn-thread embroidery pillow case Bodice of the white and turquoise 1850/60’s dress Brown and Turquoise Fairy Pillow Skirt of the white/turquoise 1850/60’s dress