A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

It was kind of a surprise to me that I'd get involved in fountain pen mania, but thinking about it from a more distant perspective, it seems pretty obvious. It's not just that I'm into historical fashion - I wear clothes I've made from repro 1950s patterns, sew on a machine with a treadle, use a safety razor, heat food up on the stove/in my toaster oven rather than a microwave, walk everywhere, make yoghurt, and cook everything from scratch. I'm an eccentric. It's not that I reject "modern life" or anything like that - I just enjoy using/wearing things that are solid and well-made (well, that's debatable when it comes to my dresses), I like how these things look and function, and, possibly due to my straitened social life, I don't really care if I come off as weird. Fortunately, people seem to find it charming rather than off-putting, anyway. Fountain pens first came into my scope in a discussion online about little luxuries you do for your...

Costume Blog Writing Month, that is! I've been doing so much long-form writing lately that I thought it would be fun to loosen up a little. There is a  semi-official list of prompts , so let me get the ones I've missed in here on the third day of the month. Day One: Introductions Hello! I'm sure you have a general idea of who I am if you're following my blog, but if you're not: I'm Cassidy. By trade, I'm a museum professional; by vocation, I'm a fashion historian. I don't tend to write much here about myself personally because I'm active on a bunch of social media platforms, though to be honest, I tend to write about fashion history there as well rather than anything personal. I suppose I just do it in a more personal way? You can find me on Twitter ( @mimicofmodes ), Tumblr ( @mimic-of-modes ), and Instagram ( @mimicofmodes ) - and I'm active at Ask Historians as a moderator and an answerer of fashion history questions. You can read...

A few days ago, I introduced you to my new Patreon page , but I wanted to give you more background about why I decided to do this and so on. With this blog, I try to bridge the gap between costuming/reenactment and academia. I do post about sewing projects, when I do them (unless I'm just following the directions from a pattern packet, there's not much scope for research there), but what I really like to do is read primary and secondary sources, take something fresh from them, and share it with everyone else. This is the kind of research you normally do for publication or a conference paper, but I don't really want to write for journals or conferences - I want to write for you , the public. It's not pure theory that I find intriguing, but the mixture of academic research with practical application, which leads to posts on  fashions in petticoats and stomachers , or early nineteenth-century corsets . Or even more esoteric topics that might not be relevant to your s...

I've been in a reading/writing/sewing slump for a good handful of months now, due to a number of factors: - The last dress I tried to make for myself ended up looking terrible, due to the fabric being too polyestery and stiff for the design, and to the fact that the cut of the bodice is really bad for someone this short-waisted. - I've been gaining weight, slowly enough that I didn't really notice until suddenly it hit me that I was dissatisfied with all my clothes because they were just  too tight to be comfortable or look good. I'm working on the weight issue, but I just can't gather the will to sew any new clothes for work. - Cameo is deceptively difficult, at least in the Made to Fit custom sizing module. My pattern files keep becoming uneditable, which is obviously a problem if you're still in the working-draft stages! - For a while, I was being really active in a few historical fashion Facebook groups, and the neverending fight to get good contribu...

I can't believe I've been working on this exhibition since the spring . Well, technically, I spent quite a few months in between researching a walking tour of Main Street - originally my brother agreed to make an ambitious app for it, which was then scaled back into a page on our website, and then recently I found that The Clio Foundation  is developing something to allow exactly the kind of tours I want to create, so that isn't available yet. The exhibition itself went up very smoothly. As you can see, it's not large - just one short stretch of wall next to and running up the side of our narrow ramp. To the right is the intro text: Imagine yourself back in Canton in the year 1900. Walking down the north side of Main Street from the Silas Wright House (at this time being used as a parsonage for the newly-rebuilt Universalist Church), you pass most of the same buildings that you know today with different occupants – the Remington Corner Clothing Store, Conkey’s ...

This is so  awkward. Some time ago, I wrote a piece on the blogger at This Victorian Life. She had recently been profiled by Vox or Vice or Vulture - one of those online magazine-like sites - and the profile itself didn't seem very fair. In addition, a lot of the resulting internet chatter about the whole situation of a couple deciding to live "like Victorians" (kind of) came off to me as wrong-headed, assuming that nostalgia for history and a desire to experience the past automatically meant thinking that all aspects of the past are better than the present, including historic racism, sexism, etc., and my contrariness and defensiveness kicked in, pushing me to post a rebuttal. Recently, the blogger and her husband took a trip to Vancouver where they attempted to visit a famous private garden, the rules of which disallow costumes and wedding dress. In a blog post, the employees who turned them away were described as cruel, rude brutes who looked down on the couple, the...

Hooray! After just a few days, Dragonrose Historical Patterns has been fully funded and then some. I must give a great big thank-you to everyone who supported us, either for a preordered pattern or without reward, and another big thank-you to Lauren of American Duchess for sharing a link for us on Facebook. Look, it really is a Pingat! Our total is still climbing. Julie and I discussed it, and decided to add a few stretch goals. $3,400 - We're already almost to this one (and may hit it while I'm typing). When we hit it, we can purchase a module to allow us to create standard-sized, preprinted patterns, in addition to our custom-sized patterns for individuals. $13,500 - I know, it sounds like a lot! It is  a lot! But the extra $11,000 would allow us to buy a 72" Ioline Flex-Jet E commercial printer, which would let us print Dragonrose patterns much more cheaply and therefore sell them to you more cheaply. We would also be able to sell them to distributors wholes...

This is finally happening! Julie  (or should I link here ?) and I have been tossing around these plans for starting a line of historical patterns for a long time. I'm not quite sure how long. I've been merrily taking pattern after pattern for a couple of years so that once the infrastructure is in place, we can start putting them into the computer program and working on the grading, making test samples, etc. But first we need the computer program and associated modules, hence the Kickstarter. Our first pattern, which we're making available for pre-order as the basis for the Kickstarter , is for the 1867 pink evening gown by Emile Pingat in the collection of the Albany Institute of History and Art. Evening dress, Pingat, ca. 1867; AIHA 1972.95.2 Julie actually made the first version of the pattern and took it to the Costume Society of America conference in Cleveland this year, where it won the CSA Designer Showcase. (I'm going to be making my own soon as well.)...

This past weekend was the first reenactment that I've actually been in charge of. (Some of you may pause to chuckle.) At last year's Civil War Weekend at Robert Moses State Park in Massena, I attended with the director of the museum as a kind of deputy - running errands that needed to be run, taking pictures so we would have something new to use in publicity next year, and so on. This year, it was all on my shoulders - the preparation leading up to the day, and the on-site work during the reenactment. This is a picture taken of me last year - I wore the same secondhand dress this time, but with all the new underthings I've made for the HSM, so you do not actually see each rung in the hoop, even when the wind blows. I also have a new bonnet: a straw Flora Francine form from Timely Tresses, trimmed with ribbon from Bulldog and Baum . New pictures ... someday, if someone else took a picture of me and I find it! It was definitely an experience . You really don't re...

Surely  I've said everything I feel the need to? No, because I've continued conversations on the Historical Sew Monthly Facebook group and on Reddit, and Sarah Chrisman did a follow-up interview with SheKnows and then kindly sent me the full text of her answers, some of which were not used. Basically this is like an exclusive interview, in a way. If you see a quote here that's not on SheKnows, that's where it came from!

And what a great birthday it is! For this morning, as I came here to post a link to the Amazon US page for Regency Women's Dress , as it's now pre-orderable ... ... I noticed that I'm listed as the #1 new release in Textile & Costume ! Based, I assume, on preorders from my Facebook announcements! ( Amazon UK ) ( Amazon France ) What a really fantastic birthday present! I seriously grinned at the screen for a moment. The sites all say October but I've been assured that the publishing date is September 17 everywhere. Exciting!! Who'd have thought the "grand project" (see post tags) would have really come to this!

There's a piece on Vox that's been going around Facebook - I Love the Victorian Era, So I Decided to Live in It - by Sarah Chrisman, who's probably familiar to many of you as a blogger and author , even if you haven't read blog or book. Sarah Chrisman is the more public face of a married couple who live in Port Townsend, WA - and as much in the Victorian Era as possible. They very rarely use electricity. They have an icebox, mechanical clocks, fountain pens, oil lamps, etc. etc. etc. They wear pretty accurate historical clothing, which for Sarah includes a corset. (I don't know her measurements, but it looks like she skirts the edge of the period definition of tightlacing, and if she were wearing modern clothing she'd be classified as a tightlacer.) The response has been astoundingly negative . (Although some responses have been thought-through and eloquent.) I'm not totally surprised, because I know that a lot of people see the in-depth study of ...

I hate to do this! But ever since I became fully employed in the history field, I've found it really hard to produce quality posts on a regular basis. Back in the day, when I was frustrated about icing cakes and slicing bread for a "living" (plus not sewing anything ever), it was a simple thing to sit down and research the exact progression of the shape of the bustle - but now I spend hours at work tracking down historical minutiae and hours off work sewing feverishly. Going forward I'm going to continue writing my Historical Sew Monthly posts, and hopefully without the articles in between they will become more substantial again. I intend to get more done than just those, but pushing myself to write a post a week isn't working. So I'm sorry for the lack of content today, but I can promise that the August challenge is going to be something special!

You were supposed to get a well-researched post on Redfern Ltd. this week, but I've read several posts on Outlander  lately and I want to add my two cents. To be perfectly honest, my initial impression was (and is, for each new outfit), "hmm, I see where they were going; I wonder if they know about [construction thing]? [Aspect] makes it very costumey." Overall I would like to see more winged cuffs and caps, but I'm very happy with the materials used, Annette Badland's tying-over-the-kerchief brown gown , and Claire's 1940s wardrobe. One thing that is really bothering me, though, in this dialogue - and how wonderful is it that in this day and age, film designers, fans, and recreationists can now communicate with each other directly? - is the idea that discussing issues of dubious accuracy is insulting the designer or saying that the costumes are terrible because they're inaccurate. I can appreciate the handwork put into the wedding robe de cour , even ...

I really dislike making this post, but I'm trying to convince myself that it's not that bad. Here's a creepy picture from an 1861 Godey's to distract you from my awkwardness My life has been tricky lately.  I'm on a long-term temp assignment while trying to find permanent employment.  I'm living at home, but have to move out fairly soon due to Reasons, and so I'm trying to make the new permanent (or semi-permanent, or temporary - I'm not too picky) employment be in the same general area as new lodgings, and all that to be in the same area as some museums, so I can volunteer without having to spend lots more on gas - extensive volunteering being pretty much a necessary step in getting a job in museums, as entry level positions are rare.  I recently had to spend a chunk of change replacing the brake rotors on my car, which was very sad but I was all stoic about it, standing up to adversity etc.  But now the CMOS battery in my laptop, which has bee...

A million thanks to KittyCalash for giving me the Versatile Blogger Award.  It is a wonderful birthday present. :D The rules of the award are that you must: Thank and link back to the person who nominated you Paste the award to your blog Tell 7 thing about yourself  Nominate 15 other blogs Seven things about me ... I love starting to write fiction, but I usually don't finish anything because I start working on some other endeavor (usually sewing) and lose the creative impulse.  Most of the time, when I start to write something it's because I've read some non-fiction and I want to explore a situation or historical person.  When it's relating closely to royalty (which is often), I write in some other universe so I can control all the history and plot. Most of the time periods I'm the most interested in are not very popular, and I'm not sure sometimes if it's part of the reason I like them or if there's some common thread that makes me like ...