Rachel E. Pollock's Blog: La Bricoleuse aggregate and more..., page 8

Unveiling the Secrets of Mascot Making - Avant Garb #Mascots

Book Review: Sewn Hats

 

I recently taught a guest masterclass on vintage sewn hat patterns for Pattern Place members of Creative Costume Academy, and I wish I'd learned about this book beforehand rather than after-the-fact, because I would have recommended it.

In fact, it was published in 2012, and I can't believe I've only just learned of its existence! I've been seeking a book on sewn hat styles for ages, albeit not actively. Perhaps it's more accurate to say I've been wishing one existed while remaining ignorant of this one. (I ought to cut myself some slack though, since I learned to make hats back in the early 1990s and can't possibly find out about every book released on hatmaking topics as they come out).

This is a great book for complete novices to hatmaking, but who have some familiarity with sewing other garments or accessories in fabric. It might be too challenging if you don't understand basic sewing terms, but you don't need to know anything about hatmaking or even basic hat vocabulary--the author explains concepts like  the difference between a brim and a visor.

The book is arranged in chapters that pertain to specific kinds of hats, like several warm hats to make for cold weather, several vintage hats (mostly sewn cloches), summer sun hats, hats for children/babies. The step-by-step directions are clear and the patterns themselves are available online as a PDF. What I find so exciting is the potential to use these patterns as essentially hat slopers, to alter and make other various sewn hat styles. Last season I drafted a sewn felt cloche pattern from scratch, and while that wasn't difficult, if I'd begun with one of the patterns in this book I could have cut a couple hours/mockups out of the process.

The full-color photos illustrate examples of each style on human models (as opposed to canvas heads or mannequins), and the vector-art pattern layouts are clear and easy to read. I'm thrilled to add this to my millinery library.

Book Review: To Dye For by Alden Wicker

   Reading To Dye For by Alden Wicker, I felt like I was reading the 21st century incarnation of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring or Upton Sinclair's The Jungle--a book of investigative journalism with the power to blow the lid off industry corruption and change the world.
It sounds like hyperbole, but not only do I recommend this book to every costumer, garment-maker, cosplayer, sewing enthusiast, fashion maven, and clothing designer, but I honestly think every fabric wearing human should read it. 
You may be wondering (as was I), how can our clothing poison us? Upon consideration, I recalled the legendary "arsenic green" dyes discovered and marketed in the mid-19th century, and Wicker elaborates upon the myriad ways dyes, finishes, and other properties of 21st-century "high performance" textiles can contain hidden dangers.

I learned of the book via this article, an overview of the toxicity of flight crew uniforms, written by the author in the Guardian. And in fact the book opens with an in-depth consideration of the plight of flight attendants on several airlines, poisoned by their redesigned and remade new uniforms. 
Subsequent chapters concern the history of toxicity in clothing items (going back literally millennia!), why azo (polyester) dyes are different from prior toxic dyes like aniline dyes and "arsenic green", hazards of performance finishes like stain resistance/flame retardants/wrinkle resistance, and a great (hopeful) chapter on how to change your habits to protect yourself and work for industry change. 
The book concludes by returning to the various airline professionals whose cases she opened the book with, following up with how their conditions have progressed in the intervening years. And (SPOILER) their cases are not conclusive or cut-and-dried. The very nature of their plight makes for indecisive outcomes and no singly culpable substance or chemical. Industries argue (correctly) that it's anecdotal. But a preponderance of anecdotal evidence in this instance is significant and worth consideration.
 Their stories and the book in general are epic and alarming yet not without hope. I have a tendency to gawk at disaster, so I read the book in a single-day marathon. If you're more sensitive to Epic Bad, you might need to read it in digestible bits over time.  But I'm serious when I say, every clothes-wearing American [1] needs to read this book and make informed decisions about their sewn-product purchasing choices.  Directors and designers for any theatre that aspires to sustainable practices must inform themselves about the depth and breadth of the textile industry, and this book is an excellent source for not only some fairly disturbing facts but also some strategies for developing best-practice goals.

[1] Some of the info concerns global fashion production, but all the regulations/controls cited are US-specific. So I suppose the book might be a work of Schadenfreude for nations with more stringent regulations on clothing toxicity.

Pro Tips for managing any costume project!

Book Review: The Dress Diary by Kate Strasdin

 I've been waiting for this book to come out ever since I learned about it from an interview with the author on the Dress: Fancy podcast.

Basically, the author was given an old scrapbook of textile swatches, kept and collected by a random ordinary merchant-class British woman throughout her life, that was ultimately found in a stall in Camden Market. I suppose it's actually a book about material culture and what this artifact of a 19th century life can illuminate and obfuscate.

I gather from the introduction that these books were perhaps not as commonly kept as a written diary but were at least enough of a phenomenon that other clothing textile scrapbooks exist in the collections of other museums. It's wild to think that even if these things were frequently assembled by lots and lots of women, they would have probably been something discarded into the trash by heirs after the deaths of their makers, as not worth keeping. And yet it's clear from this book analyzing the contents of just one extant swatch diary, they indicate so much about the lives of people otherwise invisible in the history as recorded by Western colonialism.

Author Kate Strasdin uses the artifact of the dress diary to explore numerous aspects of the 19th century textile industry, from the Lancashine cotton mills so closely intertwined with Anne's family to the travesty of the global cotton trade built on the backs of the enslaved. She explores innovations in textile weaving, manufacturing, and printing, as well as the artisanal trades such technologies made obsolete. She traces the path of lacemaking from the delicate cottage industry of bobbin lace to the mechanization of machine-lace.

Chapters on early 19th-century dressmakers, tailors and milliners in Anne Sykes' orbit make it clear that garment workers have always been (and continue to be) highly skilled, overworked, underpaid, and mistreated by both their clients and employers. The circumstances are different but I found myself continually reminded of garment-workers' struggles that would arise in the intervening time, from the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire to the 21st-century injustices in the sweatshops of Indonesia and Bangladesh.

There's a chapter on Victorian mourning customs (as there are several swatches in the diary captioned for the mourning attire of various people Anne Sykes knew), with fascinating information about how the sartorial expectations of "proper" mourning were codified, marketed, and observed by people at varying levels depending on gender, class, geographic location, etc.

There's also a chapter on fancy-dress balls and Victorian masquerade costume, because there's a swatch from a Dolly Varden costume (according to its caption) that her friend wore to a costume party just after Dickens' Barnaby Rudge came out, when the character of Dolly Varden would have been popularly known. And the author even makes the comparison to contemporary cosplay culture in that section! So fascinating.

A whole chapter focuses on a single, singular swatch from the dress of the Sykes' longtime cook, Margaret Charnock. Strasdin discusses the servant class and the rarity of surviving examples of their clothing, due to the physical labor of their work exacting wear and tear on the garments and the economy of the people who wore them reusing the textiles many times over, most ending in being cut up for rags or wadding. This fabric scrap in Anne's dress diary is an exceptionally rare glimpse into one garment belonging to one working class woman nearly two centuries ago. 

As a safety representative and dyeroom supervisor, the chapter I found most engrossing concerns the way the development of aniline dyes in the middle of the 19th century is reflected among the colors of the textile swatches in the artifact. The author explores the intersection between the textile industry, fashion trends, and the developing science of chemistry. and the related topics of sustainability and safe work practices. The touchstone swatches for all of these topics belonged to a flamboyant middle-aged acquaintance, the aptly-named Bridgetanne Peacock, who appears through several years worth of the collection.

This book first came out in the UK under the title of The Dress Diary of Anne Sykes, and was released to the US as The Dress Diary: Stories from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe. It includes sixteen full-color pages as an insert in the middle of the book, photo reproductions of pages/swatches in the original artifact.

A QR code at the end of the book leads to this webpage containing full-color scans of 16 more pages of textile swatches including some mysteries, people the author was unable to uncover in the historical record at the time of the book's printing.

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to fashion historians, garment makers, sewing history enthusiasts, Mancunians/Liverpudlians and other residents of the north of England, material culture scholars, those researching the history of textiles and the globalization of fashion, and anyone for whom any part of this narrative piques an interest. Well-researched and utterly absorbing.

Book Review: Pricing Workbook for Creatives

 

I was excited to learn about this relatively new (2019) publication, Pricing Workbook for Creatives by Anne Ruthmann. This is an issue that comes up in every creative field and one that is always a struggle. I've mader a video about how to calculate what fee to ask for costume work, but this goes into much more depth.

Basically, I wish this workbook had been available when I got great ideas for creative businesses back in my 20s, when the main resource for mentorship was to hope for the best at a Small Business Association local chapter's outreach events. Ruthman has put together a collection of worksheets that lead the prospective creative entrepreneur through evaluating the financial requirements of goods and services your prospective business might offer, and also develop strategies to grow a profitable, successful creative business. 

Although by its very nature, there are a lot of number-crunching calculations involved in completing most of the worksheets in this book, Ruthmann's explanatory text is full of positive encouragement--it's not just a collection of boring forms to fill out. 

This is nothing less than a manual for full-time creative success. I highly recommend it to anyone thinking of starting a creative business, from costume makers to tarot card readers to interior designers and beyond

Book Review:The Handwear Handbook

 

I am thrilled to review this exciting new title! Author Gillian Conahan's book, The Handwear Handbook: Make Gloves, Cuffs & Vambraces for Cosplay & Beyond is the reference I've been waiting for.

If that sounds like hyperbole, it's not. I teach a graduate level class on costume accessory construction with a project on glove structures, and (until now) the most in-depth text I could find has been a manual written in the 1950s for thrifty housewives to make their own gloves. I'm thrilled to have something published in 2023, and which covers the kinds of issues costumers face in creating pieces based on glove structures, often using novel materials like leather and vinyl and spandex.

Conahan includes an excellent glossary of unusual glove-specific terminology and details all the various seams and seaming structures used. She covers a range of edge- and hem-finishing techniques and advice on working with many different materials including the notoriously-difficult (in glove applications) woven textiles.

The secomd half of the book is a series of step-by-step projects ranging in complexity from embellished cuffs to articiulated armored gauntlet gloves. These include links and QR codes for digital patterns for each project. 

Conahan's bio mentions her experience in professional stage costume and editing a sewing magazine, both of which clearly served her well in writing this well-researched and thorough resource text. The full-color photographs clearly illustrate materials, media, and processes described throughout.

I wish there were some mention of the ergonomic concerns of using a glove foundation for mounting larger costume decor (examples: Edward Scissorhands gloves, lobster claws, etc) but that's probably far more information than the majority of the readership of this book wants to know.

I will definitely use this book as a reference in my classes moving forward!

Book Review: Mrs. Musterman Milliner of Main Street

 

Such a valuable new title for scholars of millinery history! Available in paperback and digitally on Kindle, this biography of Lillian Musterman, a milliner and hat shop owner in Annapolis MD in the early 20th century, was written by her granddaughter, nonfiction author Elizabeth Leah Reed. 

Reed draws from newspaper articles, personal correspondence, family lore, and local history to document the life and career of this extraordinary woman. Full of fascinating details about the American millinery trade outside the epicenter of NYC, this important book illuminates rare aspects of life in this career path including the role of the traveling milliner, employed by a firm in a large city like Baltimore and sent to work on-location at sponsoring stores and boutiques around the state. What an exciting opportunity for young women in the 1910s!

The book may also be of interest to readers of women's history and anyone with a connection to the state of Maryland.

Book Review: Mra. Musterman Milliner of Main Street

 

Such a valuable new title for scholars of millinery history! This biography of Lillian Musterman, a milliner and hat shop owner in Annapolis MD in the early 20th century, was written by her granddaughter, nonfiction author Elizabeth Leah Reed. 

Reed draws from newspaper articles, personal correspondence, family lore, and local history to document the life and career of this extraordinary woman. Full of fascinating details about the American millinery trade outside the epicenter of NYC, this important book illuminates rare aspects of life in this career path including the role of the traveling milliner, employed by a firm in a large city like Baltimore and sent to work on-location at sponsoring stores and boutiques around the state. What an exciting opportunity for young women in the 1910s!

The book may also be of interest to readers of women's history and anyone with a connection to the state of Maryland.

Transform a dye vat into a steam chamber