The Girl in the Fireplace

Historical Masquerade Entry Aurora Celeste

"The Girl in the Fireplace" is the fourth episode of the second series of the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It was first broadcast on May 6, 2006. Sophia Myles gueststarred as the historical figure Madame de Pompadour. The episode takes place in multiple time periods as the Tenth Doctor and his companions land on a space ship in the fifty-first century and find time windows leading to eighteenth century France. Curious, they investigate and find that a group of clockwork androids, tasked with repairing the ship, built the windows to help their repairs and are using them to stalk Madame de Pompadour (Reinette Poisson) throughout her life. The episode was nominated for a Nebula Award and won the 2007 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form.1 This costume is the dress from the pivotal scene where the androids have come to kill Reinette and the Doctor comes to rescue her. The dress is a rental, and was also used in the movie The Madness of King George and in the TV mini-series Aristocrats.2 According to the narrative the dress is worn in 1958, when Reinette is 37. I started with my historical garment research in that time period. Although you never see the undergarments under the dress, I decided that in order to start the recreation the undergarments would have to be first.
1 2

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Girl_in_the_Fireplace and http://www.gallifreyone.com/episode.php?id=2006-04 http://www.costumersguide.com/reused_18.shtml

The Stays

I started with the corset. Because of the good reviews on The Great Pattern Review3 and the basic shape I decided to use JP Ryans stays pattern.4 I cut each piece from 2 layers of cotton canvas. Linen would have been a more period choice, however, I went with cotton for expense and availability. Then I seamed channels in each piece using the width of my presser foot as a guide. For boning I chose plastic zip ties because: whalebone is what was commonly used, however, it is now illegal, reeds are prone to breakage and I wanted a corset that would last and not suffer poke-through, and I got a sample of commercially available plastic whalebone and other than thickness it was comparable to zip ties but more expensive per foot. I cut the zip ties to length, rounded the ends, and heated them slightly to take off any sharp edges or burrs. I did bone each seam with steels, as well as the 6 bones in the busk area and the bones around the grommets for strength and stability. After each piece was boned (which made them shrink in width by -1) I cut out an over layer of silk brocade (a period choice) and a flatlining of 1750-60s stays. Picture from http://www.nwta.com/patterns/ cotton flannel for padding to prevent the boning lines from pics/ebaystays/ebaystays.html showing to the front. I basted the cover to each piece, then sewed the corset together along the seam lines, and then hand-caught down the seam allowances to either side. This method enables me to take the corset apart into pieces in the future to add or take in the seams. This also matches pictures I have seen of stays from the period, so I believe it is a period construction method. I grommeted the lacing area with metal grommets because my handbinding is not strong enough to withstand prolongued lacings and the short cut wouldnt show when the final dress was worn. I grommeted the stays with a straight-across style instead of a spiral set-up because I knew I would often be asking other people to lace me into the stays and a criss-cross lacing is less confusing to modern sensibilities, and it also stays tighter for a long wear time with less friction and destruction to the silk brocade. Finally, I bound the corset edges with white cotton bias tape. I attempted to paint the tape to make it better match the ivory of the brocade, but I have yet to find a paint that matches well.

3 4

http://www.gbacg.org/great-pattern-review/jpryan.html http://www.jpryan.com/ladiespatterns.html

The Pannier

Next I worked on the Pannier. I started with the pattern from Corsets and Crinolines. Analysis of the dress showed that there was not much spring from the waist as the 1740s pattern had, so I eliminated the top partial-hoop. After boning the pannier I pinned in stay tapes and played with the shape. According to Corsets and Crinolines The most elegant French panniers were kidney-shaped and wider round the base,5 and from the picture above I saw a dent in the front of the dress, so I wanted to make a more kidney shape. I also wanted to keep the side fullness about as same as the dress above, so I moved all the fullness to
5

Waugh, Nora. Corsets and Crinolines p. 47

the back of the pannier. The result is more of a triangle than a kidney, but since the pleats on the back of the sacque dress pull the fullness of the dress to the back while in motion I felt that it was the most graceful place to put it. In the future I may try to reduce the pannier size instead to take out some of the fullness in the back. In order to disguise the hoops I draped a petticoat attachment for them. I cut polyester quilt batting in the size of the hoops, then cut a cotton muslin cover. I hand-quilted a brief pattern on them to keep the batting from slipping or bearding and sewed the cover together at the sides, leaving a gap for pockets, and then stitched the cover to the same tape as the pannier for ease of dresing. Although the pannier only reaches around knee level, I draped the petticoat to be floor length to reduce kick-back under the hoop as I walked. I then hand-hemmed the remaining length. At first I left a train to catch the dust and keep it off from the pleated train of the dress, but later on I learned that this left a ridge on the dress, so it was later hemmed up as well.

The Underskirt
The underskirt was draped much as the pannier cover was. I added pleats to the back of the skirt for extra fullness and ease over the curve of the hoops in the back. Period patterns show the skirt as more of a full length with pleats as the only shaping6, but I did not want to add that much fullness around the top of the skirt so I kept the side seams shaped and the front piece a large, triangular shape to reduce bulk at the waist and maintain the flat front. I also used a thin muslin for the back fabric to help reduce bulk, and used very tiny pleats instead of large, stacked pleats for the same reason. For the frontpiece fabric I found an embroidered silk taffeta. It looked similar to period embroidery patterns7, although in a monotone color like the dress inspiration, and was in a linear enough style that it mimics the inspiration fabric.

6 7

Arnold, Janet. Patterns of Fashion 1. p. 23. Hart, Avril and Susan North. Historical Fashion in Detail. pp. 63, 157.

The Dress
I started the dress pattern by draping a bodice block over my corset and panniers. Once the block was done I examined patterns from Janet Arnolds Patterns of Fashion 1 to decide where to cut the seams. I decided on a single front piece that wrapped around to the back with an open stomacher area and a laced back piece to keep the bodice tight to the body. I cut the pattern out of sturdy cotton muslin for breathability and minimal bulk. I cut one of the front pieces and sleeves and two of the back lacing area, and then sewed the lacing area together, boning it along the laces and grommeting with grommets with a shoe-lace style for ease of dressing. The fashion fabric I chose was a polyester embroidered taffeta from JoAnn Fabrics. I chose polyester over a more period fabric because it was patterned in a design that was similar to the original dress, was very resistant to wrinkles and would travel to cons well with minimal ironing, and it was on sale for $3 a yard. I bought 11 yards for the dress, and used almost 10. After sewing the cotton bodice base I used the fashion fabric to drape the front of the skirt. I draped it to fit around the bodice bottom with little pleats to take in the fullness, and to meet the sacque draping in the back where the bodice met the draping. When the pattern was right I cut two pieces.

Wwth the fabric I had left I determined I could make my sacque-draping two widths of fabric. I found that in period they used four widths of narrower fabric, so two widths of my fashion fabric was a little wide for the draping pattern, but I wanted the extra fullness to cover the extra fullness of the pannier. I draped the sacque by attaching a tape to my dress dummy and then pleating the sacque pleats onto it, pinning until they had the right fullness and width showing. My research showed8 that these back pleats were often variable in width underneath the two wide pleats that showed, so my goal in this pleating was only to make the pleats symmetrical on both sides.

Although I cant remember where . . .

Once the pleating was finished I sewed the pleats down to the tape to keep them pleated, and pinned them in place temporarily. I then sewed the two skirt pieces together, and then the fashion fabric of the bodice together. I put the fashion fabric bodice together with the cotton lining. I decided to bone the entire opening edge from the pleating in the back, around the shoulders, and down the front of the dress in order to keep the dress opening straight and laying flat when the dress was worn. I used polyester dress boning because it bent easily and I could iron a curve into it, allowing me to heat-shape it over the shoulder area so the boning would lay correctly. Then I attached the skirts and the pleating to the bodice. Hanging on my dress form I realized that the square area above the pleating was not hanging correctly, and the pleating did not have enough weight to keep the wrinkles out, so I sewed a small piece of feather boning into the center back to keep the area flat.

I then started with the sleeves. Using examples from Patterns of Fashion 1 and a JP Ryan sacque dress pattern as well as advice from the head draper at the costume shop at the University of Kansas I drafted a pattern for the sleeves that would have small pleats along the head and a corner that would fit into the join of the front shoulder strap to the sacque pleating on the shoulder. Then I sewed the sleeves. I sewed them into a tube, then pleated them into the armhole and sewed them in. I found the corner a most difficult place to sew correctly, and I finally ended up sewing the corner area by hand to get it to lay flat. Then I sewed the lining into the sacque area, turning all raw edges into the inside.

To finish the edges of the dress I gathered large lengths of tulle and couched them down with a pearl and rayon braid trim in a meandering pattern to the hem. I hemmed the dress by hand. Finally, I turned up the edges of the sleeves at the elbow and handstitched on the engegantes. They were made of a length of of polyester sparkle organza covered by a length of cream lace, both gathered to width.

The Stomacher
I patterned the stomacher from the bodice drape, adding extra to the edges for an area to pin the dress onto. Isewed the stomacher from two layers of cotton twill and a layer of polyester brocade in a gold pattern that matched well with both the fashion fabric and the original inspiration. I boned the back with 1/4 and 1/2 steels by couching on boning tape by hand and hand-finishing the top and bottom edges. Then I sewed hooks and eyes onto the stomacher and the dress. In period this was more often pinned, however, I did not want to mar the fabric of the dress or the corset with pins, so I decided to use hooks and eyes and rely on the lacing in the back of the bodice to make the dress size-variable. For the center decorations I found some jeweled flower pins in the bridal section of JoAnns and bought three matching pins.

The Jewelry
I commissioned the necklace and earrings to be made for my by a friend. They are made from gold-plated filigree pieces, glass pearls, and swarovski and plastic gems sewed and glued onto felt.

The Wig
I decided that the elaborate curls on the hair would be easiest to style with a half-wig. I bought a synthetic string fall that matched my hair color and removed the string, making a half-wig. I then curled the hair with rollers and dipped it into 170 degree water to set the curls. Then I styled the wig using bobby pins to hold the curls in place. Because the heating process causes some color loss and frizz I bought a can of white hair spray to color both the wiglet and my own hair to make them a more close match. The hair of the inspiration costume is blonde, however, in period it would most likely be at least lightly powdered, so I went with white to mimic powdered hair without the mess of powder.

The Shoes
Although you cannot see the shoes in the costume above, I wanted matching shoes. I bought a pair of pointedtoe mules from Newport News. The heel is not historically correct, however, it is as close as I could get for $10 or less. To make them match the dress I cut pieces of my fashion fabric to shape to the shoes and glued it on with E6000, shoving the excess fabric between the shoe and the heel with a screwdriver.