Atelier Lily Absinthe

Charles Worth & Textiles

/ Adam Lid / Leave a comment

Anglo-French costumier and dress designer Charles Frederick Worth (1825 - 1895 ). Born in Lincolnshire, he moved to Paris and his establishment became the centre of the fashion world. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Textiles are a major element in any fashion style and a good designer will always seek to utilize the right fabric so that a specific style looks its best. For Charles Worth, fabrics played a major role in the design process to the point where he would commission textile manufacturers to create textiles for his exclusive use. Drawing on his background as a draper, Worth created relationships with a number of textile manufacturers, most notably the silk weavers of Lyon, France.

Charles Frederick Worth Haute Couture bridesmaid dress gown from American 1896. Probably made from silk and fabric material with contrasting woven flower floral pattern, pearl, bead and lace tulle. High neckline with blown up gigot puffed sleeve, contrasting color for the bodice, dress fully flared with train at the back. #Vintage #Haute #Couture #Fashion House of Worth.

Worth’s opinion of the role of textiles was neatly summarized in an interview quoted in the March 24, 1896 edition of the Los Angeles Herald:

When a manufacturer invents any special fabric or design, he sends me a pattern asking if I can use it. The fabric may require a severe style of dress, or if light and soft it is adapted for draperies and puffings. If the material pleases me, I order a large quantity to be made specially for me, and design my dresses accordingly. A purchase by a large firm of a great quantity of material influences other firms, and that material, with the style it is suited to, becomes the fashion. All my models are first made in black and white muslin, then copied in the material and coloring which I select.

Worth notes that with enough yardage and the right design, one can create a popular fashion. Also, Worth notes that the textile manufacturer would come to him in the hopes of an order. However, knowing Worth’s tendency to commission custom fabrics, it was a two-way process in that Worth’s designs often drove textile development. In future posts we’ll be covering this in more detail but it’s interesting to hear from one of the leading designers of the day.

Design Element: Harmonious Color Combinations

/ Adam Lid / Leave a comment

Inspiration often comes from unexpected sources and this post is one of those…Recently, we came across some pictures featuring an circa early 1950s evening dress designed by a one Fred Perlberg that was featured on the Augusta Auctions website. While this dress seemingly has nothing to do with late 19th Century fashion, it does illustrate an interesting point in regard to the use of color in fashion design and especially when applied to the 1870s and 1880s: specifically, monochromatic colors were used in combination with each other. Essentially, monochromatic colors involved the use of tints, shades and tones of one color and in this case, green, as illustrated below:

In this example, we see an incredibly rich dark green combined with a much lighter shade of green- basically a tint where white has been added to the dark green. On a practical level, this is probably the easiest way to create an interesting dress design. Below is an example of an 1880s day dress that we made, using a similar color scheme:

In this example, we’ve used three distinct tints of blue:

The Perlberg dress is a fairly simple example but it gets the idea across very directly. Here’s another example depicted with the first and fourth figures in this December 1880 fashion plate from Godey’s Magazine:

Finally, here’s a little more complex example with this mid to late 1880s day dress:

Day Dress, c. 1883 – 1889; Goldstein Museum of Design (1963.007.002a-b)

We hope that you’ve enjoyed this tiny exploration in the use of monochromatic colors as a design tool in fashion. Stay tuned for more!

In The Atelier

/ Karin McKechnie-Lid / Leave a comment

Working on a few projects at a time keeps me interested…this is one of several reproduction gown projects that I’m working on at present. Only the foundation seams are machined, and frankly, I’m too far into this gown to take shortcuts! Have you ever had to take a vacation from a project? I sure have, with this one, but I’m determined to finish.

What’s On

/ Adam Lid / Leave a comment

Lately, we’ve been on a big push to expand our wardrobe collection and in particular, 1870s and 1880s styles that can be used for both background as well as for principal characters. Because these are all day dresses, the basic fabric we’re using is cotton, either in stripes or small irregular patterns such as florals and plants. In some instances, we are also using silk taffeta for accent. In this example, the base fabric is a light blue cotton with an old gold/chartreuse floral pattern. For accent, we used a dark gold/chartreuse (depending on the light) silk taffeta for accents on the front and sleeve cuffs.

Here’s a close-up for constructing revers to be inserted on the fronts:

The green silk chartreuse velvet was a real pain to work with- it was constantly migrating and it took a lot of pins and basting stitches to keep everything in place. Below are close-ups of the sleeve construction:

It looks simple but there were a lot of steps involved, each requiring exacting attention to detail and taking a long time. In a future post, we’ll show more so stay tuned.

Off To The Getty Villa

/ Adam Lid / 1 Comment

It’s been awhile since we’ve been at the Getty Villa so today we decided to renew our acquaintance. We normally make it out to the Villa about every two to three months but due to a long-standing road closure and work in general, we’ve been unable to make it; normally, the Villa is about 20 minutes away but the major roadway was closed from March to June due to a landslide caused by heavy winter rains. So today the stars lined up and off we went!

From the looks of things, it appears that the gardens are under renovation and the grape vines in the arbor had been severally trimmed back.

The long pool and surrounding garden are some of our most favorite parts of the Villa and it’s easy to linger for a long time here and lost all track of time…not that we were any kind of a hurry. The weather was nice and cool, in the mid-70s which provided a nice break from the 100 plus temperatures we’ve been getting in the Valley lately. It was definitely worth the trip!