Had an excellent study day in Bristol, provided by the West
of England Costume Society, entitled Dressing the little dears, and covering
children’s wear from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.
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| Ninya with the Tudor Tailor display |
Our first speakers were Jane Malcolm-Davies and Ninya
Mikhaila from
the Tudor Tailor, ably
assisted by their live model, Ninya’s daughter Minnie Perry. Their presentation
Counting cuffs and analysing aprons, was subtitled a statistical approach to
children’s dress in the sixteenth century. Much of the information was drawn
from their recently published book
The Tudor Child. They
had, in order to get their information, trawled through nearly 16,000 wills
with over 30,000 bequests of clothing, only 357 of which were for children, and
vast numbers of images, limited to north west Europe. They spoke about
swaddling, and once the babes were a little older, half swaddling, where their
arms were free. Lacking a real baby, they are notorious uncooperative, they had
a baby sized baby doll you could use to practice swaddling. There was much talk
of “slavering clouts” that is bibs. They then moved on to small children, and
the problems of guessing the gender of the child, with coats for boys and gowns
for girls. Minnie was dressed in an outfit copied in part from a child on the
Oglander family
monument, with a kirtle on top of her smock, and a russet gown over her
kirtle. The book is recommended.
(Huggett and Mikhaila, 2013)
Huggett, J. and Mikhaila. N., 2013. The Tudor
Child. Lightwater: Fat Goose. £25
Second speaker was Noreen Marshall, who was previously a
curator at the
Bethnal Green
Museum of Childhood. Her talk, What will baby wear, covered the history of
baby clothes and started with the sixteenth century. She too spoke about
swaddling, noting that the bands were quite deep 2-4 inches, and she had a
photograph of a
1575-1600
band from the collection. Noreen talked about chrisoms, the cloth that was
used when the child was christened, and how these do not survive. Chrisom
children were those who died within the first month. Noreen stated that the
ppins used for swaddling were normal open ended pins, and
layette
pincushions with the pinheads spelling out mottos such as “welcome sweet
babe” were common presents for new mothers. Noreen showed a
christening
set dating to 1650-1700 which consisted of a cap, forehead cloth, bib and
mittens, heavily decorated with lace, and a
bearing
cloth of about the same date, which she described as small tablecloth size.
We moved on through 18
th and 19
th century christening
robes to the revolutions of the late 19
th and early 20
th
centuries. Terry for nappies appeared at the end of the 19
th
century, and we were shown a pilcher (nappy cover) of circa 1909 in oiled silk,
creating an early waterproof.
Liberty
bodices were introduced in 1908, with a wrapover style by the 1920s.
Barracoats made their appearance as open garments in the 19
th
century but a
closed
style by the 20
th century.
Romper
suits appear for older children from around 1900, but were being used for
babies by 1925.
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| Examples from Alasdair Peebles collection |
After lunch collector Alasdair Peebles talked about Suitable
dress for boys, examining the boy’s suit not only with illustrations, but with
examples from his collection and covering from 1770 to the 1940s. He started
with photographs of a 1770s suit he had purchased when Brooklyn Museum
deaccessioned some of their collection. He then looked at the nankeen skeleton
suit of unbleached cotton (far left in the photograph). This style was worn
from the 1780s to the 1820s. The breeches button to the jacket. Next a
tunic
suit (second from left in the photo), these were popular in the 1830s. Next
came a suit based on the pattern of the French Zouave uniforms, an original
survives in the
Chicago
History Museum. The outfit Alasdair owns (second from right in the photo),
is not as flamboyant as the Chicago example, but is of similar cut. The boy’s
sailor suit needs no introduction. The young
Prince Albert Edward
was famously painted wearing this style in 1848, the original is in the
National Maritime Museum.
Alasdair explained how those that have
survived are mainly from the 1920s and are of cotton jean, wool versions having
succumbed to moth. Alasdair then produced a
little kilt suit, which
unfortunately I did not photograph. These were popular in the 1880s and 1890s.
He wondered why it had little black rosettes on the kilt, but no one was able
to offer an explanation. He then moved on to the
Norfolk suit, which by 1900 was
ubiquitous, but survivals of children’s versions are now incredibly rare. Finally
Alasdair looked at the
Eton
suit, worn in private schools until the 1930s or later, and comprising
black coat and waistcoat, striped trousers, stiffened collar and top hat.
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| A Ladybird dressing, which someone gave to our speaker. |
Our
final speaker was social anthropologist Dr. Kaori O’Connor, who some people may
have seen recently on the Great British Sewing Bee talking about how Lycra
changed fashion. Her talk was entitled The Ladybird, the dressing gown and a
golden age of British childhood. Kaori spoke about how the comfortable, safe,
secure image of the child’s dressing gown was formed in the inter war years by
things like images of
listening
to radio stories with Uncle Mac, and the Ovaltineys. In 1932 Eric Pasold,
whose family had a long running textile manufacturing business on the
continent, established the British base in Langley. The firm specialised in
machine knit garments and at the beginning was mostly producing underwear.
During the war the factory went over to producing parachutes. Kaori pointed out
that during the Second World War dressing gowns were an item of clothing that
was not produced. After the war Eric decided on a new label for children,
Ladybird, and he started with the underwear and with the dressing gown. Eric
also produced a book about his family’s story
The
Legend of the Scarlet Ladybird, and a strip for the comic Swift
entitled
The
Sign of the Scarlet Ladybird. In the stories Ladybird clothes, such as tee
shirts, help to get the children out of trouble or scrapes. When fashions for
children stared to change in the 1960s Pasold sold out to Coats Patons, who
continued to market the Ladybird range.
This year
we have been invited to go and play with the Dutch at Schipluiden near Delft.
We are re-creating a battle of 1574. I have neither time nor money to make a
wholly new outfit, so it is a matter of repurposing what I already own. Having
looked at some 1570s Dutch and Flemish genre paintings, especially by Pieter Aertsen
(1508 -1575), Pieter Pietersz (1540-1603)
and Joachim Beuckelaer (1533–1574) I decided on something that would make me look
vaguely period. 
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