Designing a Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol Dress

Last week we had a lot of snow here in Holland, and with Christmas right around the corner, it inspired me to make a new wintery Christmasy costume.
To me, Nothing says Christmas like Charles Dickens’ classic novel: A Christmas Carol. The classic story of the three ghosts visiting grumpy old Scrooge always puts me in the Christmas spirit. I actually have a lovely illustrated version of a Christmas Carol from the 1930’s. During the holidays it stands on my mantle as Christmas decorations. (And of course for easy access if I want to reread it.)

Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1943. the complete title back then was A Christmas Carol in Prose: Being a Ghost Story of Christmas. It was published on the nineteenth of december, and apparently it was sold out by the twenty-second. So even back then it was quite popular. So when I decided a few weeks ago that I wanted to make a Christmas costume, I immediately knew I wanted it to be a dress from 1843.

The first thing with designing a historical dress is always to make sure you achieve the perfect silhouet. So to make sure I do, I like to start my designing proces with the structural undergarments. For the corset i found a pattern in Corsets and Crinolines by Norah Waugh. It is still shaped with gussets at the bosom and hips, but it doesn’t have straps like in the previous periods.

Next are the undergarments for the skirt. Many people immediately associate this period with a cage crinoline. But the fact is, those only came into fashion about a decade later. During the 1840’s they weren’t actually used yet. So how do you get that wide skirted silhouet? Firstly, by wearing lots of skirts over each other. There are accounts of ladies wearing as many as ten skirts at the same time. But most importantly by wearing a petticoat made of horsehair. A fabric was made by weaving with the tail hairs of horses. The hose hair makes the fabric very stiff, giving the skirt some body.

The picture above is an example of one of these horsehair petticoats from the Met museum. You can see the fabric is quite stiff, giving the skirts some shape. (These horsehair petticoats are actually quite interesting, and there is more to say about them than I can do in this post, so I might do a separate post on them.) There is actually still a weaver making these horsehair fabrics, but it is quite expensive. But I found an alternative. Fusible interfacing made of cotton, linnen and 10 percent horsehair.
It took me some time to decide on the design of the bodice. Of course the basic characteristics of a bodice from this time period were a given: The inverted triangle shape, with the lines pointing towards the middle of the waist, to give the illusion of a teeny tiny waist. Also the shoulder line of this period is very characteristic. the off the shoulder design of the sleeve gives the appearance of very sloped shoulders. This is often emphasized by a frill or another decorative element on that off the shoulder line.

My first design had a little puff on the bottom of the sleeve, like in the picture above. But in my research I found out that this style was popular in 1839-1840, but by 1843 had become quite old fashioned.

Then I saw this fashion plate with bodices from april 1843, and the dress on the right immediately caught my eye. the collar, broach and ruffles are just perfect, so I decided to base my design on this drawing. Because I am making a winter dress, and this fashion plate is from april, I will be making a few alterations. Most importantly, I will make the neckline higher, and because I plan to use wool, the ultimate winter fabric, the ruffles will be a little bit different. But the main characteristics of this bodice will remain. I even have a lace collar in my collection that would be perfect for this project.

So this became my final design. Unfortunately, this dress won’t be finished before Christmas, since that is already in two days. Doesn’t time fly? But it is a nice dress to work on during the holiday season and I hope we have a few more snowy days in January or February, so I can take some wintery pictures once this dress is finished.

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Have a merry Christmas and a happy new year.