Historical Accuracy VS Knitwear in Period Dramas - Outlander, Emma, Little Women.

[Music] hi welcome my name is helena and i'm the creator of faber network if you are new here i am a i used to be a question designer because what i'm doing today has me a bit confused i used to work in film and tv in in the costume department i have degree in costume design but i mostly worked as a costume supervisor and as a costume standby on set however that's not what i do anymore i am a knitwear designer and an indie hand dyer of yarns so i run faba knitwear which is my business i used to work in costume which had me very confused for a second because the video i'm doing today is i'm going to be looking at period dramas so films and tv shows set in the past that have knitwear in them then give you my opinion on these pieces a little bit on the films a little bit on the costumes but i'm not going to go into a full like question review simply because there are so many other brilliant content creators out there who have covered these films and series that i've found but they don't really talk about knitwear and as i have had and have a fit in each of those career paths and those spaces i actually feel like this is something i have some actual expertise on i am going to look at the knitwear for outlander the tv series for emma the 2020 film for mary shelley and he told women the horror that was the newest adoption of little women i first there are some things that should be disclaimed just in case there's just so there's no confusion when i use terms and such if you follow any other history or costume people on youtube you might already have heard that historical accuracy is not something that we can ever completely achieve today we know what we know based on manuscripts prints fashion pamphlets and magazines from the past that have survived from accounts of diaries and newspapers cassettes and of course remaining historical pieces that have survived through the years but we don't really know pretend that we know a lot about them but not everything would have survived and not everything would have been accurately described it's my boyfriend's birthday and he's not home he's being so flowers i'm going to open this but i can fit my meter i definitely think we should get to enjoy them before he comes home um what was i saying yes historical accuracy we do the best that we can but when i use the term accurate i just mean that accurate in what i have been able to gather and from what others have been able to gather that does not mean it is 100 without a doubt accurate another thing to note is that costume design and historic accuracy are not necessarily one the same the designer or the production in general might not be aiming for historical accuracy and that's fine the job of the costume design is to work with the rest of the production crew so the producers the directors the other departments her makeup set design all those departments and everyone has their ideas and you come together and you create a world you are basically world building that doesn't matter if you're doing a period piece or a fantasy piece or a modern piece you have to create a believable world that these characters would act accordingly in and that's basically the whole job so the costume designer's job is to translate that through the use of clothing if you have a world where the costumes don't fit in but they're meant to it's going to take you out of the story and the other way around as well if you have a gorgeous period piece but they've not chosen the right locations or the dialogues wrong and all these things matter so it's really important to have a good collaboration however the two people or there are usually more producers but the host of people whose opinion matter the most are the director and the producers and a costume designer has to work with them they are working to create these people's vision as a designer you rarely get to do your own vision for things but if you're a big designer like you will hire colleen outward because of her aesthetic in comparison to another designer so that's the main focus of a costume designer you don't get to decide whether or not you should be historically accurate most of the time unfortunately that is decided by other departments and you can have your say and you can argue back and forth about what's important or not but just so that's clear historical accuracy it's not necessarily the goal of each production i'm also going to touch briefly on the more specific job of the costume designer so now we know they have to visually create the director and the producer's view and their vision they have you have to manifest that in clothing and not just clothing you have to do character building because you can't just put anyone in anything that's not going to work you have to put characters in clothing that make them believable characters that translates how they are how their personalities are what they like what they dislike and their ages and their preferences and their interests and also their character arc that's one of the really fun and important bits about costume is how does how do certain characters develop over time and how can you translate that into the use of clothing and that's a really important part of costume design so in pre-production each character as well as the story is analyzed in minutes detail to make sure every aspect of each character has been evaluated every stone has been turned to make sure you can put together the best possible wardrobe for each character and also in regards to the whole world because these characters also need to work together and whether that's by creating divisions or showing unity to certain groups all these things matter you also need to take into account the especially in period dramas the characters are social standing so a wealthy aristocrat will not wear the same clothing as a working person and that also will have a deciding factor in how many changes there are in per character per film and per scene some characters will have loads of different clothing and you can't even keep track of when they change but it's appropriate because of their sexual standing almost now the characters will wear the same thing for two and a half hours and that's appropriate for their character so all of these things mesh together to create the world and the world building that you have to do as a question designer i think you as a viewer should never be distracted by the clothing it should never take away from the story and that doesn't mean you can't have outrageous fun pieces because in some worlds that's completely appropriate just look at bridgeton it's outrageous and it's not accurate but it works because that's the world that they've built and you can also kind of see it in emma which is also one of the films i'm going to be talking about where you have this beautiful accurate world with accent pieces that are not accurate because it helps and aids the story so i think you should my opinion is that you should never be it should never take away from the story and you should never be distracted by it it should just help tell the story let's start with outlander as that's the one set in the earliest historical varies and note for all of these if you haven't seen them and you don't want any spoilers i can't promise that i'm not going to spoil things so spoiler alert for everything i'm not planning on doing any spoilers but i might let slip so watch it first watch these things first if you're interested and you don't like potential spoilers as i said let's dive into outlander [Music] outlander starts with claire a 1940s woman on her holiday in scotland travels through time to 1743. the whole premise as obviously by what i just said is a fantasy setting placed in an actual time period so this is a really fun premise i think because it allows the designer to play with the fact that someone from a different period can bring their tastes and their more modern interests and their skills into completely different time periods and that will affect how they behave how they dress how they style things and i think they did a really good job at this with outlander in general you don't need to go out in public like this i most certainly do i'll have you know i helped design this dress outlander is fun because they actually have a lot of knitwear i'm not going to tell you anything about the accuracy yet but there is a lot before we dive into the actual review of the knitwear and outlander let's have a look at some general history facts about network in the 18th century hand knitting in the 18th century seems to be confined to mostly accessories such as hats mitts stockings and gloves there are some occasional findings of undershirts but not really all that common this is based on texts and imagery as well as some surviving items from the actual periods itself as i said there have been fines of men's shirts called waistcoats from the time which were knitted undershirts both from the 17th and 18th centuries not large of them there are some and the most famous example is charles the first when she watches execution in 1649 also it is said however these were not common as most large garments were not hand knit they were knits on the knitting frame first knitting machine which is was developed by william lee in 1589 there is in other terms not much to suggest that hand knitting was widely popular for garment knitting when most historical evidence would suggest that accessories were by far the more common thing to knit by hand however we don't know that for certain we think that there are some surviving pieces that suggest that they were knit to a very slight degree probably for them very wealthy such as charles the first and we know they had the skills to do this it just wasn't common and it probably wasn't practical because of time after the development of the knitting frame the first knitting machine most knitting most hand knitting i should say where it was either done by the very poor or they're very wealthy as a form of leisure they're very poor because they couldn't afford to machine it so to sum up the 18th century knitting we can say that it was definitely done we have surviving evidence of gloves of mitts of caps of shirts there's a lot not a lot that's taking a bit too far but there is evidence with showing all these things being worn and we know poor people knit it was taught in orphanages being a useful skill and the wealthy knit let's take a look at scotland in particular as this is where outlander takes place according to the book the art of feral knitting um knitting in scotland was such an important part of scottish heritage that whole families and sometimes even villages were involved in making hand-knit garments such as sweaters socks stockings and gloves so we know that hand knitting definitely had an important part in scottish 18 scottish 18th century life now let's have a look at london what knits do we see in outlander cowls shawls and mitts so many cows trolls and mitts we've already established that there weren't all that much garment knitting happening in the 18th century apart from accessories however there aren't all that many shawls and cowls either but let's have a look at the first knitted item that claire is strong wearing and i'm going to look at claire a little bit about brianna i'm not going to go into all the other characters because claire just wears a sandwich knitwear the first icing that we see are in are mitts some hand knit mitts we know that 18th century ladies wore mitts but mostly they were sung together by already woven fabric so there weren't nitmets at least we don't know of any patterns for knit myths from the 18th century however i don't i don't have trouble imagining like if they could knit stockings and gloves they could probably knit mitts fingerless gloves as well because they already used other myths how many times am i gonna say that was i seen her in this picture of this lady in the red dress she is wearing a pair of silk fingerless gloves very common accessory at the time however this is highland the highlands of scotland so silk fingers gloves aren't really going to do it for you the costume design for outlander is terry dressback i'm not sure i pronounced that correctly it's fine uh said that and i have some quotes here in hollywood we don't we want to see cleavage but much of the shooting takes place in cold drafty castles when the leading lady lady and ladies were wearing just a bosom bearing gown she would die freeze to death or be stoned to death as a she and the most important thing for her was not that the questions were authentic but they felt right to the story so knowing this making fingerless mix and fingerless gloves as part of these highland women's costume when you know they had rich knitting heritage in scotland and you know women of the 18th century warm silk mitts and mitts of other fabrics i'm fine with this it's an easy conclusion to draw as a designer it's both practical and it fits there is also a reference in linda bone gardens what clothes were real where in 18th century knitter had an advertisement in a gazette or a magazine where she would remake old stockings into fingerless mitts and that goes to show that it's not that uh that much of a far from you couldn't far for long conclusion to draw that women would wear woolen mitts would they be handing it don't know does it fit the show in the character absolutely claire wears several different myths of english gloves throughout all five seasons of outlander and they range both in style and look most of them are quite chunky they are knit in stockinette garter stitch um and they are quite plain she also has a pair of cabled fingers gloves and those are probably the most far fetched for me for the period um although i think it's a nice homage to scottish traditions of knitwear traditions all in all the myths wingless gloves while not historically accurate based on what we know today they do their job they keep the actors warm they give the costumes a nice layering piece and also texture they give lovely texture to the shots and they are based on garments that we know women wore at the time we just don't know if this material was used and this technique another item that claire wears a lot of are cowls claire has a plethora of cows that she wears in outlander and if i'm not mistaken and i might be because there's quite a lot of episodes and seasons claire and later brianna are the only two characters who wears cowls so i interpret that as these women are not from this time they are cold they know of a more practical way to keep your a higher chest and your throat and neck warm which is cowell's now i looked tried finding 1940s knitting patterns for cows and i couldn't find any but turtlenecks and turtlenecks were definitely a thing in the 40s hoods were a thing and so claire doing some troubleshooting or creative thinking i don't think it's i think it's believable that she could conjure up the idea of knitting herself a cow in the 18th century because none of the other original 18th century characters ever wear them that i can remember so while these are definitely not historically accurate at all they work with the character on the premise that claire has used her time traveller's knowledge to make these herself the one thing that claire s that i do not like at all knitting wise is her little shrug bolero thing in season one when she goes out with gayless and again we could do the premise that claire's used her 1940s knitting skills to make this um shrugs and boleros were definitely a thing then i've not seen any 1940s patterns for these but i have seen 1950s patterns for these and so that's not far-fetched but i just can't get past that other characters would be like they wouldn't know what she was wearing she would be very strange and very weird wearing this weird little loose gauge very very 70s i think valero and that's the worst one for me this early in the series another thing that she wears that's i'm not really i wouldn't really call it cowl but it's not really a shawl it's this little capelet thing i actually like this because this looks very very much like some battery it looks very 1930s 1940s which is appropriate to wear players from little pixie elven looking things were really popular with little hoods and capes so i think this is really appropriate also capes and cloaks definitely a thing in the 18th century so while the other characters would probably be surprised what you're wearing how did you make this why are you wearing it why didn't you make it longer then i like it i think it has fun 1930s 40s references which suits the characters original birth period let's move on to claire's shawls or wraps the shawls that claire is in atlanta are traditionally referred to as sontags not sure how to pronounce it it's one of those words that i've read so many times but i have no idea how to pronounce it which is a type of rap which became popular in the 1860s that's a good 120 years later than outlander and again we could pretend that it's because claire's a time traveler had it not been for the fact that so many other characters wear these wraps and i get it it's and they look great they look gorgeous worn over fitted bodices they look like they belong in the 18th century they just don't and don't get me wrong they wore shorts and they wore wraps they just weren't knitted or hand-knit most these shawls of the time were lace shawls which were very beautiful but not very warm or they were but made from working materials uh woven wool would have been a better use of shorts at the time and claire does have a really nice tartan woven why is this so difficult to say woven sure in much about london and i really like that but i also understand why they opted for knitted shorts because they do give the costumes and the general aesthetic of the series such a nice textured rustic vibe so while not the slightest bit historically accurate they look really good as i said the shorts that claire wears are called a sun tank these were typically you or v-shaped jaws or habits that were draped across the shoulders and that would either tie at the waist or tie around your bust and waist to hug your frame and give you warmth these were typically worn under your coats or cape but over your bodice so with all that said all the references i could find on shawl knitting in the 18th century all said they didn't do it however i did find one reference to a specific type of knitted shawl made in europe in the 18th century some may even say as far back as the 17th century which is the russian oremburg shawls which originated in oremberg which is on the south south of the urian alps and they're this these beautiful hand spun and hand knit lace gossamer lace shorts knit in goats and goats as with mohair today is so warm and these are beautiful handcrafted delicate expertly made pieces that they did export but they would have been incredibly pricey to export so these would have been bought i'm guessing i could find very little on this um they would have been exported probably purely for royalty and aristocrats probably not all the way up to rural highland scotland although i can't say for sure and so i think for this instance for outlander with in the highlands with the rustic rules that they use and the costumes with all these things i think the knitwear helps elevate the costumes and they don't distract from it however they are not accurate the only problem i have with some of them is how chunky they are because some of them are so chunky and knitwear historical nowhere is infamous for its tiny tiny tiny almost like robotic machine like gauge my fingers ache just thinking about the gates that these misses produced oh one item i completely forgot her mid-century knitted jacket at the end of season five what was that completely took me by surprise because as i i think all the other accessories helped elevate the costumes this one did not do that this was a typical 20th century mid-century knit with it was long it was obviously hand knit so it didn't look like anything that could have been referenced in regards to garment knitting of the past it it just looked so out of place and again we have seen claire knitting in the show so you know she's a knitter and again she's a time traveler she will probably have known how to knit garments from the 1940s but other characters would have reacted to seeing someone in the 18th century wearing a mid 20th century knit jacket i also super quickly want to touch on brianna's cow that she wears and i really like this and it's this is not accurate at all but it's something that she either brings with her or gets a hold of very quickly as she enters the 18th century so i'm assuming she made the this in the 1970s herself all in all outlander really enjoyed the network i really enjoyed the costumes in general i love how they played with this time travelers time traveler aspect of these women bringing their own personal styles and tastes back to the 17th century making it practical for them there we know claire for instance had a pair of sip upstairs which is really fun and yeah i think they did a really good job it's not accurate it doesn't really matter because it aids the story and doesn't take away from it the next film in my review is mary shelley mary shelley came out in 2018 and it's the story of mary wollen croft goodwin the author of amongst others frankenstein and the modern name from eugenius she married actually that's not true she met a poet percy shea in 1814 and started a um romantic relationship with this married man out of wedlock so we can already here establish mario shelly was a bit of a bohemian the story mostly takes place in england and switzerland so we know the time and we know the place now it starts in 1940 and then covers her early years this period of fashion and this area in general as long as the regency era where the silhouette was very straight and column like let's have a look at some of the knitwear in mary shelley because they actually have three pieces on mary which is played by el fanning mary's first outfit includes a piece of knitwear that she is seen wearing through a lot of the film and i like this because they didn't have back in the day you didn't have 60 pieces in your wardrobe you had a few and when ever designers think about that and incorporate it into their costuming i really appreciate that i like it so she wears this for a lot of the film under various garments both on its own and as a mid layer it's this nice rustic red garter stitch spencer jacket that looks to be nick from hand-dyed yarn what i like most about this jacket is the ruffled hem at the end that looks like the ruffles you would have on many original spencer jackets shower found from the time and depicted at the time a spencer is a short cropped jacket that ends just at your underbust that fits nicely with the empire waist silhouette addresses of the time they came with or without tails at the back and they could be both long-sleeved short sleeved and have puff shoulders they often came in contrasting colors to the dresses and with no light dresses were very popular at the time and so you have loads of lovely spences that you see today from the time in red and pinks and yellows and blues and browns and they would be the statement piece of your outward worn with a bonnet these outfits these spencer jackets started appearing in the 1790s but remained in vogue until the mid-1820s the necklines range from high ruffled statement necklines to more subdued crew necks two v-necks and even slightly rounded square ones when they were lower they were always worn with the fissu which is a shared bit of fabric that was worn to cover the bust for modesty mary's second spencer is a blue one that also looks to be nicked with hand-dyed yarn this one is also cropped and has a v-neck some reason this one has a much more modern feel to me than the previous one it also has a strange sleeve length i'm i have found one reference picture to a spencer jacket or a bodice um with these elbow length sleeves they are by no means common the most common length was either a short one or a t-shirt length or a short one with a dress underneath or a long sleeve dispenser jacket but i do think as a knitted garment it looks strange the whole point of introducing netware in these films when knisted garments weren't really a thing i'm assuming it's for warmth and that doesn't really do the job when you are cutting the sleeves enough however much i have looked for patterns in references to knit spins a jacket spencer jacket i have not found any so i can't say for sure they didn't exist but i have not found any references to them however as i said with outlander when you take obvious inspiration from the existing silhouettes and cuts and fashions of the time within which you are setting your show and you make a knitted garment both for aesthetic purposes and to keep the actors and actresses warm i'm absolutely fine with it they obviously tried making spencer jackets i can see where the reference comes from and i think it works even though it's not accurate not so sure about the blue one but i quite like her rustic red one the one and last piece of knitwear from mary shelley is horrible it is so bad in this setting it's a light gray cropped raglan pullover yes you heard me and it doesn't work at all i wish they'd have kept it to those two spencer jackets or knit another one this ruined it for me so bad the only thing i can say about that this that's even remotely regency is the fact that it has the right crop it ends just at the underboob but when while the expenses are not historically accurate either they are at least hinting at historical accuracy this no no so to sum up mary shelley knitwear wise i really appreciate the fact that they opted for new wear even if it's not historically accurate because i think it suits mary's character is it accurate not at all would she have worn her hair like that most definitely not but i think knitwell ice at least the first card the first spencer the rust red one i really like the other two i'm not too fussed about and the last one i abhor let's move on to anna which is a jane austen novel published in 1915 so i'm going to assume it's around the same time as mary shelley this is set so also the regency era i can't talk about emma without acknowledging the fact that it's probably the most superb costume drama everything is brilliant the costumes the sets the dialogue the directing everything you can tell it's a team that's really really worked together and pulled together to create the best possible end product that they could and there is netware in this before i dive into the knitwear let me let me just say that the costumes for emma are so accurate they have done a brilliant job they have referenced actual pieces that we have in museums today and made versions of those for emma the character this is next level like nothing compares to the to this this is so good and i know i said i don't care about accuracy if it doesn't help the story but in this case it it elevated it because of the accuracy because everything worked together to make a really believable world and whereas accuracy in outlander wouldn't really have i don't think it would have done the same because it has more of a fantasy premise so i hope you see the difference of why i appreciate them but in their own ways emma so accurate they did such a good job they also took some liberties with the network because there's no evidence of knitted spences in the regency era and harriet is seen wearing a lovely gorgeous red knit spencer when she goes to tea with emma this is a liberty that has been taken however because everything else is so accurate i feel like there's a reason they took the liberties that they did they were very intentional they must have weighed the risks of are we going to use this thing even if it's not accurate because emma's sat there in her beautiful lovely muslin dress and looks so sleek and elegant and then there's harriet who is a questionable upbringing and who is socially quite clumsy and innocent and is drinking her tea imitating emma and she's wearing this red and white gingham dress with this rustic red knit spencer on top and when we know that knitting was something taught in orphanages and the porterhouses it just creates such a nice character divide in regards to endless and harriet's social standing and i think it's really efficient and they also did they knit this to make it look like an authentic spencer jacket it looks like they took the pattern for a woolen spencer and just knit it instead of cut it up in fabric it's so well made and it looks beautiful they're not even hinting at accuracy with this they made i dare say an accurate spencer just in an inaccurate fabric it works all the better because of all the other accuracies there is another knit actually it's not knit another crochet pattern in this garment in ammo and it's also harriet's wearing this it's a real wear from the film bright star and it's a crocheted pastel colored little shrug bolero spencery looking thing it's super whimsical and girly i think it's super cute is it regency not in the slightest but it's so lovely on harriet's it fits in with the birthday party the childishness and again it's it must have been a calculated decision because they didn't take these liberties with many other characters and so all in all i have only good things to say about the way they use knitwear and emma even though it's not historically accurate the last piece i'm going to talk about is the newest adoption of little women i know as most people who enjoy a bit of piri drama little women was not for me and i'm not here to review the film i just want to set i just have to say it i didn't like this film um and i didn't like the costumes um but there isn't it wearing this and there is some actual accurate nightwear in this so credit where credits is due i say first scene where we are showing knitwear in little women is when the sisters are walking together and two of the sisters are wearing the sortings sometimes whatever however it is you pronounce them the wraps the habits the shawls and three of the sisters are wearing hand mitts one sister is wearing a ridiculous ruffled collar let's talk about each of these knitted items first let's look into the habits so both beth and amy wear habits or these wraps as i mentioned in the outlander section these are these became popular in the 1860s and that's when little women is set they were super popular in north america in the 1860s during the civil war so holly fully super appropriate very accurate points for this i also really like how they make them different beth who is the more delicate you know fragile dare i say character and sister has this lovely pink mauve um wrap with the darker purple pink edges and this is a detail that is prevalent in historical references from the time of this line and these details and i think they did a really good job with this whereas amy who is the youngest sister and would probably have been wearing a lot more hand-me-downs than she did in the film this is the only time i think they actually meant this hers is greyish brown and it's just a normal regular garter stitch one it's not very fancy which is appropriate for the time being the younger sister i really really like the fact they are wearing these i like the way each character wears them that's all the good i can say about that but they are accurate they're also wearing mitts both beth amy andrea are all wearing color work mittens now i don't know enough about color work history in the usa to claim anything to offer them about whether this is accurate in the united states but i can say that this type of knitwear and these this style of knitting was starting to gain popularity in both norway and latvia at the time um this looks the style of knitting looks a lot like celebrity selfie mittens which was a norwegian colorwork mitten that was credited to double check might from in 1857 so time wise things are looking really good i wasn't able to find any dates or specifics about latvian colored mittens but i know there is a rich and glorious history of color work missions from latvia probably other european countries and non-european philanthropic countries these are the two that i know of we also know there was a lot of immigration from norway to the north states of the usa during the 19th century so it's not that far-fetched to think that norwegians might have come over brought their heritage and their knitwear traditions and simply continued with their knitting lives in the states so all in all i think this i don't know if this was a thing in the usa in the 1860s i know it was a thing here and all in all it adds up it's i think this is accurate the last bit of nowhere that i'm gonna comment on from little women is amy's ridiculous knitted collar i couldn't find any collars like this from the 1860s i was able to find patterns for hoods and collars from the 1870s and up and there's also this pattern from 1993 which really reminds me of what she's wearing around her neck but i think this was more of a character styling choice than an accurate choice and i think because amy is shown to be more childish she is the only sister this really helps her look she helps show her youth and show her more childish behavior so with that in mind i think it's fine but seeing as the rest of the frame and the rest of the costumes are so chaotic this is like the final drop that makes it bad if you're taking this inaccurate color and placed it on an accurate costume it could have added that bit of character that you saw the success they did in emma so that's my opinion on that collar but the habits and also the myths are from what i was hiding out there historically accurate for the time that's my review and my take on these four series and films i'm very excited to hear what you think if you have any favorites of them if you have if you disagree with me or if you know any other fun films and tv shows with nowhere mostly historical i have a whole list of more recent vintage films so 20th century their shows and series films with knitwear but it's quite fun to see them in an older setting just to be able to do that research and look into it properly and also do the character analysis for each of them because as i said i think you always have to weigh up is it inaccurate does it add to the story liberties are allowed to be taken and when it works it really works as a knitwire designer and knitter in general i really like seeing that wearing film even if it's not historically accurate if it helps tell the story i will see you next time

Channel: Fabel Knitwear

Views: 5,231

Rating: 4.9043827 out of 5

Keywords: outlander, mary shelley, little women, emma, regency, costume, costume design, costume analazyz, outlander costumes, outlander knitwear, outlander knitting, victorian costumes, victorian knitting, little women sontags, litte women costumes, little women costume review, outlander costume review, emma costume review, emma kniwear, emma harriet spender, knitwear design, regency knitwear, 18th century, 18th century costumes, outlander costume knitwear, historical accuracy

Id: ncjHDjpTflk

Length: 42min 29sec (2549 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 14 2021