Wedding Dress Inspiration

27 days to go...

I have spent the last few days working on my evening and ball gown for Queen Victoria.

I decided to base this dress on Victoria's wedding dress and the gown will also be worn during the festival for the Pageant of Queen Victoria's life which will include her wedding.

Queen Victoria's Wedding Dress, 1840(MoL D325 a & b, Royal Collection)

The original dress is made of Spitalfield's silk. It was originally creamy white but has discoloured over time and is now a darker shade of cream. The dress has a pleated skirt and a separate bodice. The bodice has a very pronounced point at the waist and is decorated with Honiton bobbin lace. The skirt was also originally trimmed with a wide Honiton lace flounce.

Close up of Queen Victoria in Sir George Hayter's painting, "The Marriage of Queen Victoria", 1842. The Royal Collections. Image found here

My dress will be made in a creamy coloured moiré fabric. This is darker than the original shade of the dress but is in fact quite close to how the dress appears now. The skirt is pleated like the original wedding dress and I have adapted the bodice pattern I used for my other two dress to feature a deeper point at the front and a double puff sleeve. The gown will be trimmed with lace, although unfortunately nothing quite as extravagant and beautiful as the original Honiton lace.

The dress is not an exact replica but more of a homage to the wedding dress which also reflects some of the other dresses worn by Victoria for famous portraits. Some of these may have in fact been her wedding dress but is interesting to note that many of the paintings which depicted this dress were not true to the actual garment itself. Nevertheless, despite the differences between the paintings and engravings produced and published at the time, I have tried to stay true to the uncluttered line and simplicity of the original which provoked a new fashion for wedding gowns.

In this 1842 portrait by Winterhalter the Queen appears to be wearing her wedding gown - however, the sleeves and the lace frill appear shorter than on the original dress itself and the lace is missing from the cuffs. (Image found here)

The pattern for the dresses

49 days to go...

Today it was finally time to start work on the dresses themselves. In order to make Victoria's costumes as authentic as possible, I have decided to use a pattern from Janet Arnold's "Patterns of Fashion 1".

This wonderful series of books offers detailed drawing and patterns for original dresses in museum collections around the UK. Careful measurements taken from the garments were used by Arnold to draft patterns that allow us to essentially recreate the real thing. These patterns are complete with detailed annotations on the construction techniques used to put the dresses together.

The dress I have chosen as the basis for my pattern is a day dress in The Gallery of English Costume in Manchester (now The Gallery of Costume). The dress is dated c.1839-1845 and is described as,

"A day dress in a delicate shade of deep beige. The fabric is a silk and cashmere mixture with a soft, glossy finish. The two piece straight sleeves are decorated with double crossway pieces, which are trimmed with piping and bouillons. The neckline would have been edged with lace or worn with a chemisette. The bodice is decorated with flat, pleated folds of the same fabric as the dress. which descend from the shoulder to the centre front." ((Arnold, p64)*

 The only drawback of these patterns is the size. In contrast to commercially available patterns such as Truly Victorian, Laughing Moon and The Mantua Maker, you cannot simply pick your size and happily cut away. Firstly, each dress is unique and the pattern reproduces the exact size of the original wearer - for the most part rather small! Furthermore, the patterns have then been scaled down to 1:8 for printing. A little preparation, calculation and experimentation is therefore required to obtain a usable pattern.

Visit tomorrow to find out more about how I created the bodice pattern for Queen Victoria's gowns using this pattern.

*References
Janet Arnold, Patterns of Fashion 1, Englishwomen's dresses and their construction c.1660-1860,(Macmillan, London, 1977).