Finding 1920's Shoes in the Modern World

Evening shoes, Morris Wolock & Co., late 1920's, MET

 Lets talk about shoes, I love shoes, I'v been wearing heels since I was a sophmore in high school! That's why I was sad to discover just how hard it was to find historical shoes out there in the world! Now, thanks to American Duchess, there are some amazing options! I dream of owning a pair of each of her magnificent designs and I definitely have my eye on a pair of red kensingtons in the future. She also makes a great pair of 1920's shoes called the 23 Skidoo which are an amazing option for 20's leather shoes. As for other 20's styles, there is truly only one place to find them, in the dance shoes section! Tango, Salsa, thank goodness for ballroom dancing because the shoes are fabulously vintage in style!

American Duchess 23 Skidoo!

c. 1926, Shoe Icons

Shoe Icons

Shoe Icons

Shoe Icons

Now for some modern options. These dance shoes are a bit pricier than I would usually pay, but they are made to order! That also means most often you can select the heel height and style as well, which is an awfully nice concept! Make sure if you find a pair you like that you select the 'street sole' option so that your new shoes will stand up to modern wearing!

I love these! I think they look very passably 20's, as so many 20's evening shoes were done in brocade!

A lovely silver leather pair, versatile with many dresses!

This style comes in a few different colors and would be extra special with a pair of sparkling shoe clips added!

Again in a patterned fabric! Imagine if you covered the heels of these in rhinestones!

A less flashy style but one I can't wait to invest in! they would match everything!

I would like to note in the end here that this post is not sponsored in any way, I just wanted to pass on this resource for good retro-look shoes! I haven't yet ordered a pair from this company myself but I hope to very soon!

Avallon France and the Hidden Museum of Costume in Burgundy

I spent about five weeks in Burgundy France in the summer of 2012 staying with lovely family friends who took the worlds best care of me! It was one of the best experiences traveling I have ever had, my wonderful hostess Martine took me to all the little old towns and points of intrest around the region. As a history lover I was in heaven, obviously, and one day she took my to Avallon. This medieval town is still surrounded by its ancient ramparts, and is wonderful to visit on its own, but is elevated to a must visit sight for its miraculous costume museum! On an ancient street there is a archway into a courtyard, leading into a stone house full of treasures beyond description!

Inside is the craziest costume museum you will ever stumble upon! Run by adorable little old french women who will give you a tour and turn the lights in each jam packet room as you wander the labyrinth that is this museum! Each room of this inexplicably luxurious french mansion is positively oozing with antiques, paintings, porcelain, lace, furniture you name it! There is simply a mind-boggling amount of stuff in each room and that is just the setting for an amazing collection of historic dress. The rooms are populated with antique mannequins, from the 50's mostly, all clad in the most beautiful historic garments! The exhibit is changed over every year by the women who run the museum and it is just crazy to think they have even more amazing costumes in storage!

My camera struggled in the dim lighting to capture good images of this place's glory!

also in this crazy mansion? an entire chapel! complete with an 1890's wedding set up! what?!

This necklace, give it to meeee! amazing

the details!

One of my two favorite dresses I saw at the museum, deep green velvet with lace and soutache galore

my other favorite, black net with white glass beads and velvet accents, gorgeous!

Visiting this museum was easily one of the most fascinating experiences I have ever had. The woman who was giving us a tour was doing so in french so my friend was translating for me and we wandered through tiny halls with paintings and drawings stacked from floor to ceiling like an old world pinterest board of hogwartzian glory. The museum was entirely dark as the guide lead us to each room she turned on the lights to reveal each over-stuffed room of antiques and costume. The rooms themselves were of interest alone, each paneled or painted in styled ranging from the late baroque to the late 18th century. The whole experience was more akin to time travel within an antiques warehouse than visiting any normal museum. What a crazy, crazy place! Too amazing to really be described, it seemed so innocuous from the outside, the opulence within was such a shock!

the drive back to the house was equally magical!

The Sparkle Dot Dress

On Saturday, a few friends were getting together for dinner down in Colorado Springs and we decided to get dressed up! I always want to get dressed up, so I was extra pleased! I finished this dress that day in time to wear it out! I have had this sheer polyester chiffon with woven lame polka dots for a long time and decided to make a 20's frock out of it! (since I'm obsessed!) Again I modified the one-hour-dress pattern, this time adding an off center handkerchief hem. This was super easy to achieve, I cut it just as you would a circle skirt, only I left the edges square instead of rounding them off and also positioned the waist circle off center to make the front a bit shorter than the back. I am really happy with how this dress came out! It felt really glamorous to wear as the longer skirt is unusual in the modern world of going out to dinner and drinks. I think it is wildly under rated! I threw on a grey and black faux fur collar too, as its still pretty cold here, and felt super glam all evening!

Top 5 Books for Costuming Inspiration

Though now there is Pinterest, which is a costuming inspiration and research resource so rich I don't think any one doubts how amazingly useful it is, once there were only books. I don't know if you've noticed, but I am a little old fashioned, and though I may own a Kindle too, I am a book lover through and through. As a teenager, after seeing Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette in 2006, I fell in love with historic costume and as a result of this sudden infatuation my parents bought me some lovely books for that Christmas on the subject. I have developed quite the library of Costume and Textile history books since then so I have decided to compile a little list of my favorites for seeking inspiration. In no particular order here are 5 of my favorites!

Fashion: a history from the 18th to the 20th century. The book that for me started it all, I received it for Christmas those many moons ago and poured over its large colorful pages. The Kyoto Costume Institute has one of the best collections of historic dress in the world and in this tome they are displayed in full glory. Ranging through the early 1700's through to the early 2000's, all of our favorite eras to recreate are represented inside. This book will always hold a special place in my heart as my number one, the book that started me on a path to the full obsession for historic dress I have now!

Hailing from the excellent collections of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Fashioning Fashion includes breathtakingly close up images of some gorgeous gowns. The quality of the photography in the book is outstanding and the detail shots and beautiful collection make the book a must have for historic costume enthusiasts!

Though I wish there was a more extensive book catalog of the Costume Institute's (Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York) collections, this book is another full of great inspiration that lives on my shelf. For people who love costume, 100 dresses could never be enough, especially when considering the huge breadth of the MET's collection in total. But this book is still a nice addition to the costumers shelf :)

From another magnificent collection, that of the V&A in London, comes a series of books on the often overlooked details of fashion. I have three of the current four releases in this series, I have yet to acquire the last on twentieth century fashion but I hope to add it to my library soon.  For those who labor over details like seam finishes, fly fringe and embroidery these books are a wonder with their high resolution photographic close ups. They also provide drawings of the garments that are helpful in understanding the full garment and mark the seams which is handy. Again I wish there was a book like the Kyoto museum's that was a full catalog of the V&A's extensive collection, tomes like that are difficult and expensive to produce and the Fashion in Detail series is still an excellent addition to any costumers bookshelf.

Though there are several resources for original fashion plates online, I find it nice to flip through them at full size and appreciate the detail. If you are at all in interested in Victorian and Edwardian costuming, I highly recommend these books of plates from Harpers Bazaar and La Mode Illustree. I hope to be adding to my non-existent Victorian costume closet this year and I know I will be investigating the gowns in these books for inspiration. With both of these books being priced much lower than the investments above, they are a relatively inexpensive addition to kick-start a historic costuming book collection.

I hope I have inspired some of you to consider a physical costume history library. As wonderful as pinterest and tumblr are, sometimes nothing beats a cup of tea and a really wonderful book to star off your next project!

My One Hour 1920's Dresses

So I took photos for about an hour today and yet I only have four to show you! The lighting was just terrible for some reason! So I apologize for the lack of photos in this post! I think what I really need is a photographer other than my cameras self timer sadly. In any case, yesterday I told you all about the 1920's one hour dress pattern and both of these dresses are made using the most basic iteration of that pattern. The first is in a fall print chiffon I fell in love with at Joanns. I just love these colors and the little oak leaves and acorns in the print and I cant wait to wear it next fall!

The other dress (seen below) is in, I admit, a very low quality velvet. The velvet is a dusty purple color with all over 'embroidery' in gold thread. This dress is not my favorite, the pile of the velvet is so low quality I feel I look a bit too much like a bath mat in this dress! It just isn't very flattering, I mean the 20's silhouette on my very 50's hourglass figure just doesn't really work, but I usually just decide not to care because I love the 20's!

I have also noticed the quality of these photos is super grainy and sad, goodness what a bad lighting day! Hopefully I can get better photos soon!

The One Hour 1920's Dress

UPDATED/IMPROVED/MORE 

Posts about the 1920's one hour dress here:  

(The Pattern) (Cutting Out the Dress & Starting the Sewing) (Sewing & Finishing)

The popular One Hour Dress, a pattern available all over the internet, but easy to draft at home in no time at all! When I starting making two new 20's dresses this past week I based the pattern on the most basic of the one-hour dress models. At the patterns most basic level, I have found you will really only need three measurements.

1. The bust measurement (around the body at the fullest point of the bust) (this will be measurement a. in the graphic below)

2. From the top of the shoulder to the desired drop waist/hip line (b. in the graphic below)

3. From that drop waist/hip line to the desired hem length (c. in the graphic below)

The pattern for the 1920's one hour dress is essentially a rectangle with extra extensions for the sleeves and hip fullness. The starting rectangle is the width of 1/2 of your bust measurement (so if your bust measurement is say 40", the rectangle will be 20" across). The sleeve extensions are created by dividing measurement b. by two to determine the depth of the sleeve. You can extend the top edge as wide as you would like, the wider it is the longer your sleeve.

For sewing the dress together, I like to start by hemming the top edges first and then sewing the seams at the shoulders from the edge of the sleeve towards the neck. Leave enough space for the boat neck style neck opening to fit over your head. Then, right sides together, sew the side seams together. Gather or pleat (where the wiggly red lines are above) the skirt extensions and sew down to waist flat. Hopefully that made some sense! The above pattern results in the most basic of 20's dresses with a high neck. I think it looks really nice in a sheer flowy fabric worn over a simple slip.

For a simple variation, just change the shape of the skirt. When modifying the skirt I think it is easier to separate the bodice and the skirt into two pieces that will be re-attached at the waist, but I suppose if you had wide enough fabric you could make it in one piece. Once you change to a larger skirt shape, like those in various colors above, you no longer gather the skirt to the waist but simply sew along the extension to close the full side seam. By changing the skirt shape, the hem becomes like a handkerchief hem and can be really beautiful in a sheer fabric!  

I like the high boat-neck neckline with long 1920's style beaded necklaces but you can change the neckline to whatever you like and finish it by adding a facing on the inside. You can remove the sleeve extensions entirely and either add arm hole facings or bind with bias tape. With a different measurement, from the top of the bust (instead the top of the shoulder) to the hip you can change from a sleeve to a strap. The best thing about this basic 1920's pattern is you can modify it really easily. So much of the 20's shape is geometric and that translates to the patterns as well. I am still experimenting with this pattern, but this is what has been working for me so far. I'll show you the results of my 1920's dressmaking experiments later this week!

Want more about the 1920's 1 Hour Dress?:
(The Pattern) (Cutting Out the Dress & Starting the Sewing) (Sewing & Finishing)