Jane Austen Evening 2011 - Menswear Recap

The men pulled out all the stops this year at the annual Jane Austen Evening! The ladies looked lovely, as always, but I thought the men really stepped it up. I've got a few pictures to share of the dapper men - but I missed quite a few, there were too many good-looking gents!

And first, what you've all been waiting for...drumroll please...

Chris in his suit! Here he's got on his tailcoat, waistcoat, shirt and cravat. You can see the little ventilation hole in the shirt that he insisted on leaving open lest he die from the heat. The 1930's pants were a big hit - lots of men were wearing modern pants, and he even got a few compliments on them.

 The annual meeting of the Tolerant Husbands Society. This Society is also open to any male friends or brothers that one might be able to bribe with cookies.

Look at the fabulous fit on this outfit! You have to be confident to wear it, that's for sure, and he was quite snazzy. I like the shirring at the sleeve cap. 

I snuck a back view - since he was gracious enough to pose for the front, I figured it was okay. :o) 

Another Chris! This gentleman sews his own clothes (maybe sometime I can get mixed up and bring him home instead of mine? Nah, we'd just fight over the ironing board or something). He's the mastermind behind this Royal Naval uniform that I've drooled over many times - I was so excited when I saw him walk by and had to go over to introduce myself!

I got a closeup of his neckcloth, very impressive! Chris said he used rice starch on his cravat, and Lauren realized that he used the Perfect Pleater for his shirt ruffles. I found his post on the rice starch on the Regency Society of America message boards, where he is a frequent poster, and I'm sure would be willing to answer any questions you might post. I'll probably pop over with a few of my own!

 Undoubtedly the cutest young gentleman at the Ball. Look at those stockings!

These next two outfits might be my favorites of the night, for sheer ingenuity. These men were accompanied by lovely ladies who deconstructed and repurposed thrifted suits, and turned them into incredible regency wear. What a great idea! you get all the fun of making cool collars etc, without having to make the icky welt pockets! (And they were quite well-done too - it wasn't until I was told *the secret* that I saw how they were remade!)

Another repurposed Regency suit, and the fine lady who made it. 

Showing where she pieced the tailcoat together - cut a little off the front, add it to the back, and voila!

And here ends my menswear recap...don't worry, I know I still owe you a review of the waistcoat I made, and probably a couple other things... :) If you want to see the tasty cookies from the event, pop over to V is for Vintage and say hi!

Fitting the ACTUAL COAT!! :)

Hal & Betty - LA Balboa Dancers, 1939

This past week has been busy! Last weekend we drove up to San Francisco to visit my sister and do some dancing - and in some exciting news, yours truly is the 2010 North American Balboa Champion! Okay, Chris and me both, not just me. That sounds much more impressive than it really is...but then, that's usually the case with Titles. 

Enough with this mid-20th century junk, let's go further back in time.

I've gotten the tailcoat body assembled and the collar attached - looks pretty nice, if I do say so myself! I love love love sewing with this melton wool. It's smooth in the machine, presses beautifully, and is even a dream to cut. I hate cutting! I've adjusted the brightness on the pictures so that hopefully you can see the detail. The actual jacket is deep black, not splotchy. My tailoring book actually recommends using a dark fabric for your first tailoring project, so that mistakes are less likely to show. Good call!

As you can see, I went with modern construction techniques, machine sewing the inside and flipping it right side out. If I had known I was going to use that method from the beginning, I would have picked easier/less pointed collar shapes. The M collar point would be much easier to handstitch together on the outside edge - but I felt that I couldn't just do the collar and not do the rest.

I'm not thrilled with how wide the gap is between the collar point and the lapel - I think that on my mockups the points were closer together, almost touching. I think the difference might be partially because of the thickness of the fabric, and maybe something to do with the roll line/breakpoint placement? Anyway, the right and left sides are even, so that's fine. Something to worry about next time.

I used French Collar Canvas from B. Black, and boy is that stuff heavy-duty! I doubt I'll use it again, and instead opt for a medium weight hymo. But I don't have to worry about his collar drooping!

In the back, I took in a little at the shoulder seam at the armhole, because it was gapping away from the body. That's why the seams don't match at the outer edge. To compensate, I might set the sleeves in toward the center back a little further, but this was an Era of Small Backs, so that should look good.

I haven't touched the tails yet, but already the wool is draping in the back much more nicely than the muslin did. Love that wool melton!

Jacket Entrails...err...Innards

First of all, a big thank you to everyone who responded to my last entry - I'm going to take your advice and just focus on one project at a time from here on out. I don't think we'll have complete outfits in time for the ball in January, so we'll have to beg, borrow, and steal the missing pieces (or maybe just rent them ;)


Subject to change, I think I'll finish the jacket first, then do my dress, and then go back to the trousers etc. if there's time (which there won't be). That's kind of killing me, because the trousers are about halfway done, but it's really best to not risk distraction. Big Picture!


Here's my progress with tailoring the undercollar and front body. As I said before, I'm opting to machine stitch as much as possible. I'm (more or less) following the machine tailoring instructions from Tailoring: The Classic Guide to Sewing the Perfect Jacket, which has options for hand tailoring, machine tailoring, and fusible tailoring on every step. I'm having to improvise a little because the shape of my pattern is a little different from what the book demonstrates.

Undercollar - you can see my
padstitching lines, all drawn out
before I decided to machine it!

Hymo for Front Body -
With Shoulder Patch & Waist Dart

Zig-Zag joined Jacket Front
and Hymo at edges -
Taped Line is machined until
a couple inches from CF,
then the exposed section
is handfinished

We're heading out of town this weekend for a dance event, but hopefully I'll have a nice collar to show off next week. I'm working on getting the collar roll right - that whole "turn of the cloth" thing. It's so fiddly!

Bling

Formal Dress Suit - German, 1805

One of the pieces I was taken with at the LACMA exhibit was this formal dress suit with detachable buttons. Instead of being stitched on, the buttons are attached to the coat and waistcoat through eyelets - this way the same set of buttons could be used for multiple suits. So clever!

Case with 2 sizes of buttons

Detail of Eyelet Holes

Here are some men's shoe buckles from 1770-1790. Not very Beau Brummell-y, but well within the accepted timeframe for the Jane Austen Evening!

Final Tailcoat Mockup

One cuff jauntily turned back

Here she is, finally! The final tailcoat mockup. For this mockup, instead of muslin I used a mid-weight washed canvas for the body and sleeves, which is closer to my final fabric.

I'm fairly happy with how it's turning out - the body has a pretty good fit, I got the front and back tails to be the same length finally, and I'm even a little surprised with how nice the collar looks. The final coat feels within reach!

We took the pictures after Chris got home late after work, so there's no head and just a modern shirt. ;)

Tailcoat Sleeve Cuff

As I posted last time, I find the tailcoat sleeve cuff intimidating - and still do, even after working on it. I'm just not sure how it's supposed to work, with an overlap but no slit/placket above the cuff like on a shirtsleeve, so it's the construction aspect that's tripping me up. I'm just winging the whole cuff thing because the only references I can find for this style of cuff are portraits (so not much nitty-gritty detail), but it seems like there was enough variation in cuff construction and style that I should have some leeway.

Instead of using the cuff pattern from Tidens Toej, with its wavy lines that also probably aren't the right length (since I drafted my own undersleeve pattern), I decided to draft my own cuff pattern. I just did straight lines, with a little flare at the end - it's going to be a trial and error pattern piece.

First Cuff Draft and Mockup

The first cuff with the straight edges is a little too tight at the front (top edge of the mockup), and I want it to flare more over the hand. I was reading this article by Lynn McMasters on the shape of different top hats, and realized that the flare of the top hats illustrated are similar to the shape I want for my cuff. So I reworked the cuff to curve, more like top hat pattern "D".

2nd Cuff, based on top hat shape

I like this version more - the cuff definitely has more attitude now! And after playing with cuff shapes, I realized that the 1825 tailcoat in Norah Waugh's Cut of Men's Clothes has a curved cuff too. I love discovering the nuances of period clothing - different coats in the same period would have had different cuff shapes, and it's fun to have options.

Tailcoat Sleeve

After plugging along on the tailcoat pattern pretty good, I lost some steam after working on the collar and took a break before getting to the sleeve. I think I'm especially intimidated by the cuff. But now it's time to dive back in!

For the top sleeve pattern I used my original scaled up version of the Tidens Toej pattern. I drafted the undersleeve from the top sleeve, using instructions from Men's Garments. It was very easy - basically you trace off the top half of the sleeve (armhole seam to elbow), then rotate it slightly at the elbow and finish tracing to the bottom edge. No need to true up the pattern, because the underarm seamlines should be the same length. I checked to make sure the sleeve cap was larger than the armhole seam, but since it's supposed to have a little puff at the top I didn't really mess with it.

Reshaped the Undersleeve Sleeve Cap

I stitched a sleeve mockup and quickly looked at it on Chris, not attached to the rest of the coat. Not bad, but a couple adjustments were needed:
- the sleeve cap gathers on the Tidens Toej pattern were too far forward for my taste
- the undersleeve was too high under the arm
- the elbow was too low - raise it just 1"




At first I didn't like the look of the undersleeve seam being so far forward and I was going to move it further back to the underside of the arm. Right before I changed the pattern, I read this post on A Tailor Made It that made me realize that 20th century 2-piece sleeves have much smaller undersleeves than earlier garments. It guess it's my modern sensibility coming through wanting to "fix" it. I still don't love how it looks, but since it's "correct" I'll leave it alone.  Laziness wins again!

Mockup with Corrected Sleeve

There's some schmutz at the back underarm, but
he's got good movement, so I'll leave it for now
and maybe take it out of the final version.

With the blousey shirt on, the coat sleeve looks much tighter than before! The armhole is too tight at the front, but once I scoop that out a little I think I'll be ready for my final mockup! (So tempted to cut into my real fabric, but then I remember how  much it cost and I'm okay with another mockup!)

Melton and Hymo and Canvas, Oh My!

As we get deeper and deeper into the year, the next Jane Austen Evening looms closer and closer...so rather than working on the coat, which should be my priority, I've been stalling and working on the other (easier) parts. I think Chris might be getting worried that he'll be coatless, cause he's been nudging me back to working on it. He'd rather have a tailcoat than trousers...to each their own! ;)

We set a shopping date to go to B. Black in downtown LA this Saturday. I'm hoping to get everything in one trip because their hours are a little limited so going back several times would be a pain. This means I need to figure out how the darned thing goes together, so I can get the right stuff - easier said than done!

I've only found a couple resources that describe Regency men's coat construction. To Cut a Regency Coat offers descriptions of the inner construction, and Men's Garment's 1830-1900 has a couple pages and a diagram. Not much to go from, but it's a start. Oh! And Lauren has progress shots of her tailcoat in this blog post.

What I've learned is that these garments were less heavily tailored than jackets today - no shoulder pads, self facing/lining at the front, and only a canvas or linen stay at the back neck (the back is unlined). The front skirts were lined with a contrast fabric.

I'm a little panicked, but lists make me feel more in control. What am I missing?

Shopping List
Wool Melton for Body & Front Facing
Contrast Fabric? for Collar
Lining (cotton?) for front skirt & maybe sleeves
Hymo for front interfacing & front shoulder
Collar Canvas for collar interfacing (I already have some, or else I wouldn't be so spendy!)
Undercollar Felt
Twill Tape for roll line
Thread
Buttons (self-covered?)

Can I just say how glad I am that I'm skipping making Halloween costumes this year?

Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 2

I worked on the collar pattern a little more, and I'm much happier with it now. I did take it into work for pattern help - I wasn't sure if the problem was the neckline or the collar, and I didn't want to waste time "fixing" the wrong thing. Turns out the major culprit was the collar - much easier to fix.

To review, here's the collar in the 1st Fitting:

1st Collar Mockup - Collar is pulling away at the neckline seam where it meets the Lapel

Collar Pattern after 1st Mockup - Darker Line shows the refined Point

So here's the fix - the collar needs to curve up more along the neckline seam. Because the collar seamline was too straight, it was tugging in an odd direction. I decided to curve the neckline up about 1" higher than it was before (1" was just an educated guess).

I traced the straight-ish back neckline edge with no changes, marked the new point I was aiming to curve up to, and slashed the collar from edge to the neckline (at one point I thought this was all wrong and threw away the process pattern, so no pics...but I'll do some if anyone ever asks). Keeping the front neck seamline the same length (bottom edge), I curved it up into my new shape. But! By overlapping the outer edge to make the new curved shape, the pattern became too tight on the outer edge, which was the same problem I had with my very first collar draft. GOING IN CIRCLES!! So I laid the pattern back out flat, and traced that top edge in the shape it wanted to be - but it's now longer than my original CB line, so I had to change the angle of the CB seam.

Collar After Correction - Neckline edge is more curved (bottom edge), Point remains the same

 The collar pattern looks completely different from any of the examples I've been looking at (thus the trashed collar pattern mentioned above). But I decided to give it a shot and stitch it onto my mockup - VICTORY!! Now the collar lays much more nicely where it joins the lapel. (Okay, I have to take out a smidge from CB, but you can't really tell here.) If I ever make another coat from this pattern, I'll want to rework this area, but I think it's time to call it good enough and MOVE ON. :)

Corrected Collar Mockup - Note the smooth roll where the lapel and collar meet

Collar Pattern & Fitting, Part 1

With all these options, it seems like it should be easy enough to make up some sort of collar, right? Well hopefully for you it's easier than it was for me...for the last couple weeks I've been struggling to get my collar to fit and lay right. 

Remember how I changed the front neckline in the first fitting, and the neckline curve became a tighter circle? Because the neckline shape changed, I decided to scrap the collar I scaled up from the Tidens Toej pattern and draft a new one using Men's Garments 1830-1900. This book has been extremely helpful to me so far, but that version of the draft didn't work because the neckline is so much tighter...the inner edge is so tightly curved, that the outer edge became too tight.

Original Collar draft - probably should have stuck to this version!

Drafted Collar, Slashed and Spread to open up the outer curve

I was just hoping that my new collar would be big enough, and I planned to tweak it significantly in the next fitting. The shape of that outer edge is really ugly!

It turns out, I over-spread the collar draft a little bit, so I'm taking about 1" out of the center back collar. We also shaped the collar to be a little more narrow at the front - it's on the smaller side for the period, but not quite as small as the original inspiration portrait. I kind of insisted on having the "M" shaped collar point - I don't think Chris cares for it much, but to me it's a really cool feature of the period that I didn't want to leave out.

One part I'm still struggling with is getting the collar to roll correctly at the front collar/lapel - you can see it pulling away from Chris's neck where I've got it marked with a pin on one side. I think it's the neckline shape that's the problem, not the sewing. I'm going to ask a patternmaker at work for help, and I'll post the correction here.

BTW, taking pictures when we fit has been really helpful to refer back to when working on the pattern. That way I don't have to ask him to put it back on every 5 minutes!

Viewer's Left: Unshaped Collar as drafted
Viewer's Right: Collar is trimmed and "M" Point defined

Viewer's Left: Collar Trimmed
Viewer's RIght: Unshaped Collar

Crazy Regency Collars!

There is a great variety of collars in Regency era coats, and I think it's an opportunity for the wearer to express his personality. For civilian coats, the collar should be wide and turnback, but there are a great many choices of collar shape, point shape, and even fabric.

Here is a sampling of coats, mostly from the Victoria & Albert museum collection. Note the variety of collar options! 

French Tailcoat c.1800
High Turndown Collar & Wide Revers/Lapels

Hunting Coat c.1815
Wide Self Fabric Collar with "M" Shape

Velvet Collar with Peak Lapel

Self Fabric Collar c.1815

Detail of "Thrush's Tongue" or "Lark's Tongue" Collar from above coat

Searching museum collections online is relatively new for me - I've only spent a little time looking at the V&A, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a couple others. If you have a favorite collection or search method, please share!

"Your Clothes May Be Beau Brummell-y"

The first time I remember hearing the name Beau Brummell is in the 1980's musical Annie - the lyrics of "You're Never Fully Dressed Without a Smile" use the term "Beau Brummell-y" to describe a dapper wardrobe. (Of course I had no idea to what it referenced when I was 7 years old, I only figured out the wordplay several years later.) I assumed when starting this blog that anyone interested in Regency Men's Fashion would understand the reference in my title, but I'm realizing now that with the current Austen obsession ("Mr. Darcy" this and "Mr. Knightley" that), a little background on Brummell might be useful here.

During the social and political upheaval of the late 18th century in Europe, overdone fabrics and frippery went out of style (who wants to look like an aristocrat when they're all getting their heads chopped off??) and fashion was simplified. Women's fashion took its cue from Classical ideals, and for men, country clothing became the new trend in town. Breeches and stockings were out. Brightly colored brocade coats were out. Now men wore long trousers and a dark woolen coat (exquisitely tailored, of course) to be fashionable.

1805 Caricature of Beau Brummell

Beau Brummell made a name for himself with high society as a leader of fashion, right during this major turning point for men's clothing. He did not invent the new fashion, but he dictated the right and wrong way to wear it. He determined that the effect should be subtle and elegant, and worked hard to make it look easy and natural. He employed various tailors and hairstylists to help achieve his desired look, and would spend hours dressing and went through piles of cravats every day. The Prince Regent himself watched Brummell dress to learn the tricks!

Miniature Portrait of
Beau Brummell

The male mode of dress developed during the early 19th century has set the tone for menswear to this day. Even in this age of jeans and t-shirts, no man's wardrobe is considered complete without a tailored suit of dark wool. And luckily for me, it's easier to convince a guy to dress "period" in a coat and trousers than a doublet and petticoat breeches!

There are some great resources if you want to learn more about Beau Brummell and his cohorts - Wikipedia, of course, and lately I've also been enjoying reading An Elegant Madness: High Society in Regency England. I missed Beau Brummell: This Charming Man but want to see it someday!

Pattern Corrections and Second Mockup

After fitting the first mockup of Chris's Regency coat, I took the mockup apart to trace off the pieces.

Front Body

Here you can see the neckline pinned to correct the droop, and the new armhole that I sketched in based off of where I clipped. You can also see the waistline dart - I tried to pin out the same "banana" shape that the pattern from the Cut of Men's Clothes has, but that doesn't make sense to me for sewing (the outer side of the dart will be longer than the inner side), so I'm going to modify that to a regular fisheye dart.

Tailcoat from The Cut of Men's Clothes
Note the Waistline Dart

Second Pattern with Adjustments after fitting

I forgot to take pictures of the pattern before I modified it after the 2nd fitting, so here's a combined picture. One thing I'm a little concerned about is the neckline shape after I picked up the Droopy Front in the first fitting. See how small it is now? That's different from both the Tidens Toej pattern and the Cut of Men's Clothes, but I'm going with it for now.









Here's the second mockup - looks a little nicer! I'm only making minor adjustments here - reshaping the side/back seam little more, adding 1" to the body length.


You can see that Chris is wearing more Regency-esque clothes under the mockup than the first time round (Collared shirt, vest/waistcoast). It's best to do that every time, but crucial as you get further in the project. It's hard to tell if you have the right silhouette if the undergarments are wrong - that goes for men as much it does for women.

Second Mockup - Back

Second Mockup - Front