My Victorian Fashion Plates

I'm being increasingly enamoured of the style and substance of fashion plates. In part, this is due to having enjoyed groping the fashion prints I bought from Sanders of Oxford not so long ago. (I'm still proudly showing them off to everyone who steps foot in my living room at present - I daresay my housemates are getting quite sick of that-advert-about-the-Victorian-children and that-ridiculous-article-about-pancakes.)

I'm slightly amused by the fact that though different, distortion of the human form is still distinctly present in Victorian fashion drawings. The women's waists appear about as wide as their heads and all sorts of contortion appear to be happening to allow for the back of the bonnet to be visible.

That all the figures have no waist also amuses me - though of course, in different ways, granted, but that is the only modes of waist in Victorian female fashion: waists that go down to tiny corseted nothingness and a sheer lack of waist as a towering mound of fabric.

Unsurprisingly, the fashion plates with the descriptions still intact were significantly (almost disproportionately) more expensive than the ones that were just pretty pictures (such as the ones I bought). Though apparently, it's surprisingly common for the descriptions to differ from the illustrations (especially as the colourists would quite happily replace one colour with another if they happened to run out).

The above clearly shows the a rather early example of lower sleeve fullness, triangular or V-shaped emphasis in the bodice, and a sloping shoulder line that came into ascendancy 1840s. The lady in the green-dotted gown in particular has a number of pleated panels at the breast.

Fashion history aside, I'm rather taken with the blue dress on the left. I confess to be beginning to contemplate something along those lines. Not entirely convinced by the pale blue with the yellow bonnet, but I'm not sure I consider the colours to be an accurate representation of what colour choices were like. Unsurprisingly, colours fade and these pictures are well over a hundred years old.

As an aside, colourists of lithographic prints (such as fashion plates) are usually educated women,

...who do not wish it known that they earn money by their labour: these carry the plates to their own homes (and eve nhave them sent to fashionable places of restor in summer), so that many a fair damsel trips along Chester street with a roll of something which seems to be music, but is, in fact, work.

Virginia Penny, The Employments of Women: a Cyclopaedia of Woman's Work, (1863)

I've not much to add to that other than that's fascinating and I'm waiting for that to appear in a novel sometime. I feel the urge to make some sort of quip about how my painting of the Designer's work is continuing this tradition of skilled men drawing and womenfolk tinting, but the words won't quite phrase in my mind.

I'm more than slightly tempted to try and mimic the art style of the prints in future sketching, but the Designer reminds me that the level of technical skill required is rather higher than that of my usual fare. I'll posting a little more on fashion plates on the internet another day, I'm beginning to hoard quite the collection.

Another Gentleman Adventurer

Behold, the chronicle of  Alistair Linsell: Gentleman Adventurer. His blog is home to exciting features such as "Rate my hat!", "Info on Roraima" "Letters to her Majesty The Queen". All this is in endeavour of him raising money for twelve environmental charities and hopefully to win himself a chance of being on the documentary crew of the Lost Worlds Project.

Today, he asks for you, dear reader, to Rate My Hat: Bowler vs. Top hat.

The Red Wuxia Robes

It is probably apt that the Costume Mercenary is finally appearing in kit from her own culture.

The outer robe is made of a crimson linen-polyester, as is the shorter white inner robe. The long black surcoat is made of pure linen. Under all that are some beige linen trousers.

I had some reservations about the linen polyester, but it does have the advantage of not wrinkling - as can be seen in contrast to the black sleeveless surcoat.

There are also two hidden pockets up the sleeves of the red out robe. The red sash is long enough to tie thrice around the waist.

The photos, as mentioned in the preview post, are taken by the puny bamboo bushes at the Durham University Botanic Garden. I was rather disappointed we didn't managed to borrow the Dragon Katana from Character Kit (last seen with the Gothic Coat), though that said, it'd probably annoy me on some level to be holding a katana whilst in a wuxia robes.

This was, surprisingly, one of the most difficult photoshoots. Being told to try and resemble Xiao Long Nu is strangely more intimidating than imitating Arwen. Though I was predominately obsessed with western fantasy, classical mythology and fairy tales during my impressionable childhood, I also absorbed much of the wuxia from the culture around me. The daily tv serials showed me the world of the rivers and lakes, a world of flying martial artists, ethereally calm swordswomen and wandering heroes.

But isn't really to all that these costumes come to exist, but rather from a Kamakuran character I played some years ago at Maelstrom. I just felt like reminiscing.

It did come up in Rule7 thread some time ago, but due to the reliance on hand-to-hand combat and the predominance of flying, wuxia translates rather poorly into live roleplay (that said, you could probably argue flaming walls and castles translate poorly and players are still capable of imagining). And I would still very much like to see an attempt made (and not simply because I would very much like to peddle you some kit for it).

A set of robes like the one the Mercenary is modelling in the pictures would cost something in the region of £80.

More photos under the cut.

Steampunk Sketches ("Gas Mask Woman")

The Designer and I have been talking over ideas for a number of things. In due course, I got out the paints (well, metaphorically, they sort of live on the dining room table now) and we played around with them.

The idea was for a underbust-corset-like-thing with a row of buckles going down. Something like the back of the steampunk dress, only in the front and with much bigger, chunkier buckles.

The skirt is supposed to be made of quite a stiff material with mesh between. Something like an Irish dancing skirt, apparently.

And the woman is wearing a shirt, it just happens to be white.

Why exactly she is wearing a gas mask is more or less unknown, likewise with the spiky helmet. The Designer felt it appropriate and I painted it before he rethought the decision. It more or less adds to the steampunk quotient of the sketch.

Note the signature: I've finally managed to convince him to sign one of his sketches. Though, this one, like many others is technically a collaborative effort (I painted Gas Mask Lady, though he inked and sketched her). The Designer hovers over a lot of my sketching, offering suggestions - if you see something cool, it probably came from him.

The the dress came from a flippant remark from the Designer concerning the replacement of buckles for buttons wherever possible in steampunk clothing. We were watching Sweeney Todd shortly thereafter and the idea came about to apply this principle to the clothing therein. In particular, Johanna's blue gown with triangle cutouts.

Here, you see a red and black gown with triangle cutout and instead of buttons holding overlap together, we have buckles. Instead of ruffles on the skirt, I essentially drew the skirt from the Steampunk Dress.

It seems attractive enough, but part of me thinks this has more to do with how the shapes work together and that the tails from the buckles would rather detract from that, but it was fun to draw.

Click Me Pictures...

Not so long ago, the Costume Mercenary was frustratedly writing product descriptions and now, perhaps unsurprisingly, I'm frustratedly making banner adverts. Some of you (or so I hope) might even have clicked onto the site via one of these mutated creations of mine.

Funnily enough, making one is harder than it looks.

Picking the right picture (I know I have millions, but only a handful are good enough), getting the picture to fit the allotted space, getting it to look right and getting the right sounding text... these are all recent headaches and I'm not quite sure I've in any way succeeded, but such is the way of things.

I'm welcoming any suggestions, advice and suchlike on graphical design.

In Other News: Whilst here are various very pretty things that I would very much like to post about (including a strangely swirly greatcoat, a new cloak design, a tudor gown and some dresses) The Designer (who also takes photographs) has recently become a lot busier during the daylight hours and I'm currently also scribbling pictures for Profound Decision's upcoming live roleplay event, Odyssey: The Great Game. 

A Hundred and Fifty Year Old Paper

Found it!

After a far too lengthy search for it, I have finally found the cardboard documents tube of 1850s newpaper prints I bought in Oxford. For long paranoid weeks, I had thought it was accidentally taken out with the recycling. It turns out, of course, that it had actually rolled under one of the many bookcases in the living room and despite many frantic efforts, remained at large until about two hours ago.

As the story goes, I was passing through the city of dreaming spires and I passed by Sanders of Oxford. I peered into the window of their 16th century building and they happened to be having a sale. Aside from beautiful and really expensive old things, they also sold beautiful and not very expensive old things.

For less than the cost of a pack of glitter pens each (yes, I bought some new glitter pens - actually the Designer bought me some glitter pens - dull anecdote, will stop now), I bought some old newspaper clippings. I wonder now if these scraps owe their existence to all Victorian craze of scrapbooking that tore apart medieval manuscripts for the purposes of entertaining small children. Look, little Timmy, here is a five hundred year old book! Why don't you cut out all the pretty pictures for your scrap book! 

There are utterly irreplaceable manuscripts that have been carved up in this way. The destruction of books is a heartbreaking topic, so I won't go into how visitors to cathedrals used to have their pick of which historiated initial they wanted to take home as a souvenir (some of these have since been reclaimed and sewn back in).




My scanner is a standard A4 size and the full-pages of The Illustrated London News are closer to a modern B4 (read: my scanner is not big enough), so some clever patchwork may have to happen at some point. But here is a brief glimpse of the various bits and pieces I've scanned this morning.

Dear reader, I'm afraid you will have to brace yourself for the deluge of scans from my collection and consequent gushing about it.

More photos under the cut.

Preview: On Adventures Botanical and Oriental

Spring is supposed to be here and weather has been distinctly improving. Despite having said that circumstances have been conspiring against photos of the kit from happening, the Designer and the Mercenary managed to find time today. As always, here are a few preview photos and the rest will be up when I've sorted through the two hundred odd photos that were taken.

We were at Durham University's Botanic Garden, mostly in the bamboo grove (the bamboo I'm peering from, for example,  is Yushiana anceps, commonly known as Pitt White). I was actually rather disappointed in what I had considered rather wimpy bamboo after seeing it grow in huge thickets by the road near where I used to live in Hong Kong. The Designer's memory of the place proved to be somewhat flawed as he forgot about all the little educational red signs that littered the place. Trying to keep them out of shot was quite a feat and lots of strategic posing had to be undertaken.

Accusations of spring are perhaps unjustified as the sakura blossoms weren't in existence yet. It is, perhaps, just as well since the costumes are wuxia in nature which is Chinese rather than Japanese, and though cherry blossoms are still important to Chinese culture it certainly doesn't dominate it the way it does the Japanese. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, attempting to look serene is very difficult. We didn't manage to borrow any of Character Kit's swords in time for these photos and trying to look murderously serene without a sword is even more difficult.

The other problem was trying to find a setting for the "Carthaginian" outfit that we had thrown together for Odyssey (incidentally, bearing very little resemblance to the fashions of the historical Carthage). We had attempted a range of places, including the Alpine Garden, which the Designer remembered to resemble "a quarry in Wales" (it is somewhat less impressive than that description may suggest) and the South African section of the hothouse. Both he and I are rather dissatisfied with how those photos turned out, by more on that when I post them properly.