- Halloween fast approaches, unless of course you are
watching this back in January, in which case I do not care. Halloween is perpetually approaching, whether you are looking to
put together a historical or historically inspired
Halloween costume, or whether you are interested in adopting more historical elements into your everyday
wardrobe in the form of, as we call it, history bounding. I thought it would be
fun today to sit down and have a look at some images
of modern dress garments, how they can potentially be restructured or refashioned into
these historical garments or whether we can just use these
as sort of reference points or jumping off points to
know if we are going out and perhaps thrifting or
borrowing or looking for a garment that could potentially work for a specific historical period, what exactly we are looking for. This is not your cue to go
out and purchase fast fashion. Please, if you are going out and purchasing any
costume elements at all, do thrift, do borrow from friends. But before we get started, allow me to introduce you
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historical hand sewing skills that I already possess. Skillshare specializes
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after watching this video, Skillshare has you very well covered in the sewing department. I can especially recommend Denise Byron's sewing basics class. Her love for sewing and
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your creativity today. Without further ado, a number of you have very
kindly sent in some submissions over on Instagram. So let's have a look at what has come in and see what magic we can work. So first, if we have a modern
waistcoat sent in by Payton who would like this to be made
into a Victorian waistcoat. A lot of these submissions are saying, "I would like to see this
as a Victorian garment", but the Victorian period
is very, very long. So I'm sort of interpreting and sort of trying to pin it down into one specific decade
or historical silhouette that can be defined because the beginning of the
Victorian period waistcoats are very different from the end of Victorian
period waistcoats. We're going to say we're looking around, well my reference image says 1898, so end of the Victorian
period 1880s to 1890s. The historical waistcoats,
for day wear especially, are generally very, very high up, especially in the earlier
1870s and 1880s periods when the suit coats, which
we'll talk about later, are also cut very high up here. You want the waistcoat to have
a little bit of excitement happening outside of the suit coat, which means that the waistcoat
has to be even higher up. This man up here has got that very, very high
neckline cut on his waistcoat. They can dip a little bit lower, especially for evening wear when you've got the starched front shirts, which you want to show off because they have been
very nicely starched and they're very clean
and pressed and white. So the lower cuts are generally more of an
evening wear thing, for daywear waistcoats you want them
to be a little bit high up. They can have lapels,
they can not have lapels, they can have notched lapels like this. They can have shawl
color lapels like that, or they could have no lapels at all. It's up to you. This will depend on your
specific body shape, but you want to be sure that your armscyes are very nicely fitted. It can be quite common these
days for garments in general to be cut with very large armscyes which allow for a wider size range. Standard sizing is a myth by the way. But as you can see on
the reference images, the armscyes on these
waistcoats are cut very close, very high up under the arm, which just allow for easier arm movement. So if you are doing a
little bit of alteration on your waistcoat to make
it look more historical, you would want to make sure those armscyes are fitting very nice and close
into the crook of the arm. But if you just sort of take up the shoulder seam a little bit, which will just sort of
take in a little bit of room out of the shoulder seam, which will raise the entire garment, raising the neck line,
raising the armscye, and that can work out really nicely. The other thing that you want
to be really careful about is the length of the waistcoat. Waistcoats kind of all throughout
the 19th century really are very short, as we
would define them today. A lot of our waistcoats
today sort of extend to about the high hip, which is not the most
historically prevalent thing. Generally a lot of the
waistcoats that we see are at the natural waistline or just an inch or two
below the natural waistline. This here, why is this so thick? What are you doing? What brush is this? Oh my god. Dani, you're gonna laugh at me. I don't know how this program works. There we go. This would be his natural waistline here. It's the sort of crease in the torso. Usually it's the slimmest part
of the waistline, wasteland? Usually it's the slimmest
part of the waist area, but everyone's built differently,
so sometimes it's not. So that is roughly where you'd want your waistcoat to sit a couple of inches below. You don't want it to
extend all the way down to the high hip. That's a very simple fix. You just sort of tuck it in and rehem it. The women's waistcoats are constructed very
similarly in this period, so if you are a woman also
looking for a period waistcoat, it's pretty much the same. You just have to put a couple
more darts in the front. Generally, the way that waistcoats are cut are with two darts to shape them. If you have a little bit of
extra room in the waist area, if you just want to fit it, you will have to potentially have a little bit of extra room taken out in the lower waist area. They would often have
two, a set of two darts down at the bottom here. you can add little watch pockets, which can either go on the
front at the bottom here. You can add a little welt
pocket at the top up here if that's something that you would like to potentially have a go at. Next up we have a dress
that's sent in by Izzy who would like to make this
into more of a Regency dress. So already right from the start, she has chosen a very
wise baseline silhouette. Obviously, as many of us know, the Regency period is very characterized by this raised waistline, this empire waistline that sort of sits right under the bust, which this is doing pretty much. If you are looking for a dress that could suit the Regency period, you might want to start with one that has that raised waistline or that has at least a waist seam and is very, very long on you so that you can unpick that waist seam and raise it without
having it be too short. My absolute first suggestion, if you want to cheat any dress, if you employ some period undergarments underneath any modern outfit and then sort of tailor that garment to fit over top of the
period undergarments, you will automatically have a
more period silhouette then. If you start with even a
direct period reconstruction and do not put the right
foundation garments under it, it will look significantly worse. The general consensus is that there is no such
thing as a "modern body". Humans have been human-shaped
for thousands of years, and it's really just a matter
of the foundational garments, the way that those structure
underneath the clothes, the body, as well as the
sort of illusion aspects of the outer garments, that
sort of give us these wild, crazy images of the
human body in the past. One thing, if at all possible to do, is to sort of think about
the effects of corsetry. I mean, we wear modern bras today which provide more of a rounded and defined bust silhouette
than historically, which generally is a bit
more flat across the front with any definition happening at the top. If you can, as much as possible, see if you can flatten
this front section here, that can give you the illusion that you are wearing some
sort of waist structure underneath that garment. What I would do for this particular gown is I would raise everything, whether that is just
raising the shoulders, just taking out a little bit
of room in the shoulders, pulling the whole dress
up so that you again, raise this neckline, raise this bus line, raise this waistline. As we can see, we've got
quite a bit of room here from the under bust
waistline to the shoulder versus on our Regency woman, we've got a lot less room here. The print on this dress
is actually really good. Cotton printed dresses
were very, very prevalent, especially in day wear, in this period. I would suggest having a
look at some period imagery, especially of textiles from the period so that you can sort of get
your head around the motifs and the patterns and designs that were common in
these historical periods. Some patterns, some motifs, like very graphic flowers and things are very modern and will read very modern, but some things like whatever
is going on in this dress, which I can't really see for certain, but it does look like just
some sort of filigree motif that could absolutely have
existed in the Regency period. I'm not sure about the prevalence of buttons here at the front that probably, and again, never say never, but that's not a very common thing that would've existed
in this Regency period. I am quite interested in the seaming that's going on in the front here, it looks like it's sort
of coming down like this, like robing down at the front and then it's almost got
a little stomacher bit happening at the front, which is really interesting because that could almost
be a carryover of styles from the 18th century, which absolutely is a thing that would've been seen in this period. So this is actually a
really interesting nod to the previous period, which is absolutely something that would've existed as
part of Regency dress. So next we have a really interesting dress that was sent in from Abigail. This is another example of dresses that are sourced sort of
already very reminiscent to begin with of the period, and that can be sort of
worked with from there. I think the original
message originally said, make this Victorian, but once
again, what is Victorian? I'm interpreting this to
be sort of mid 1850s, 1860s just because that is what the
silhouette most looks like we are getting here. We've got this sort of roughly
pleated gathered bodice area, which is very reminiscent of this period. We get pleating configurations in all sorts of areas in this
period, but most prevalently, the pleating sort of
gathers into a little point just at the center front. This is, of course, one of
those many illusion tactics to just sort of try and give the illusion that the waist is as small as possible. Having a lot of gathering that starts out very wide at the shoulders and sort of gathers in very
tightly just down at the waist, helps to give that nice triangular top of the hourglass shape that is so desired of this period. So I don't know what
this dress is made of, if it is at all possible to take out the gathering at the waist and sort of redistribute that gathering more towards the center front. You do have to be a bit careful about this because it can skew Edwardian, which might actually be the goal if you sort of create that puff front, which was very popular
in the Edwardian period. The thing that will
differentiate 1850s, 1860s, mid-19th century from the Edwardian period is of course the sleeves as
well as the skirt structure. So if you were actually
trying to make this into a historical gown, you would want to put
some sort of structure underneath the skirt. The fashionable silhouette of
this period is the crinoline. So it is this big wide circular cage shape that is full all the way around, not like the bustle of the later periods, which is only full in the back. Not everyone in the period
could afford a crinoline, let alone could tolerate the physical consequences
of wearing a crinoline. So it is equally possible to
just put underneath your skirt a bunch of very stiffened petticoats. You could technically cheat these days and just put heavy tulle, very crisp, structural, crunchy tulle and of course have that
be a very long skirt that would give you a nice amount of body. No wait, that's, oh, I see brush size! (quiet maniacal giggles) The other thing that you
would definitely want to do if you're going for mid 19th century in this particular case is you would want to put sleeves on it. You can either find a blue cotton that matches this in color or dyes something to match this color and add the sleeves yourself. You could wear another garment
underneath that has sleeves. I don't know, I'm not gonna
tell you how to live your life. It looks like we've got
that sort of going on on her over here. It is very fitted in
slim, just at the top, and then it has a bit more fullness and sort of a bell shape at the bottom. You can also have just
a very standard sleeve that is sort of uniformly
full at the top and the bottom and then it's sort of gathered into a cuff just at the cuff, as is
going on on her over here. It's really only evening
dresses of this period that don't have sleeves. The other thing about the
sleeves in this period is that they tend to be a
bit dropped off the shoulder. So the bodice would actually extend a bit to just about over the
curve of the shoulder. It's very fashionable in this period to have very low, sloped shoulders that you don't have
very sharp shoulder line because that's not what they
were going for in this period. The next very common question we had is, of course, men's shirts. We have a lot of questions
about men's shirts being made into 18th century, those puffy, pirate-type shirts, poet shirts, whatever you wanna call them, and then of course 19th century shirts. So let's have a look at
a modern dress shirt, which is very, very common to get in, especially in thrift stores today, and then how we can
potentially convert these into these two different
centuries of shirts. So the first thing you'll notice is that the 18th century
shirts are very full. They have got so much fabric in them. There's gathering at the neckline, there's gathering at the cuffs, there's gathering at the shoulders. So the first thing that I would recommend is either, if at all possible, sizing up multiple sizes
if you are buying a shirt with the intent to make it
into an 18th century shirt, or what you could also do is
because these are very common, they tend to be made of the same fabric and they tend to be very cheap, is to buy two or three of them. That way, what you can do is you can unpick the pieces and basically extend all of the pieces so that they can gather up and to make these very
fine voluminous gathers. So the other thing that you will notice, and this is something that
we'll have to work around a bit, is that 18th century shirts do not have this button down
feature as modern shirts do. Generally, I will say. I'm sure there's a button
down 18th century shirt somewhere out in the world that someone's gonna dig
up to be like, hey wait, you might want to hide that. It is possible that you can
actually just stitch it up from about here down. I mean take out the button
placket here as well, and just stitch both sides
of the garment together. So you just end up with
the center front seam that's fine, piecing is period, we can deal with that. The other thing you can do is if you're wearing a high waisted, either britches or trousers or whatever, you might not notice the buttons anyway. You just put the frill at the top here with one of your other shirts
that you bought potentially, and no one will notice the
buttons and it will be fine. What I would do is I would
take apart all of the pieces. So what you would have is you would have two of
these front pieces here and then you would have the sleeve pieces. So what I would do is I would
take both sides of front one and stitch them together like that, and then I would also
take both sleeve pieces, and as much as possible because the sleeve might
have a shape to it. I mean if you have an excess of material, you can sort of crop off the bits that are slightly too short
and just discard those and only use the bits
that are more squarish. Once you have those
double wide shirt fronts and those double wide sleeves, then follow the process of just making a typical
18th century men's shirt. You will notice that
a lot of the gathering is happening just at the front here. It's not happening all
across the shoulder. So you will want to keep
these edges fairly smooth and only start the
gathering maybe from here or only just sort of
around this neck area. The gathering at the back again will only really
happen at this back neck area and not carry on to the
shoulders if at all possible. And then of course, any excess that the cuff
can also be gathered at the cuff down there. You may want to cut off the collar just because it might be stiffened, which is a bit more of
a later period thing. If you're going for more Regency, see if it's possible to
just turn the collar up and wear it like that with a cravat because that's exactly how they would've been
worn in that period. If not, you can just sort
of cut off the collar where it stands just there. Generally with dress shirts, there is that little stand
just at the bottom there, which is probably going to
be a little bit too short for the period. So you can additionally
unpick the little stand and maybe add a new stand
that is a little bit taller. But again, if you're going
to be wearing a cravat or some sort of neck wear
over top of that anyway, it might not even matter. So let's move on to 19th century shirts. We still don't really have the button down by the 19th century, and this is the end of
the 19th century here. We do, however, have
this sort of Henley thing going up at the top. So we have got a couple of buttons. We don't really see shirts going all the way down to the bottom. Trousers should be pretty high
waist in the 19th century. Once again, you can see that
these shirts are fairly wide across the front. They're not quite as fitted as a lot of modern dress shirts are. So once again, I would
size up if at all possible. We do not, however, have
all of the gathering at the neck line that we do
have in the 18th century shirts. The one thing we do want to
make sure that we are doing is having these fullish sleeves, having the gathering at the shoulders, having it gather into the cuffs because that will help to
give it a little bit more of a 19th century flare, as well as putting in a little gusted if you so desire under the arm, if you have any fabric left over. Once again, our shirts are a
bit long in the 19th century, but if you're wearing them, again, with a pair of high waisted trousers, you might be able to sacrifice
the bottom couple of inches of the shirt if no one's
going to see it anyway. If you need to add things
like gussets or collars or cuffs or whatever. The thing about 19th
century shirts, generally, is that they tend not to include collars because the collars in this
period generally are separate. Stiff collars are very of
the norm in this period, and rather than starch your entire shirt, which first of all is time consuming and second of all is just
a nightmare of uncomfort, by having a detachable collar, you can starch and treat and launder these
collars very specifically without having to worry about the rest of the
shirt getting in the way. So this way you can launder the shirt and not have to worry about
starching and laundering and repressing and shaping the collar. Many dress shirts nowadays
are still constructed in the way that shirts
had to be constructed to accommodate a detachable collar. Only the collars today are
stitched onto the shirt. So you might be able to see
there's a little stand piece on the inside of the neckline here that helps the collar stand up before it folds over. That fold over bit would've been the bit that is part of the detachable
collar historically, but you can unpick that
seam at the edge here, take that off, and then you're
just left with the stand. I mean, you would probably
have to buy a stand collar that can either just stand up or they have collars that fold over. Separate collars, if you are
looking for one of those, will probably have this situation where there are two button
holes and no buttons. It means you need a
collar stud or shirt studs if it's on a shirt, which again are a thing that you will probably have
to source either vintage or used antique or from a haberdashery that sells these things. Next, we have a jacket to be turned into a Regency spencer, sent in by Sarah. Obviously, the first thing
that you'll notice about this is that the Regency
spencers are very short because once again, we're dealing with that raised waistline of the Regency period. It doesn't need to go all
the way down to the waist like a modern jacket. This is really good news because
by cutting off the jacket just at the under bust area, you are left with all this
extra fabric to play with, which is good because
these Regency spencers have a lot of, generally, decoration and excitement going on. For the most part, in the vast majority, these Regency spencers are
closed down at the center front and they generally
don't have these lapels. It's not unheard of, especially if you're
getting into more spencers that take a bit more
after men's tailoring. Generally, it might be a bit
higher up at the top here because the men's wear is sort
of cut very high at the neck. Very often, these Regency spencers will have a waistband
down at the bottom here. So again, you can borrow from
all of your excess fabric that you've just cut off. Fashion yourself a little
waistband down at the bottom here. The shoulders tend to be
accentuated in this period, especially on spencers. A lot of these garments
have puffed sleeves, gathered sleeves,
sleeves that are sort of, just have some sort of volume or emphasis just at the shoulder here, which this jacket does not, but we have tons of extra
fabric down at the bottom, which we can absolutely play with. You might not have enough extra sleeve unless you've bought a jacket
that's vastly too big for you, but you can fashion
some little sleeve puffs that can go over top of the
shoulder that already exists and give the illusion that you have a nice puffed
sleeve going on over top, while that sleeve is a perfectly modern armscye
underneath, that's fine. This jacket is actually particularly good because as you can see,
we've got very long sleeves, which is something that
we see happening a lot in the Regency period, sleeves that sort of come way down onto the hand and flare out maybe a
little bit over the hand, which this jacket already
seems to be doing. If you're feeling a bit ambitious, make some rouleaux trimming and
do a little bit of a design, just the cuff down here. This is sort of militaristic, almost, these details down at the cuffs. These braid work, especially. If you wanna recut this jacket, of course you can
absolutely recut the panels to reflect this diamond shape at the back. You can add this little frill, just the back, this sort of bustle frill, which is of course very
common in this period. This is a great project, probably will have lots
of great fun with that. We have next a skirt sent in by Emily, just a very standard modern maxi skirt, which she would like to have
made into a Victorian skirt. This is such an interesting project because if you find a skirt that has gathering at the waistband or has an elasticated waistband, you can absolutely make a really wonderful Victorian skirt out of this. You probably don't want it to be something super, super lightweight and diaphanous and floaty, something that has a little
bit of structure to it like a cotton or, I mean
it might be synthetic, a more heavy weight synthetic. It doesn't want to be like tissue floaty. We are presumably going
a bit late Victorian with this sort of 1890s,
Edwardian, turn of the century, which means that we'll
want a very smooth front with any gathering or pleading
happening just at the back. We can see on our examples
one's got- is all the way smooth all the way around, except
for just at the back here. The other one is really only
smooth at the front panel and then gathered all
the way down at the sides and at the back. If you don't have that
much extra material, you might want to just smooth
it around the front and sides and then just do a
little pleat at the back just to give the suggestion that it's got fullness at the back. But effectively what you would do is unpick the skirt from the waistband, redistribute that gathering so that it's all nice and
smooth down at the front here, and then redistribute it so that it's got all its
gathering, or pleating if you feel like pleating,
just at the back. If you want to get really ambitious, you could obtain some tarlatan, which is a very lightweight
cotton gauze fabric that has been stiffened. It is very cheap generally. What you could potentially do is unpick the skirt panels themselves. Lay those panels on top of the tarlatan and cut out an extra shape, flatline those which I
have a bunch of videos on making Victorian skirts. Watch any of those. Flatline those to the
tarlatan, restitch those seams, and then distribute that
length into the waistband so that it gathers at the
back and you will end up with a beautifully
stiffened Victorian skirt that will behave more
like a Victorian skirt. This does, however,
theoretically mean this skirt is not going to be the
most washable thing, so if you were a fan of
throwing your skirt on the wash frequently, do not do this. Tarlatan generally should not be wet because then the stiffening can dissolve. This information might be a bit flexible because I know Noelle
over at Costuming Drama has done this experiment where she has wet and washed tarlatan and it has come out relatively fine. So do with that information as you will, but do not be surprised if this stiffening does just dissolve
straight out of the fabric. My candle has not been on. Wait, this is an emergency. ~You have seen nothing~. Now we have from Anil,
a men's suit jacket, which wants to be made
into a Victorian garment. Let's go with the 1870s because this is an interesting period for Victorian men's wear, namely because this is the most different, I think from the modern
style and cut of men's wear. This is going to be a bit
difficult to get into refashioning because this will probably
involve significant tailoring, especially when you start
messing with the lapels. For this, especially mid-
to late-19th-century period. We do, once again, have this very closely cut, high up lapel that is sort of quintessential
of this period here. Often we have a button
just at the top here. The rest of them are not buttons, so you get the sort of beetle
wing effect with the jackets. But if we wanna talk a bit of progression from the earlier 19th century, the Regency tends to be very closely cut, very fitted, very fluid,
very sort of curving, and a lot of the very
highly fashionable men in the Regency period up through the 1830s were corseting, actually, to get those very round
chested, very small waisted, curving silhouettes that are very popular in that earlier 19th century period. But the suit coats in this
later part of the period tend to be very boxy, sort of square cut and not sort of defining
a very fitted silhouette. Men's suit coats you may
think are just very general and have been the same
since the beginning of time, but really if you look at
them from decade to decade, the subtle shifts in the lapel shape, in the height of the closure,
just at the top here, the setting of the sleeve especially, the length
of the coat as well. The length of the coats in this period tend to be quite long. Sometimes they're cut
away a bit at the front. So as we can see already the modern jacket is quite different from
these Victorian jackets. It is too short, so it would need to be
lengthened quite a bit. It could be cut away slightly, so we have a little bit more
of that slightly 19th century shaping down at the bottom. The lapels are very thin
and they're very low, which is a very, very modern feature. If you are going historical, you want your lapels probably
to be a little bit wider. This is specifically more
feature of this period. But when you start getting
these very high up neck lines, of course you're losing
a bit of the waistcoat, so a lot of men were quite
fond of, as this man here has buttoned just the top button here, has left the rest of the buttons open so that you get a little bit of peek of the waistcoat down at the bottom here because how else are you gonna show off
your nice little waistcoat? But again, if you're doing
that sort of silhouette, it is imperative then that your waistcoat is the correct length and your trousers are the correct length. So do make sure you are having
a nice pair of high-waisted trousers to wear with that waistcoat, especially if you're going to see it from within the suit jacket. We have a couple of really fantastic honorable mentions from people who are not necessarily seeking advice on how to historicalify these garments, but who have historicalified
garments themselves and they are really wonderful. Elise has done some
really fantastic things turning this '70s, '80s, late 20th century wild brocade
jacket into a fabulous... well, it looks sort of early 17th century with those big sleeves, doublet. Just absolutely wonderful work there. Elise has also done a really wonderful cycling jacket project out
of an existing thrifted, regular, just, man's suit. This is a really wonderful project that came out just spectacularly. Next up, we have a classic
project by Clara here who has done the alterations to this very modern, very standard jacket and has has turned it into the
classic, the quintessential, the highly coveted
Edwardian cycling jumper that so many of us are
lusting after constantly. The trickiest part about this project is of course, the sleeve volume. This was done in such a clever way by cutting a bit further
into the shoulder. The other thing that she's done is she's sourced an original garment that has a high collar and just sort of folds
the collar bit down, which is very clever. And then of course we
have a little Tudor-ish, is what she describes it as, gown, has been made from outgrown clothes, which is something that
I haven't thought about, but is such a really wonderful use for especially growing humans,
to repurpose those garments that have been outgrown to use that fabric to have a little bit of
practice sewing stuff. That is a really wonderful project. And of course, you end up with a fantastic Tudor-ish
princess style gown, which looks wonderful, and I hope you wear that
absolutely everywhere. So I hope that has given
you some inspiration for all the possibilities
of what you can do with modern clothes and period clothes and appreciating the
details of period clothes that can be brought into modern dress to make them more exciting to you, perhaps make them more
interesting, more unique. If there's one thing to take away from this whole experiment, it is that learning about historical dress and thinking about how to bring
elements of historical dress into the modern dress is really to go back to
the original imagery. And that is, I mean, it's effectively what
I've just been doing here, sitting here today, is just going back to the
original fashion plates, the original photographs, if
they exist in the 19th century, the original paintings, and really having a very
careful study of them. What does the physical
human body look like? What's being shifted? What's being molded? What is an illusion and what
is actually in existence? What are the shoulders shaped like and how are they shaped that way? Is there sort of illusionary
shaping going on at the front to make the waist look smaller? The shape of the lapels,
the length of the sleeves, the length of the jacket,
the placement of the pockets, the placement of the buttons,
the number of buttons, because all those little tiny details really helped to distinguish
decade from decade where a garment lives. I hope that has helped
you if you are on a quest to adopt some more historical clothes. If not, I hope that this has
got you to think a bit more about the wonders of
detail, noticing details, looking at shape, looking at color, looking at things, studying things. I mean, the possibilities are endless. Go forth, do wonderful things. I hate ending videos. Bye. (candle blows)
