- 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)
