A challenge posed by my Costume Design I class professor, Amanda Doherty: to accurately recreate a historical garment.
I chose to recreate a ball gown from the crinoline era, specifically this dress from the Chastleton House as depicted in a historical dress design book that my professor has. According to the book, the dress used to belong to a Mrs. Warren Hastings. Because this drawing had no materials listed in the information about the dress, I did a lot of research in the surrounding time period to understand what kind of materials would have been used for the garment.
Using a dress form at half-human scale, I draped and patterned and pinned a full crinoline skirt, bodice, sleeves, and skirt.
I was not working off of a pattern for this garment- unfortunately I was unable to find one in my research, so everything is self-patterned.
I chose to recreate a ball gown from the crinoline era, specifically this dress from the Chastleton House as depicted in a historical dress design book that my professor has. According to the book, the dress used to belong to a Mrs. Warren Hastings. Because this drawing had no materials listed in the information about the dress, I did a lot of research in the surrounding time period to understand what kind of materials would have been used for the garment.
Using a dress form at half-human scale, I draped and patterned and pinned a full crinoline skirt, bodice, sleeves, and skirt.
I was not working off of a pattern for this garment- unfortunately I was unable to find one in my research, so everything is self-patterned.
This is the front of the dress. I hand sewed the bodice together, but everything else is simply pinned to the dress form.
