A Stitch in Time s01e04 Dido Belle

clothes are the ultimate form of visual communication by looking at the way people dressed we can learn not only about them as individuals but about the society they lived in I'm amber Bouchard fashion historian and in the words of louis xiv i believe that fashion is the mirror of history so taking historical works of art as our inspiration traditional tailor linear Michaela and the team will be recreating historical clothing using only authentic methods oh look at that it's changing color in the air and I'll be finding out what they tell us about the people who wore them I'm assuming the King wouldn't be dressing himself oh right and the times they lived in and seeing what they like to wear for almost 200 years this painting was described simply as a portrait of Lady Elizabeth Murray and it was assumed her unidentified companion was a maid only in the 1980s was it discovered that far from being a servant the other girl was in fact Lady Elizabeth's cousin Dido Elizabeth Belle hers is a story that takes us from the slave ships of the Mediterranean to the heart of Georgian high society when I look back through the history of Western art what I'm inevitably confronted with is a lot of faces that look like mine ie they're white so what really drew me to this portrait of Dido and Elizabeth is the fact that it's so unusual to see a picture from this time that depicts a black subject and a white subject with equal status there's something about Dido that I find incredibly human and really compelling and I also think that from the tiny amount I know about her backstory already that it's going to lead us into some much darker areas in the history of fashion and I'm really keen to confront those areas and to explore them further from what can be seen Dido's dress appears both elegant and simple but I'm interested to find out from linea what type of gown it may be this portrait dress wise a little bit of an enigma isn't it it is quite difficult to work out exactly what she's wearing what are your thoughts here there are so many possibilities with how we could interpret that Gorman unfortunately like so many portraits we can't see her back and it's particularly obscured by all these kind of layers of sashes and things in exactly the places where we would look for clues as to how it's constructed and this sort of basket of fruit she's carrying as well yeah do we have any other portraits that we can sort of compare in terms of types of garment that we think she might be wearing yeah there are actually helpfully lots of paintings of 18th century women wearing these more relaxed exotic styles and hopefully they're not all holding something in front of her like tighter is gray so this lady here for example you can see how very loose in cut this gown is it's a simple crossover and I do think that the neckline that Dido's got there with this v-shape can only be achieved in the 18th century really by having a crossover yeah wrapping front this is very very similar isn't it yeah I think that's a real strong contender for how the front would would look if we could if we could see it now some of the reading I've been doing about this portrait describes it as silver and it's my understanding that at this time silver was quite a popular color for wedding dresses wedding dresses would have been a bit more formal than this what kind of fabric do you think this is well I don't believe it is silver I've got a sample here of some silk that has silver thread woven into it and it doesn't drape in the same way that I think the fabric dye dough is wearing drapes it's quite stiff because the only way to incorporate silver into a silk fabric in the 18th century was to weave actual threads of silver so it's it's metal right and although it's a soft metal it still changes the nature of the fabric yeah and I think this is too stiff for what we want to achieve with dyed oh yeah it almost stays into the shape that you're folding yeah it's beautiful and it would make a lovely formal wedding dress but that's what we're doing so I think we should be looking at is satin a silk satin is really a very very typical choice for these kinds of informal robe and wrapping gown and a lot styles yeah I think we definitely want a satin that's a you know very cool kind of ivory possibly or even a light grey which could be interpreted as silver but not actual silver we have very little information with which to piece together Dido's story but what we do know is that she was born in 1761 the illegitimate daughter of captain John Lindsay and Maria Belle an enslaved African woman on a Spanish ship captured by Lindsay at some point in her infancy Dido was sent to live with her father's uncle Lord Mansfield Britain's Lord Chief Justice and one of the most powerful men of his day I'm keen to find out if the portrait can unwrap any secrets of Dido's life so I'm meeting art historian Vicky Coleman at Scoon Palace Lord Mansfield's birthplace where the painting now hangs I've completely fallen in love with this portrait but I'm very interested to hear you contextualise this for me how unusual is this for a late 18th century portraits well in terms of later 18th century British art history this is a really a typical image mainly because we have these two women one with a black complexion one with a white complexion presented more or less as social equals and it's extremely rare to find that on canvas because what we're dealing with in this period is a long pictorial tradition of black servant portraiture in which they're shown as very much subservient to their female mistresses and what we see here is an image from that mid 17th century period which is absolutely typical we have here this black servant on the right also notice how he's looking up towards the female sitter and really he's there to say to you and I the external viewers direct your gaze to her so he becomes a kind of interlocutor for her beauty and so if we then leap forward over a hundred years what we can see immediately is how there's none of that subservience I think this is an image that speaks of things like sisterhood companionship one theory is that Dido has maybe been dressed in clothes that aren't her own to highlight some kind of exoticism do you think that could be the so Dido's dress so what people have made of this and you're quite right is they've looked at the turban and they've suggested that her dress may be indebted to the idea of masquerades which are very popular at this time which are kind of fancy dress parties I'm not so sure but what we can say is that it looks to me to be very shiny and glimmery for a day dress so I think it's unlikely that she's going to be in the poultry yard ordinary wearing this dress I personally am slightly skeptical of the sort of over exotic sized readings of this portrait and lot has been made at the turban mmm the turban was very fashionable headgear at the time I think and definitely due to it being a sort of slightly exotic object but I think that that doesn't necessarily confer on Dido this kind of exotic objectified status and that would also fit in with the style of dress from what we can work out from the actual portrait itself and the fact that it's more dynamic she's not wearing any kind of panties or hoops and her skirts in the way that elizabeth is I find Dido as a subject much more compelling she looks like the one who's fun the one who I want to hang out with the one I want to spend time with absolutely agree I think Dido looks incredibly mischievous actually I'd much rather hang out with Dido well I'm finding out about Dido's life ninya is trying to discover more about the style of her dress what's really frustrating that Dido is that her bowl of fruit and her sashes and her arm are all exactly in the crucial area in the point that we've really tell us what's going on with that because the other possibility that you were playing over back yes that the back might be cut as a loose yes to give it a bit more fullness below and also because that's a fashionable element yeah I know why I don't think it can be upset but I just thought this is this the way that this top edge of a lot of the police is covered up in the 18th century is with a trip which then goes down here and it's the roping isn't it and it's a classic look and it doesn't it doesn't fit with anything else in the cut of that that 12 so yeah I was uncomfortable about that thank you the other possibility is that something like yeah this jacket that's very simple isn't it yeah I'm actually quite loose if you imagine that as full-length and and this gusset here is done expanding out well I kind of had that thought - and I like that I did put that back on - this one oh that's that one yes it's it's kind of it it's nice the back is nice and that then the seams are nice but it the way it hangs down now it's neither one thing nor another that so um yeah doesn't work for me that government is not a classic western garment like her cousin is wearing it is different and I think that's the point then they're making her different hmm so we don't know whether she had that herself or whether it was part of the the painters clothing we don't know anything about it sadly do we we don't know this story that led up to the painting and what her thoughts were and we assume she was put into that to make a contrast but she might have chosen it what's this what this one that is a bed gown do you think that's a possibility it is I think you're gonna have to do another 12 [Music] well we have the new 12 but I really like if this all-in-one yes sleeve I think it's just the most convincing yeah and hers isn't actually huge some of them are very big but the person's cannot be make that a little bit smaller and that but it's fine that's really yeah oh there isn't it with it yes and it really rankles down it must have a little button or something yeah there I think yeah 312 lucky raised by the Mansfield's alongside her cousin Lady Elizabeth died I grew up in luxury at Kenwood House a world away from the experiences of most black people in England at the time si Martin is an expert on black British history and I'm hoping he can tell me more about Dido's life at Kenwood this is you know a far cry from the way that most people in Georgian Britain would have grown up but I would imagine that for a black woman it's especially unusual there was something very particular about Dido situation though it wasn't unique there were other black people particularly people of mixed background who had similar to Dido zone parentage one white male father and usually a black enslaved mother who were lucky enough to enjoy some degree of the luxuries that Dido would have enjoyed but it's true to say that her experiences overall were very different from the vast majority of black people living in Britain at the time and she worked and within the grounds at the home was that usual yet work of the sort that Dido was engaged in low-level household duties looking after the dairy working with inaud Mansfield note taking light accounts these would be the occupations of a gentle woman of the period and perhaps Dido considered herself as such but they wouldn't have been the duties with which the lady of the house would have bothered herself and I doubt very much if Lady Elizabeth would have had anything to do in those domains at all one interesting feature of the likeness of Dido in the painting is that she is wearing both a turban and ostrich feather yeah and although at the time the wearing of turbans had become quite fashionable among some parts of the upper classes it's also a signifier for a lot of young black people in domestic service Dido's life here at home with her family the relationships that they had she was clearly cared for although we know that she was formed on and that she was a great favorite and confidant of Lord Mansfield Dido is illegitimate she did not always dine with her blood relations as they were she is definitely outside family this would have been a very difficult issue just to negotiate socially and culturally to meet others outside the family even within the family it would have caused problems and that would have set her apart I'm starting to get more of a sense of Dido's world but I feel that many of the details of her life is still hidden last time I saw ninya details of the dress were proving equally elusive so I'm looking forward to finding out what decisions have been made this is the pattern it's a very common style amongst various ethnic garments across the world it's it's the idea that you want to use as much of the material as possible have no wastage at all because materials are very expensive and time-consuming to make and it's making the most of the materials as you cut so planning ahead so if you look at this this is the neck it's going to come out of there yeah this is the sleeve and this is the body great and this piece that we cut out of there to make the sleeve it's very cunningly down here yeah to increase the size of the skirt I see the joy of it is because it's such a simple cut all the beauty is going to come from from the material itself it is wonderful I cannot wait to see it Wow see how you could interpret that as silver yeah it does look silvery yeah it doesn't it really does it's a very pale gray but it's it's pure silk and there's no actual metal thread in it so it's going to be ever so soft and draping gorgeous absolutely beautiful when it as one slip yeah it really does it really does this is looking very exciting yes I've done about six using muslin rather than the real silks so here I'm just doing the draping of this line here so would you like to have a go at trying to emulate that yeah noloty you want to pull this back on itself like that okay so and then we'll it will be pins gonna be sort of secured once we've played around with it and draped it half leave then I'll sew it so that you can't see the stitching nice see which will also be helped with disguising it because of the jewels on her turban yeah and so if there are any stitches that can't be helped but to be seen then they'll be covered with jewels right so well that looks fab I love those pleats so I'll just pin it a bit here so that it doesn't move now my instinct is to try to make it a bit more elaborate and use this to create some kind of like fan shape at the side or at the back but that wouldn't be quite actually right no this is quite a subtle little addition I think you don't always need so much accessorizing to disagree so will this all form the lining will we be tucking this in on itself yeah create the lining and then once it's all pinned I'll sew around the outside mm-hmm so it'll be like a proper brim yeah this is fun you can see immediate returns doing this it's quite satisfying I think that's right the pin so we'll just very little written evidence of die days life exists but she does appear in the household account books still held at Kenwood house and I've been given special permission to see them well I'm here in the glorious surroundings are some amazing neoclassical dream that's just a library that died I would have spent quite a lot of time in what I've got here is some of the household accounts and so in here we do get some very small glimpses of Dido's life Dido quarter allowance jiwu October the fourth five pounds so she was given 20 pounds a year paid in quarterly instalments towards the end of the 1780s Dido's allowance was also supplemented by birthday gifts and Christmas gifts as well we can see one here to Dido at Christmas and my Lord Mansfield's order now this one is probably my longtime favorite washing and glazing Dido's bed now what that tells us is that likely her bed was decorated with chintz hangings now chintz was glazed fabric and was very very fashionable at this time as well so it does give us a sort of insight into Dido's world into Dido's life here well the account books give us a tantalizing peek into Dido's home life we get a more tangible insight from the diary of Thomas Hutchinson an American visitor to Lord Mansfield a black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies and after coffee walked with the company in the gardens one of the young ladies having her arm within the other she is neither handsome nor genteel heard enough he calls her Dido which I suppose as all the names she has he knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her I dare say not criminal Hutchinson's attitude highlights Dido's position perfectly she was well loved by her family but is the daughter of a slave in eighteenth-century England she was never going to be accepted as their social equal the fact is that when this portrait was painted Britain's participation in the slave trade was at its height by the 18th century demand for English cotton was booming easily washable and colorful it was becoming the fashion fabric of choice for the middle classes and a valuable trading commodity driving the Industrial Revolution however the great wealth this brought the nation was built upon in slave labor in Britain's colonies to find out more I need some historian Alan Rice so how important to the cotton industry around here was slave produced cotton from America well in the 1780s and 1790s slave produce cotton started exploding onto the scene here so a town like Manchester and its environs becomes a kind of world center of cotton production and that kind of bursts through and helps to fuel what becomes the industrial revolution and how important was the cotton industry for the British economy very very important if you look at 1780 it's two or three percent of the exports from Britain are finished cotton goods by the 1820s 1830s has gone up to twenty to twenty three percent so it's exactly important for the British economy in that its economy also a seventh of the population the working population working in cotton based industries in the mid nineteenth century we we don't tend to think of Britain as have been having such involvement in slavery because with America and still go and visit the old plantations and there's more of a sort of physical legacy but here what what we tend to forget I think is that there's such an economic legacy of slavery the late eighteenth century is that moment when Britain is the most active slaving power Liverpool is going into a frenzy of slave trading and it's the largest slave port in the world so Dido's mother maria we don't know much about her we know she was on a Spanish slave ship and at some point what would life have been like for her well life would have been pretty grim she'd be chained in the hold of a slave ship usually three or four hundred people in a very enclosed space often the women separated from the men so that they're available for the crew and the captain and they'd only been brought up from the from there hold once a day maybe twice a day for exercise and they'd be made to dance at those point to keep their limbs from moving we don't know much about the specific ship that Maria was on we know it was captured by captain Lindsay and that he took Maria under his wing now we know nothing about that kind of relationship other than the fact that it ended up with him having a black daughter with Maria Dido Belle a lot of the millions of black women taken on board slave ships and their immediate descendants I think it's an incredible thing that we have a likeness and a portrait of one of those individuals most of those lives we have we have nothing to remember them by as Lord Chief Justice Dido's great-uncle's one of the most powerful legal voices of the century his ruling granting freedom to an escaped slave James Somerset is considered one of the most significant milestones of the abolition movement in his will as well as leaving her some money Lord Mansfield writes I confirmed to Dido Elizabeth Belle of freedom despite his landmark ruling slavery wasn't abolished in the British Empire for another forty years and no one was more aware of Dido's precarious position than her great-uncle at times learning about Dido has been an emotional experience and I'm looking forward to seeing the gown of this once forgotten vivacious young woman be brought back to life oh my god the iridescent of the silk is just amazing isn't it it's like a hurl isn't it it's really beautiful I feel like I'm about to go to your costume ball in the 1920s I was not expecting that at all I was very skeptical of this idea that she may have been dressed with a specific costume purpose in mind whether it was being dressed by the artist or whether it was the idea that this wasn't her actual clothing but putting it on I feel very very differently about that idea and it's not just that I'm wearing historic clothing that it feels like a costume but it's the drapery and the fact that there is a kind of Orient alized idea I suppose it's very non-functional isn't it that isn't a shawl to keep you warm it's yeah they're to just make but it's also it is very I do wonder how much of an artistic effect ation that surely I mean if we experimented for example with taking it off and I need to see the lovely sleeves as well sleeve it's actually in the painting that the blue is is very subtle it just touches isn't it which is slightly distracting but I think it's nice weather does it feel less fancy dress me now or does it still feel fancy dressy it feels slightly less fancy dressy but I mean it's beautiful the extra length it just means that you can see or see the ruching and you know the way that that would have sort of sparkled in candle light creating something where there are creases shows off the satin to the most it really does it is a very beautiful satin you could just watch it great mmm ours it's quite hypnotic Anna how do you feel about the turban I think it was quite successful actually definitely got that hat like feel rather than a turban yeah there's so much in the painting that you can't see that I think all you could say is it's it's one of the possible solutions and it's definitely a successful solution and a plausible one but it's not necessarily what she was wearing and yet it could have been one of our other theories yeah yeah I do want to just lounge around in this forever I just wish we had a ball to send it to me why do I never have a ball wearing this gown as we've interpreted it has actually changed my mind about my theories around Dido and around what she's wearing in this portrait initially I was really quite certain that she was wearing a version of fashionable dress a version that a dress that was just becoming fashionable you know slightly more informal with these sort of oriental eyes elements to it however having worn the ensemble I'm not so sure that that's the case anymore it did feel quite like wearing costumes that I do still remains tantalizingly just out of reach and in some ways I feel a bit disappointed that we haven't fully got to the bottom of this story I feel very close to Dido and I feel like I've kind of let her down they do feel like it's sort of symbolic of wider issues within history at times especially reflecting marginalized histories that are more difficult to find out about as more work that needs to go into this and I feel like we would get there with Dido I feel like there is more information out there and it will just take a bit more time and a bit more research [Music] you [Music]

Channel: EAH

Views: 406,921

Keywords: 18th century, fashion, fashion history, archeology, dido, english fashion, english history

Id: GSDDJrlJukM

Length: 28min 56sec (1736 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 13 2018