How Coats Were Made In The 18th Century | A Stitch In Time | Absolute History

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- I'm Alice Loxton and I present documentaries over on History Hit TV. If you're passionate about all things history, sign up to History Hit TV. It's like Netflix, but just for history. We've got hours of ad-free documentaries about all aspects of the past. You can get a huge discount from History Hit TV. Make sure you check out the details below and use the code "ABSOLUTEHISTORY", all one word, when you sign up. Now, on with the show. (upbeat music) - 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 Butchart, fashion historian and in the words of Louis XIV, I believe that, "Fashion is the mirror of history." (upbeat music) So taking historical works of art as our inspiration, traditional tailor, Ninya Mikhaila and her team will be recreating historical clothing using only authentic methods. Oh, look at that. It's changing color, and yeah. (upbeat music) 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 though, right? And the times they lived in. (upbeat music) And, seeing what they like to wear. Ooh. (upbeat music) (gasps) (jaunty music) It's no surprise that the earliest painting in the National Portrait Gallery is of a king. It was hugely expensive to commission a portrait, but by the 18th century, rising prosperity meant that more people were able to preserve their likeness. (jaunty music) However, it was still really unusual for people to commission a portrait of their workers. The history of fashion, and also the history of arts largely tell us stories about elite groups of people. If you were wealthy enough to have your portrait painted, you were also, most likely, wealthy enough to be following the latest fashions. But, if I'd been alive in the 18th century, I wouldn't have been dressed like a queen or even like a noble woman, so I'm interested to find out more about the clothing that people like me would have been wearing. That's why I'm so intrigued by this rare, full-length portrait of a hedge cutter. And I'm really interested to see what Ninya makes of it. (bell rings gently) (upbeat music) - Hello. - Come in. - [Amber Butchart] Thanks. (upbeat music) So this portrait is really fascinating. It's unusual in art history and quite unusual in fashion history. What are your thoughts on what is being worn here? - I think there are clues to what's going on. It's difficult to see in the reproduction that we've got. - It's very dark, isn't it, this portrait? - It is really dark. - But you can, just about, like you say, make out some details, like this looks a bit like a mariner's cuff. - I agree, and actually Harriet did this sketch to help bring out some of the details and make it easier to see, and we picked up on that as well. What that suggests is that this coat was once a very smart and fashionable garment. What's likely is that the original person was some generations before, perhaps a yeoman gentlemen, maybe, and he would have passed it down to someone slightly below him in status, and it's probably filtered down two, three, four times, maybe before this man actually got it. - And what are our thoughts on what this is being crafted from? - We think that it's most likely to have been leather, actually. It was both a fashionable fabric, but also more importantly, as far as this hedge cutter's concerned, a very functional fabric. We actually have an original garment here made from leather, if you'd like to have a look. - I would love to have a look. - These actually belong to my brother-in-law. - (chuckling) Okay. - Who is an avid collector of military clothing. So these are actually original Napoleonic leather trousers- - Oh, wow. - Which we can use to help us get an idea about how we might use the material and actually construct the garment. - Wow, these are incredible. - [Ninya Mikhaila] Aren't they? - The other striking thing about the portrait is that the jacket itself looks, kind of, patched together. - [Ninya Mikhaila] It's very striking. - Is that, sort of, years and years of repairs? - Yes, well, you can see that, not only is it patched, but it's very, very tattered. The stitching of the patches is really incredibly crude. - [Amber Butchart] Mmm. - And I think that maybe the hedge cutter himself might have sewn those patches on, as required. - [Amber Butchart] How do the patches figure into this? Are we going to make it with the patches? - Well, what I'd be really keen to do is actually to reconstruct the coat as it would have looked when it was new, because I think it's going to look really quite different from the way it's ended its life, and it would be great to have that illustration of the beginning and what I presume would be pretty near to the end of this garment's life- - Yeah. - So that's what I like to do. - Okay, great. So we get to see it as almost an evolution. - Mmm, yeah. I think that's exciting. I think it's gonna be a very nice coat. (Ninya laughs) - Right. (gentle acoustic guitar music) - Our hedge cutter is something of a mystery. His image has been preserved for over 200 years and yet no one knows who he is. We're not even entirely sure when the portrait was painted or who it was by. I want to learn more about the painting, and so I'm meeting art historian, Florence Evans at Broughton Castle, where the portrait has been owned by the Fiennes family for generations. So here we have it. - [Florence Evans ] My goodness. I knew it was going to be large, but it really is quite monumental, isn't it? - It is. Monumental is a good way to describe it, I think. Definitely. - Mmm. - As a fashion historian, it's proven quite difficult to date this portrait based on the clothing, because we think it's something that may have been repurposed time and time again. Now, what are your thoughts on this, as an art historian? - The aesthetic is harking towards the 19th century. Whoever painted it has experimented and used bitumen in the black pigments. - Right. - And that was quite an innovative and new way of getting a rich, dark tone in your paintings. Stylistically, the way it's been handled, I really do feel that it's from certainly the 1780s, probably the 1790s. The cuffs suggest that it's an earlier date, but you would expect a laborer to have clothes that were passed down and mended and endure over decades. - And is there anything else about this portrait that you think can help us to date it? - If you look at the pipe that he's smoking, now, clay pipe bowls are very easily datable by their shape and size, and in the mid-18th century, for instance, they had a rather than elongated bowl, and here he has a rather chubbier bowl, which makes me think it's later 18th century, and pointing again towards the 19th century. - [Amber Butchart] It's really unusual to have a portrait on this scale of a member of staff, someone who's working here. - Yeah. - Is there anything comparable that you know of? - Well, in 1790, Thomas Barker of Bath did a series of life-size portraits of pastoral figures, which caused quite a furor at the time. - Were people just so unused to seeing working people depicted in this way? - Yes. On this scale, it was very unusual and it would have been startling to an 18th-century viewer, really, when they were expecting to see polite society on their walls. And that's really the first time you see that, and, in fact actually, it's the first time I've seen one on this scale myself, and it really is amazing, as it would have been at the time. - It's great to hear that Florence would situate the painting of the portrait in the late 18th century, because if we are looking at something that was painted in the 1790s, then that really tells us a whole lot, in many ways, about what's being worn here. Ninya and I had already discussed the fact that the mariner's cuff dates from much earlier in the 18th century, around the middle or the 1760s. So, if the portrait is from the 1790s, we really get a clear sense that our subject is wearing a garment that is most likely to be secondhand. Very few people can afford to get these clothes made new. Textiles, clothing, are some of the most valuable things that people can own at this point in history, and we've really lost a sense of this in the 21st century. We're so used to clothing being a disposable commodity. (gentle music) One of the distinctive features of the coat is its patches, but they're causing problems for Ninya and Harriet. - I've made a twirl for a coat from the 1750s that carries a mariner's cuff, so I've drawn the mariner's cuff on. - [Ninya Mikhaila] Oh, yeah. - [Harriet Waterhouse] Very attractive. But I've also pinned on some patches where we can see them. It's rather interesting where they sit because, in the painting, you can't see the shoulder seam- - No, and that's been really bothering me that you can't see the shoulder seam, but I think it's conceivable that the patch that's right there is just masking a little bit because there must be a shoulder seam there. - Yes, of course, but obviously, if you've been throwing your body through a hedge with thorns, that's probably going to be a big point of where- - Well, and also, I'm really struck by the fact that this whole area of patching is exactly where a pocket would be, isn't it? - Yeah, and it even looks like a pocket flap. It's like he's tried to replace the pocket flap, caught it on a hedge, and ripped it perhaps. - Yeah, but somehow, the twirl underneath the patches is really hinting at what's, potentially, a very smart coat underneath. - Yes, if we look at that side of it, you can just see the... - [Ninya Mikhaila] That's lovely, isn't it? - [Harriet Waterhouse] It's got a lovely pleated back. - [Ninya Mikhaila] And I guess he'd have a button up here. - [Harriet Waterhouse] He would, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's actually quite a beautiful shape. This coat is a classic. - It is. It really... Yeah, yeah. I'm going to want to keep this coat. - Shall I make it to fit you? (gentle music) - [Ninya Mikhaila] Let's see how much is in here. - [Harriet Waterhouse] Oh, it's quite a good hide. - So the skin here along what would have been the spine of the animal is the strongest part. - Yes, it's- - So... - It's still got a good stretch to it. - Oh, yeah. - It's nice and thick and you can see the edge there is much puckered. - Yeah, it's much thinner, and also, yeah, as you say, it's puckered and crinkled, so this is where we should actually take things like buttons and- - Bindings. - Bindings. - Yeah. - Facings, things like that, 'cause it'll be much easier- - Yeah. - To sew. You really have to think quite carefully when you're cutting leather, don't you, about which bits you're going to end up sewing in which way? - But there's also the joy that because we're going to butt the seams together, we don't have to allow any sort of seam allowance. It's a very helpful, straight edge along the backbone, isn't it? - It is, although we haven't got enough straight edge to get all four pieces, have we? - We might have, if we're very careful, but this is a good big piece, so we should be fine. (gentle music) (scissors clack on table) - [Amber Butchart] The Fashion and Textiles Collection at the V&A Museum contains over 75,000 objects. Fashion Curator, Susan North is going to show me a garment that could shed a light on the early life of our hedge cutter's coat. So what we have here is a great example of a frock coat. What's the provenance of this? - Well, it's a rather informal style of coat. This one probably dates from about the 1750s, although the style comes in earlier. The first examples that we see show up in the 1730s. - This coat is actually kind of emblematic of the secondhand trade, isn't it? Because there's also a label in here for a costumier. - Yes, yes. - Which is very exciting, I think, to be able to see the couple of different lives that this coat has had. - Absolutely. What we discovered about the 19th century theater, at least in London, was that when you look at photographs of actors in costumes, say, from the 1870s, and they're in a production that's 18th century and they're wearing real 18th-century clothing, and it was probably cheaper to go down to Seven Dials and buy something that fit you, than it was to hire a tailor to make something for you. And of course, this is a time when the actor is responsible for his costume. He's got to pay for it. - And, one of the reasons I chose this portrait was because I was really keen to explore more everyday dress, like something that someone like me, maybe, would have been wearing. Now it's very, very difficult to actually find that out through museum collections. So why do you think there is that lack of working dress? - Most of the fashion museums, obviously, want the glamorous things, so that's part of the bias, but then the other bias is what people save. We tend to save the most expensive things, the most beautiful things. Most working class clothing would have gone through five, six life cycles, getting ever more bedraggled to a point where really the only person who's interested in it is the rag man. Now the rag man buys linen and cotton that's just really too decrepit for anything. He takes it away and they make paper out of it. He gets money for it. Even when it was a rag, there was somebody who was willing to pay you for it, and anything we do have, I would say, really, is an accident. It's benign neglect. Somebody forgot to recycle this. - Lucky for us. - Eh, lucky for us. (upbeat music) - The hedge cutter is such a fantastic character. We really get a sense of his personality in the portrait, so I'm looking forward to seeing his clothing come to life in 3D form. (upbeat music) Now, in the painting, of course his clothing is old, it's dirty, it's used, it's patched, so seeing it as it would have been when it was a brand-new garment is gonna be quite fascinating. It's also gonna be interesting from a practical perspective, for me to have a go working with leather. (upbeat music) It's not something I've ever worked with before so that is going to be quite eye opening. So what's going on? - Well, this might sound a bit weird, but my brother-in-law's trousers have been speaking to me quite a lot for the last few days. They have lots to tell me. - Yeah, right. - Let's see if they'll share any information with you. Looking carefully, I can see that there's very particular seam treatments for very particular areas. - [Amber Butchart] Right. - You see this seam here? - Yeah, this, around here, looks very complicated. - It's a seam called a butt stitch. - [Amber Butchart] Right. - Which you see more normally on much thicker leather, and it's where you need the leather to just butt up one edge to the other. - Yeah. - The way we actually sew the butt seam is that the holes have to be made in the nether first. - [Amber Butchart] Right. - The hole is going through the top and out the side of the leather, out the middle. - Crikey. - Which is why you're then able to, kind of, butt the edges together like that, so the first thing you have to do is use an awl which is this tool here. It's like a, kind of, pointed blade. - Yeah. - And I'm going to push the hole from the side and then slide it out like that. (Alice sighs) And that takes a bit of practice. - Yeah, it looks really difficult. - Yeah, and it's quite easy to tear a leather that's this thin. - Thin. - Gosh. - So, let's try one in the actual sleeve. - I guess, okay. So... Oh. - [Ninya Mikhaila] Yeah, that's good. - [Amber Butchart] Am I going too far? My holes seem to be bigger, and- - No, that's fine 'cause it kind of closes back again. - I'm slightly losing the straightness of the line that you had. - Okay, well. Let's stop there. (both laugh) Would you like to try actually sewing them together? - Okay. - So here I've got one piece of thread with a needle on each end. - Right. - [Ninya Mikhaila] So this needle is going to go in that hole there. - This one, here? - Yeah. - Mm-hmm, now, before you pull too tight, put that needle down. (Ninya laughs) Pick this one up. - Yeah. - So this one is going to go back through that same hole that you've just sewn through. - [Amber Butchart] Ooh. (Ninya laughs) - Yeah, I've done it. - Okay, and then you can pull the two threads away from each other to get the tension and tighten it up. You probably have to pull it quite close to the nether. Yeah, that's it. - Okay. Gosh, that's an awful lot of work, isn't it? To join two bits of leather together. Okay, fun as this has been, (chuckles) I might leave the rest of it to you for now. - Are you sure? - I'm, I'm sure, yeah. - Well, that's nice of you, for us. - Thank you. (both laugh heartily) So, I'm keen to see what you're up to over here. This is very exciting. - Yes, it's nice when you start to get the finished garment coming out. Now, we did debate whether to have the edges just left raw because leather doesn't fray and it would've made sense to just have the pocket flap made without any sort of binding on it. - Yeah. - But- - [Ninya Mikhaila] Guess what happened. (both laugh) - Ah! - Brother-in-law's trousers. - The trousers are speaking to you, too? - [Ninya Mikhaila] They said, "Excuse me, that's wrong." (all laugh) - Yeah, if you remember, when you looked at the edge of the fly flap, it's got a bound edge made with the same leather. - Yeah. - And so, we've done that with the pockets. - Right. - And it's made it much stronger and it just, it looks- - It looks lovely. - Right, doesn't it? - It looks really nice. - Yeah. - [Amber Butchart] Lovely. - So, the binding gets stitched on, as you would with a cloth binding, you stitch on one side and then turn it over and stitch the other side down. - Oh, nice. Oh. - And when you've done that, it's a little bit bulky, so we don't do it with a iron. We do it with a hammer. - Oh, that's exciting. - Yeah, that is exciting, it is exciting. It's quite satisfying because it molds all the bits of leather in together. - Right. - So, I haven't done this one yet, but you can see, where it's sort of folded into the corners, it's still quite big and bulky, isn't it? - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - So if you- - Oh, look! - Just hammer it flat like that, it immediately- - It makes such a difference, doesn't it? - Sits down, doesn't it? - [Amber Butchart] Yeah, really nice. - [Harriet Waterhouse] Do you feel...? - [Amber Butchart] Yeah, go on then, great. You can see it sort of flattening out, can't you? That is exciting. - It is. - It's really good fun. - It's a quick result. - Yeah. - It's immediately- - Oh, look at that. (hammer bangs on table) - That's so great, it's- - That's lovely. - [Ninya Mikhaila] Is that flat enough, Amber? (all laugh) - Sorry. All of the effects of ironing, but much more fun. - Yeah. (pensive music) - Not only do we have very few portraits of working people, but we have even fewer surviving examples of what they wore. But what we do have is an amazing collection of 18th-century, everyday textiles from here at The Foundling Museum. (pensive music) What we are seeing here are records of children, often babies, who were left at the Foundling Hospital. Much of the time when they were left, they would be accompanied by a textile token. This could be part of their mother's clothing or maybe a specific textile, but the purpose of it was so that if the mother found herself in better circumstances, she could return and identify her child by this textile token. "25th of June, 1764, female." Now, what we can see here is a beautiful example of an 18th-century printed cotton textile, but then stitched onto it, on the back, is this heart shape on cardboard, and it says, "Ann Smith was born January the 4th, 1764." John Bedford, Anna Chamber, Elizabeth Hoadley, Susan Larrett, (voice echoing) Sarah Henley, Catherine Thomas, Frances Summers, Charles, Mary, John Payne, Anne. (names fades out) The collection is hugely historically important. What we can see here is that a lot of printed cotton textiles, which were becoming more and more fashionable as manufacturing techniques improved and enhanced, these replicate the embroidered patterns that you could see, at this time, on very expensive Spittlefield silks. So this is almost like the equivalent of the high-street designer knockoff. We're used to associating fashionable dress with court circles, the aristocracy, throughout history but now, we're really beginning to see that members of the urban poor are able to start engaging in this fledgling consumer society, as well. (pensive music) From a historian's perspective, this collection is just absolutely invaluable. What we're left with here is about 5,000 textile swatches, and it's now the largest collection of everyday, 18th-century textiles that we have in the country. From a human perspective, it's actually a very difficult collection to look through. Just the hope that is bound up in these. Less than 1% of mothers were able to return and reclaim their children from the Foundling Hospital, but what we can see here is that so many of them really had the belief that they would be able to come back. (pensive music) (gentle music) While cheap printed cotton has meant that working people had a choice of fabrics for the first time, our hedge cutter was looking for function rather than fashion. - So, we've been working with this leather and discussing how soft and pliable and beautiful it is and actually questioning its defensive properties, so I thought I'd come to the back of my garden where I know there is a really viciously spiky rose, and I'm just going to see whether it actually tears if I give it a good go on this spikes. So let's see. Oh. (birds chirp) I'm gonna pretend we're really getting into this hedge. Oh. Right, so we can see there's lots of scratch marks, but nothing like anywhere near tearing, which is really interesting. It's still really intact. You can imagine that after repeated days and weeks and months of going in and out of hedges, you might get a particularly vicious one that would finally go through a very worn patch, but that's impressive actually, and what's happened is it's actually broken off the tops of a lot of these thorns. The leather has done more damage to the rose than the rose has done to the leather (chuckles) which is really interesting. (gentle music) - So what I'm doing here, I'm attaching my pre-covered buttons to the front of the coat so that the pocket flap can be fastened. (gentle music) The base of the button would have been either horn or wooden, so I just put a circle around, gather it up, and then stitch in place. Like with anything, your first button is always the worst button and then you get quicker and also better. Luckily, my worst button isn't terribly chunky, but you can tell that it is chunkier because it sits on one side rather than central. (emotional music) - [Amber Butchart] So now it's the moment of truth. Having lived for so long with the shreds and patches of our hedge cutter's coat, it'll be intriguing to discover what it would have looked like in its pristine state. (emotional music) (Amber gasps) Oh, look at that. Oh wow, look at the back. Ah, the back is amazing, and also, just that particular 18th-century men's shoulder, as well. It doesn't have any of the squareness that we associate with men's jackets today, does it? It's a much rounder look. It's, kind of, interesting because it shows how our ideas about sort of manliness and masculinity changes, doesn't it? I'm just so surprised by how soft it is already. I thought it was something that would need to be worn in but it's actually really easy to move. I was impressed how thin the leather can be and still do the things that we wanted it to in a defensive way. - Oh, it's absolutely beautiful, isn't it? I remember hammering some of these, yeah. - [Ninya Mikhaila] Yeah, I love those mariner's cuffs, though. It's just such a great detail. - It's a really great detail, isn't it? Really great detail. - This leather, when new, has this kind of bright, soft, yellow, light color, which we don't see in the portrait and this kind of leather, over time, being outdoors in the sun, getting oil from hands, and stains and everything, would have become much, much darker. - Yeah. - So give that another 40 years or so, and the color, the tone of it would change quite a lot. - Well, I think that just adds even more weight to this idea that it was definitely a secondhand garment, doesn't it? (emotional music) - I love the movement when you swoosh. - I wasn't expecting it to be so swooshy. (all laugh) I must admit, I thought there would be no swoosh, at all. (all laugh) I'm pleasantly surprised. I feel like I don't want to take it off. It just immediately does become like a second skin and you could kind of do anything in it. Coat for life. - [Ninya Mikhaila] A coat for life. - [Amber Butchart] A coat for many lives. - It's very now. - Yeah. (emotional music) I really wanted to investigate the clothing of working people, clothing that regular people, the majority of the population, would have been wearing. Seeing this coat in the flesh has been invaluable because it's absolutely reinforced our theory that this is a secondhand garment. The fact that this likely didn't come new to the hedge cutter is really clear when we see it. It's an exquisitely-made coat. It's unlikely that a working man would acquire something that's such a light color that would immediately get very, very dirty, and it just feels very elegant to wear, as well. This is something I would totally wear today. It's really very dapper, indeed. (emotional music)
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Channel: Absolute History
Views: 48,220
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Keywords: history documentaries, absolute history, world history, ridiculous history, quirky history, fashion history, historical fashion, historical costuming, 18th century, historical sewing, 18th century fashion, fashion history tiktok, georgian era, fashion history documentary
Id: dsipcSoWSBU
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Length: 29min 0sec (1740 seconds)
Published: Fri Oct 15 2021
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