18th Century Robe a l'anglaise - New! Added August 2009

My Costumes and Artwork

18th Century Robe a l'anglaise - New! Added August 2009

This is my version of the striped 18th Century dress from the movie "The Duchess", which starred Kiera Knightley. It's in a style of a Robe a l'anglais (an English robe or dress). I'd been thinking of making an 18th Century style dress for a while since Costume College this year was themed as 18th Century, and while I don't normally attend Costume College I do go there for a day to shop and have dinner with friends. I'd been thinking of using another striped fabric I had, but only had 5 yards of it which wouldn't make this style of dress. I planned to fill it out with a quilted petticoat underskirt made from some pink quilted throws I'd bought at Marshall's for this purpose, and had even got them out of storage.

Enter good luck. When I became unemployed at the beginning of May, I finally had some time to sew (something distinctly lacking during 55 hour weeks of tax season). In mid-June, I went to spend a few days with my best friend in Ventura, and while browsing a thrift store there in downtown, we came across a roll of this silk for the whopping price of $18.91. Albra graciously decided to let me have it, even though she saw it first. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the body slam ;-)

So, the dress wound up being made with the thrift store fabric, which turned out to be 100% silk from a burn test. I don't know how much was originally on the roll since I didn't unroll it before cutting to find out, but I estimate it was about 10 yards, and it was 54" wide so I had a lot to play with. I have about 2 yards of it left.

This dress was modeled after the striped dress in "The Duchess", which I spent too many hours rewatching in order to check the cut. It only appears on screen for less than 5 minutes, in the scene where Georgiana and Lady Bess Foster are walking in a park shortly after first meeting each other in Bath, and then also when they are "taking the waters" in the following scene. I also referred to the book "Revolution in Fashion" which has pictures of 18th C dresses from the Kyoto Costume Museum. Many of those are striped as well, since stripes were very popular in that period. I matched the stripes as best as I could - fortunately the fabric was pretty much symetrical across its width, which made it easier.

And as always, my deepest thanks to my friend and fitter, Mela Hoyt-Heydon, for her excellent fitting of the dress bodice. Any problems with it you see in the pictures are my bad sewing, not her first class fitting.

The 18th Century Striped dress

I sure wish my eyes were open in this picture.

Below are pictures of the back and side views of my dress. The back has bias fabric rosettes where the skirt meets the bodice. I designed this dress with a front opening so I could get into it by myself if I needed to. The bottom of the underskirt is scalloped and pinked all the way around. The edges of the over skirt are either just hemmed (in the front opening), or edged with a strip of fabric about 3" wide. This was how the movie dress was made. The trim is made from 1.5" wide strips of fabric that were pinked - I actually cut them with a pinking blade in a rotary cutter - and then pleated using my sewing machine's ruffler foot. A green organza ribbon with a gold stripe in it was put down the center of it. I had to do that by hand since the ribbon doesn't bend well.

I used Jean Hunnisett's "Period Costume for Stage and Screen 1500-1800" for rough patterns, but pretty much just draped the bodice on my dressmaking dummy since Jean's robe a l'anglaise bodice pattern is designed to continue the back of the bodice panels into the skirt. The movie dress had the overskirt attached to the bodice, but cut as a separate piece and I liked that better (plus it's a lot easier to fit in my opinion). Jean also recommends doing the polonaise (i.e. the bustled up back) by using buttons and loops, or by attaching string through rings on the inside of the skirt. I used option 3 which was stitching the puffs into place, using some twill tape on the underside of the skirt to stitch it to (I used this to create the bustle on my green 1870s bustle dress and found it very effective). The skirt(s) were cut simply as rectangular pieces, then using Jean's demonstration I gathered it into a waistband, keeping the hem level and adjusting the waist to keep all the stripes vertical. I did round off the inside corners of the overskirt a little using a flexible curve, as I didn't want them cut straight across.

The one thing I think I'll "fix" is the attachment of the trim along the bottom of the front of the bodice. It seems to be pulling the front out of whack a bit, creating the fold you can see in the pictures. When you try to pull it down, you can feel the taughtness of the fabric there. There are bones along the front of the opening in the center, so it should lay flat. I think I'll pull off the pleating and hand sew it down instead of machine sewing it, which should solve the problem. The bodice front was lying perfectly flat after the last fitting Mela did for me.

The side view.

I think this is the most attractive angle for this dress.

The Back view.

You can see the back is gathered up here.

Below are pictures of the dress on my dressmaker's dummy, after I had finished it. It took about 3 weeks to complete the dress from start to finish, starting right after the 4th of July and finishing the weekend before Costume College, which started July 31.

Front view.

Back View

Side view

Here are some pictures of the actual dress from the movie (with many many thanks to the website "Costumer's Guide to the Movies" from which these pictures come, and to the people who took them and contributed them to the site).

Promotional picture of the dress.

This is from the scene in the movie.

The back of the dress.

I believe someone took this at a costume exhibit in England.

Kiera Knightley in the dress.

This was taken during the movie's filming.

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