Vintage Couture Tailoring
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Vintage Couture Tailoring

Thomas von Nordheim

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eBook - ePub

Vintage Couture Tailoring

Thomas von Nordheim

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About This Book

Traditional tailoring is a fascinating craft, which has not changed for many centuries, however, the techniques are now known only by a few practising in the best couture ateliers and bespoke tailor's workrooms. Nothing feels quite so luxurious or sophisticated as bespoke clothes, but the tailoring skills they require are often seen to be shrouded in mystery and the clothes therefore only accessible to the rich and famous. This practical book reveals the trade secrets of couture tailoring and brings vintage couture tailoring within the reach of all. With step-by-step photographs and professional tips throughout, it shows how a ladies' jacket is made and thereby introduces a range of fundamental tailoring techniques. These can be used for garments for either gender, as well as other sewing projects: moulding fabric to shape with the iron; employing loose interfacings; hollow shoulder construction; pad stitching canvas; interlining and weighting hems;making tailored and bound buttonholes;.... and many more forgotten techniques.Written by a tailor of international repute, Vintage Couture Tailoring is dedicated to all who appreciate the highest standard of craftsmanship, and who like using their eyes and hands to produce beautiful garments.Vintage couture tailoring is practised by only a few establishments around the world today and this practical book reveals the trade secrets of couture tailoring. An invaluable guide for professionals wishing to further their skills, and for enthusiasts with an interest in traditional tailoring. Shows how to make a ladies' jacket from preparation through to assembly and reveals the exquisite finishing details that are the hallmark of couture tailoring. Superbly illustrated with 417 colour step-by-step photographs.Thomas von Nordheim is a tailor of international repute.

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Information

Publisher
Crowood
Year
2013
ISBN
9781847975881
Subtopic
Stylisme
Chapter 1

A brief history of tailoring

The two-piece suit is nowadays the internationally accepted apparel, but few know the origins of these garments. The collar and lapel of modern tailoring (formerly worn up at times as a means of protection against the elements), as well as details such as the buttoned cuffs (also referred to as ‘surgeon’s cuffs’, indicating they can be unbuttoned to allow rolling up the sleeves to engage in ‘dirty’ work) and vents in the back of a jacket (so the wearer can sit comfortably on a horse), are not thought about much and are commonly seen as ‘classic design’ from which even cutting-edge designers cannot get away. They have no utilitarian function as they did 200 years ago, so really they are decorative anachronisms.
Tailoring is a very old craft and was already regulated by Guilds during the Middle Ages in Europe. The origins of tailoring are supposed to be rooted in the structures made by stitching together material and wadding (pad stitched as we still use it now), to be worn under armour so that the body was protected against the heavy metal casings.
Retaining the stiffness of armour, but no longer a functional feature, in the late Middle Ages and during the Spanish fashion of the Renaissance period heavily padded clothes were worn: rigid fabrics, cod pieces, extreme shoulder puffs and peascod belly doublets. This created extravagant fashion silhouettes, which did not resemble the human shape underneath but represented the status and wealth of the wearer in their geometric formality.
After the unrest of the Thirty Years’ War in the early seventeenth century, clothes became less structured. The loose-fitting buttoned coat with narrow, sloping shoulders (worn with casual nonchalance) was the most popular men’s garment. Over the century and during the next, they became increasingly formal again and elaborate rows of decorative buttoning and rich embroideries adorned the fabrics. Coat skirts became fuller and were executed in stiff silks and velvets. Worn with a waistcoat and breeches, this was the prototype for the modern men’s three-piece suit, although each garment was made from different materials and the collar did not exist as such by then.
In the late eighteenth century, fashion looked to England, where country gentlemen wore informal woollen frock coats with collar and lapel. This was the start of a swing towards more casual and comfortable clothing again, which was to impress with proportion and fit, rather than ostentatious surface decoration. Around 1810 English tailors cut the coat with a waist seam, which allowed the garment to be more fitted. This cut was used on men’s coats throughout the nineteenth century, into the early 1920s on suit jackets, and is still in use today on morning coats and tail coats, the two most formal pieces of men’s clothing to have survived. At this time wool fabric replaced the stiff, rich fabrics of earlier times. With the help of discreet padding, clever cutting and tailoring techniques (the malleable wool fabrics reacted to heat and steam), a new sartorial ideal was invented. Tailoring firms like Stultz in London’s Savile Row or Staub in Paris’s Rue de Richelieu founded the reputation for these still flourishing world-class tailoring centres.
Pattern cutting systems, complicated apparatus for measuring, and the inch tape itself, were invented. Prior to that, strips of paper with notches were used to keep a record of customers’ measurements, but there were no templates. Customers had to supply their own material purchased at a draper’s shop and then each garment was cut by guessing and altered by the tailor with more or less skill, a lengthy process involving many fittings.
As a rule, garments were made to order; however, a few tailors started selling made-up garments in the late eighteenth century. The appearance of the straight-cut long overcoat in the 1840s meant that this type of unfitted garment could be made in advance and more merchant tailors offered these off the rack. Technical innovations of the Industrial Revolution meant goods could be acquired more cheaply and there was more demand for formal clothing from an increasingly ambitious and wealthier middle class. It has to be remembered that at this point the sewing machine had not been invented and all clothing, bespoke or confection (ready-made clothing), was entirely hand sewn. When it did arrive in the 1850s, it was not frequently utilized. A hundred years on from then, many ready-to-wear tailored garments were still hand finished, including buttonholes and lining around the armholes.
Throughout the nineteenth century, tailored garments were stiffened with various starched linen canvases, stiff buckram, even cardboard; padding was made from horsehair matting, cotton wadding or kapok (all of which are still used in traditional upholstery, a related craft). Coats were tight-fitting, achieved through multiple seaming in the coat. Around 1850 the coat was cut short to what we now know as a jacket. This was in response to increased demand from men to wear more comfortable clothes for leisure and sports. The buttoned sleeve cuff allowed workmen, doctors and so on to turn up their sleeves when needed.
Men’s fashions.
In the mid-nineteenth century it was not yet fashionable to wear coat, waistcoat and trousers made from the same material – quite the opposite. The three-piece lounge suit made en suite, resembling the modern business suit, arrived in c. 1870 and became the most popular men’s apparel. It was, however, considered distinctly lower class and was only worn for country pursuits and travelling by higher members of society. The frock coat and the semi-formal morning coat, still worn with contrasting trousers, were worn by upper-middle-class businessmen, politicians, bankers and doctors. Considered old-fashioned by then, they disappeared entirely from general wear between the two world wars. As with all old-fashioned dress styles, they either vanish or live on as a kind of costume reserved for special formal occasions (white tie for banquets, morning coat for weddings, events at court, and so on); alternatively they become a dress style reserved for servants (very grand staff wore eighteenth-century style liveries well into the mid-twentieth century, including wigs). Even today, waiters still wear black tie in some establishments.
Throughout the nineteenth century, coat styles changed with fashions, but this was limited to the style, length and width of lapel, trimmings, pockets, quarter details, etc. The jacket shape was basically an unshaped straight-cut garment to cover the natural human body without exaggeration. Towards the end of that century, jackets were fitted more closely to the body. Just after the First World War and until the early 1920s, jackets had heavily padded fronts with stiff built-out chests (referred to as bombĂ© in French), although this was due to the poor quality of materials available at the time. From the late 1920s, jackets were very fitted and had wide and straight padded shoulders – a look that would last throughout the 1930s. Attributed to a London tailor called Scholte, a new cut called the ‘drape cut’ (also known as ‘London cut’) was introduced. By widening and padding the shoulders and cutting the chest with extra cloth so it draped before the armhole, the figure seemed to have the fuller chest of an athletic person. This cut is still used by some establishments today.
Horsehair canvas had been made since before the First World War, but only became popular as body interfacing, rather than just for chest re-inforcement, in the 1930s. More tailors accepted that the superior springy quality of hair canvas led to an improvement in the construction of jackets, replacing the previous layering of limp linen. By this time suit jackets never had vents in the back, whether single or double; this only applied to riding jackets. Generally, single-breasted styles were considered less formal than double-breasted, but before the war, were acceptable when worked with peak lapels (when the revers goes into an upward point).
After the Second World War the American V-silhouette, with its extremely wide, padded shoulders and long, straight, oversized cut, became the fashion. In 1950 a neo-Edwardian style was propagated by London tailors, and taken on by the Italians, who became ever more prominent as fashion trendsetters in the 1950s. Jackets with wide but rounded shoulders, short lapels and only slightly fitted at the waist, were the look. From the mid 1960s jackets were cut closer to the body again and in the early 1970s very tight-fitted jackets with narrow but high padded shoulders and very wide lapels became the fashion. This was an exaggerated ‘retro’ take on the 1930s, and was followed by a more relaxed fit, but still cut quite closely to the figure. Oversize styles with ridiculously wide padded shoulders for both sexes were the fashion from the mid 1980s.
Traditionally only men did tailoring (‘man-tailored’); they also fashioned ladies’ corsets and riding habits. Though professional seamstresses were employed to do trimming and hand-finishing, they never designed, cut or fitted garments. In the eighteenth century this changed: dressmakers set up businesses and formed their own guilds. It was here that the differences in craftsmanship in traditional gents’ and ladies’ tailoring began.

Ladies’ tailoring

When it became fashionable for women in the last quarter of the nineteenth century to wear crisply tailored suits in nautical, equestrian or military styles, men’s tailors again were sought after for their high standards of exquisite craftsmanship. At this time many prestigious businesses renowned for their ladies’ tailoring such as Redfern (with branches in London, Paris and later New York and Edinburgh) were established and houses such as Henry Creed (est. 1760) rose to fame.
Around 1870 ladies began to wear so-called ‘tailor-mades’, meaning a shirt and jacket worked from the same material. They existed alongside ‘faux suits’, where the jacket was joined to the skirt. Suits, later called tailleurs, then known as ‘costume’, were considered to be distinct street wear and featured collar and lapels like men’s suits. The sleeves usually had cuff details rather than buttoned vents. All jackets were extremely closely fitted over the corseted figure, shaped by means of multiple seamed panels and sometimes boned so as to lie flat. Sleeves were always tight, except in the late 1890s when huge leg-of-mutton sleeves were fashionable. Always fashionable was the cut-away style.
In the last half of the 1910s short bolero-type jackets and loose-fitting longer jackets were worn. After the First World War Chanel presented unstructured suit jackets, something for which she later became world famous. (Then, as now, a Chanel jacket had no interfacings.) With the un-waisted 1920s fashions came the straight cut, often collarless jackets and coat. Sleeves were now straight and comfortable. CrĂȘpes and jerseys were used as materials and this added to the soft, ‘dressmaker’ look, which lasted through to the late 1930s.
Ladies’ jackets and coats then became more structured and fitted again; the styling (collar and lapels) as well as the fabrics resembled the men’s jacket and has done ever since. Although tailored trousers were already worn by some women in the 1930s – Marlene Dietrich famously had her suits made by gents’ tailors, including Savile Row’s Anderson & Shepperd – this was the exception and seen as film-star eccentricity. Trousers were reserved for beachwear.
Ladies’ fashions.
The mid 1930s can be seen as the birth of what is considered now ‘the classic suit’, both for men and women. In London, Digby Morten, then designer at Lachasse, popularized masculine tweeds and made these fabrics acceptable for any time of the day, as well as for town wear, quite a novelty then. From 1938, jacket shoulders became wider and heavily padded, a uniform-like look that did not change throughout the wartime period.
Dior’s ‘New Look’, presented in 1947, epitomized a tendency towards more feminine styling after the war: with its rounded shoulders, defined bust and small waists, and fuller and longer skirts, it was the opposite of what had been the fashion. However, this look took a while to filter through and most suit jackets and coats remained wide and square-shouldered through to the early 1950s, often more exaggerated than the men’s jackets.
In the 1950s Dior imposed new fashion lines every season. Suit jackets ranged from very fitted with tight waists and extremely rounded, padded hips and stiffened basques, to semi-fitted and loose styles. Master tailor Balenciaga presented a short coat that was fitted in the front, but had a wide swing back. The couture tailoring of the 1950s, with its incomparable array of architectural styles and structured details such as collars, fly-away cuffs and so on, required a return to stiff interfacing...

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