La Bricoleuse

In the third year of graduate study, our students complete several capstone projects, one of which is the historical reproduction. For this project, they choose a garment from our collection of antique garments, the Costar Archive. They must study the garment closely and then reproduce it as closely as possible. Often the source garment is very fragile, oddly-sized, and not a garment which could or would be worn onstage. Our students reproduce the pattern of the source garment, but adjusted/altered to the measurements of a modern physique.

Third year graduate student Denise Chukhina has completed and photographed her historical reproduction project, a replica of this 1895-1905-ish velvet bodice. (You can read all about the garment itself at the link, and see several detail shots of its embellishments and design features.)

In this blog, I've often mentioned the CoStar collection, an archive of antique and vintage clothing housed here at UNC-Chapel Hill (hosted by our graduate program, curated by program head Judy Adamson, and jointly utilized as a research tool by the Department of Dramatic Art and PlayMakers). CoStar has a continually-expanding online presence in the form of a searchable web archive of the collection of largely 19th and 20th century women's couture, which can be accessed by anyone with a browser. If you've used the site in the past, you'll notice that CoStar has undergone a design overhaul, to a more user-friendly browsable structure than its previous layout.

Each garment in the collection depicted online is accompanied by specific information about its construction, history and provenance if known, and some even have scalable patterns, images of graduate thesis reproductions, and attached research papers, such as this striped silk taffeta bodice worn by Mrs. Edgar Grout for her wedding on June 30, 1897, featuring a scaled pattern and analysis by Emily VanDervort (MFA '08), or this bodice also in striped silk taffeta from the same era (of unknown providence) which includes an analysis and photos of a reproduction by Jade Bettin (MFA '06). The online archive will only continue to grow as present and future research assistants slowly make their way through the documentation process--what's currently shown is perhaps 10-15% of the entire collection, which itself is continually expanding through the generosity of donors.

But, the real point of this post is not to focus on CoStar, which is probably a familiar topic to long-time readers. It's to announce something exciting and new!

In addition to the CoStar resource (which is primarily Western women's clothing of the past couple centuries), an entirely new archive site has gone live, NowesArk, an online catalogue of our non-Western clothing collection! NowesArk is curated by Professor Bobbi Owen, whose collection forms the bulk of its pieces.

The site is super-brand-new (to the point where the "about" section isn't up yet, and the splash page has a couple of typos), but already features 74 items to look through--primarily Japanese and Chinese garments and accessories, though also a few Vietnamese, Tibetan, and Middle Eastern pieces. Graduate research assistant Amanda Phillips (MFA '09) spent her final semester of graduate school supervising a team of several undergrad work-study students on this project, all of whom devoted many hours to documenting these pieces and getting this web resource up and running. Bravo, y'all!

With both of these archives, in the course of researching you can assemble a collection of "favorites" in a scrollable sidebar window (titled "My Stars"), by clicking on the little star/plus graphic next to a garment's title on its description page. So, suppose you are looking at the CoStar collection for bodices in the 1895-1900 window--you could add the two bodices linked above to your My Stars section, keep looking for more bodices that fit your specs and then later go back to read through the particulars or print out the extra info for all the bodices you find. If you are perusing the NowesArk collection for furisode examples, again, the star/plus graphic allows you to quickly weed through the garments and collect up specific furisode links to easily navigate between later. "My Stars" spans both archives, so if you add a bustle dress from CoStar and a haori from NowesArk, you'll see both no matter which archive you are perusing.

You can read detailed info on browsing and searching the collections here, and learn more about the consolidated archive project in general here.

Because we are clearly totally committed to creatively-relevant acronymous naming conventions, both of these archives are collectively known as the Cloaks Archives, accessible by a central clearinghouse page linking to both archives' sites. I'm looking forward to seeing how these collections continue to grow and develop in the future! (For example, i cannot wait til the archivists get to this one box i've seen in the storage area marked "1920 beaded gowns.")

Happy researching!

BTW, please do drop a comment and let us know how the sites are useful to your research or could be improved, and definitely share your experience should you use one of the scalable patterns to make your own reproduction, or as a starting place for your own "take" on one of our pieces!

ETA: I'd love to see someone make up this 1893 day dress, or this 1886 riding habit, or this intricate 1902 velvet bolero from the provided patterns. Also, i'm feeling a little bit of regret i didn't title or subtitle this post "ZOMG FREE PRD PATTERNS BBQ," since i know a common complaint is that there are really only so many period patterns out there commercially available or scalable in references like Janet Arnold's books.

If your university or institute has its own online archive of a similar or related collection, please comment with a link. And, if you have pieces you wish to donate to either collection, email me at < costume -at- unc -dot- edu > and i'll put you in touch with our Acquisitions Coordinator.