Redingotes…just when you thought we’ve exhausted this topic, we managed to find another interesting redingote dress design that we just had to share. 🙂 Today’s find is from the December 1890 issue of Demorest’s Family Magazine and was offered for sale as a sewing pattern as the “Francillon”:
Here’s the accompanying description:
An essentially stylish garment, tight-fitting, with a plain redingote back combined with the style of front shown. The illustration represents it made in broché serge of a rich garnet tint, with revers, standing collar, and sleeve-facings of black velvet, a vest of garnet silk brocaded with gold filigree gold clasps at the throat and waist, and a narrow border of black Persian lamb on the collar, revers, and sleeves. The hat is of pearl-gray felt, trimmed with gray, ostrich-tips and faced with garnet velvet.
The design is equally suitable for inexpensive materials, and being a thoroughly protective garment is adapted for the most practical uses, it being easy to make it more simple by the omission of the revers and the full vest.
In the “Francillon,” one can see the Directoire style influence in the wide lapels/revers which should come as no surprise as both styles existed together back in the late 1700s. The fabric choice, brochĂ© serge, is an interesting one that it’s a wool twill fabric fabric (serge) with an ornamental pattern that’s has the appearance of being finely stitched or embroidered (i.e. a brocade); in actuality, the pattern has been woven (brochĂ© and brocade are often used interchangeably). Below is a modern day version:
For recreating historical garments, redingotes such as the above are ideally suited in that a variety of fabrics and trims can be used and these can be as utilitarian or fancy as the maker desires. For us, the redingote is an especially interesting garment because there’s normally not much use for them in Southern California- the weather usually doesn’t get very cold so there’s little incentive to make these. Of course, one could utilize lighter fabrics such as tropical weight wool or linen but in the end, this style is probably going to be observed more than actually recreated, at least for us. 🙂