A Little Regency Exploration!

Hello everyone! 

I am hard at work on the 17th century ropilla drafting video and, if all the editing goes according to plan, I should be releasing it tomorrow! I'm so excited because I'm doing things with the editing and I can't wait to see if they improve your experience as much as I hope they will! 

Just to let you know, I'm going to be focusing on releasing a new video every two weeks on a schedule instead of the rather inconsistent releasing that I've been doing. One video each month will be 16th/17th century and the other will be something else. Maybe modern, maybe historical, but the goal is to create a specific space for myself and my content where I can feel comfortable exploring things outside of the "stuff I'm known for." 

I have been assured by many people, multiple times, that exploring other eras of clothing and focusing on the menswear of those periods won't alienate the strong audience I have. In fact, most of the costume video content creators out there delight in exploring areas outside their normal expertise and their audiences happily on that ride with them. 

It has long been my fear that if I move my own needle too much toward other eras and focus on more menswear content, I might lose more of my precious audience! I don't want to do that at all! 

It is, however, in the best interests of my career and my future to make sure that I don't appear as a one-note craftsman, and only capable of doing a single era well. I have been told, more than once, that the greater NYC professional world doesn't even know I do historical clothing because they only think of me as a knitter! 

But seriously, I don't think I am even capable of giving up the study and teaching of things from my favorite period. That just won't happen. But I do need to grow and I hope you'll grow with me!

My biggest goal over the next few weeks is simply to make sure I always turn the camera on no matter what I'm doing, and create as much raw material as possible for making videos.

Following the thinking into other periods, I was wondering if anyone else is excited about Regency menswear? 

As many people did, I watched Bridgerton (The above photo is from a recent version of Emma) and was a little surprised by some of the choices. Without going into great, judgmental detail about the Bridgerton choices, I must admit, watching the show really revved my engine for looking at actual garments and tailoring practices from the era. Most people in my circle of friends who watched Bridgerton, or who want to live as though they're in a Jane Austen novel, seem obsessed with fancy, upper-class dressing styles.

Meanwhile all I can think about is learning more about dressing the common folks and how their clothing differed in style and quality depending on their class. By Regency standards, I'm a "tradesman" and with that comes certain expectations of dress...what does that mean? How would the work differ? 

Let's take a peek at another character from Emma...Mr. Martin.

I watched the film and all I could think is "I want to dress like him...not Mr. Knightley, or any other of the upper-class men. Perhaps that means at my core, I'm a little common? Fierce... I'll own it!

I started having that exact conversation about upper-class vs. working-class menswear on my personal FB page and it got some great comments and responses. That was when Mike McCarty of Williamsburg fame (#malibudarcy on Instagram if you don't already follow him), passed me a little PDF book on cutting practices from 1809. There weren't a lot of proportions in the booklet, but there were very precise diagrams for the correct shapes and a lot of great discussion of how to THINK about cutting clothes for your clients and their various body and posture differences. There was also a bit of chatter in the book about skill-levels of tailors and the quality of the work for different classes, though quite a bit of those comments were written while looking down on those who work for the lower classes of people...it was a little hard to read some of those judgmental passages. I mean the hauteur! 

For my non-Early Modern video this month, I will be making a video about the pattern drafting and research process that I used to understand the real cut of the garment I was trying make from this 1809 booklet (among the tailoring folks it is simply known as "Queen & Lapsley-1809"). Along with that video will be some pattern analysis that I think will be interesting and relevant to the Early Modern period as well. Especially the bits regarding The Modern Maker approach to using historical tailoring texts to re-create clothing. Discussions have been had and some interesting realizations have come from them. I look forward to sharing it all with you in a couple of weeks, when the next video is ready to be released. 

I'm excited, and I hope you are too. We're entering the time of year when I usually pick up pace and energy. As the days get longer again, my motivation goes through the roof. By May/June, it will be lace-making season again and I will create another set of needle lace lessons. 

Upcoming classes will be posted soon as well. Stay tuned!

As always, Happy Stitching!