From the Collection: An Utterly Fabulous Antique Edwardian Formal Skirt

Skirt front.

Do a train and a trumpet silhouette, sheer silk, peekaboo construction of laters of white and colored sheer silks and lace insets, and a shimmery satin fluff at the feet, encrustions  of beaded motifs, and four -- count them! -- four underlaying flounces, make your heart flutter-flutter?


Then I have the formal skirt of your dreams, an Edwardian confection, a tour de force bought some time ago in totally unwearable, and without major reconstruction, unmountable condition, from a dealer liquidating another dealer's estate. The bodice is missing. Most collectors would call this skirt a cutter; I call it a researcher's and pattern maker's dream.



This skirt is a monument to the Edwardian love of luxury, of layers and of the seen, the suggested, and the hidden, of plays of light and shimmer and soft color. It is also an interesting admixture of the classically curved with the linear and almost medieval, some of the patterns on the skirt seeming to herald the beginning of the very modern era.


Skirt Design

Skirt back.

The back of the skirt tells you much about the skirt design. This skirt is shaped like an enormous trumpet. There is so much on the floor that I think the lady who wore it was quite tall, somewhere over 5 feet, five inches, my height. The skirt would have puddled around her feet in any case in the fashionable manner, but not so much as is shown here.


The waistline is shirred all the way around, but most heavily at the back, and as we will learn, would bunch more at the back than is shown, for there are three tiers of interior ties that gather the back together rather like a Natural Form dress of the end of the 1870s.

Further puddle control is a series of long tacks connecting the various layers, holding them together with an inch or so of give, but sewn such that the top layer falls into folds. The entire experience is controlled to maintain the silhouette, but in a flowey manner. Amazingly complex.

The top of the skirt, except the belt, is sheer silk. It shows the a second skirt beneath, of a very pale green silk gauze. Underneath both? Another layer opaque white silk. The skirt from knee down is a light satin, embroidered with cut steel faceted fat bugle beads and glued-on, (yes, glued!) cut steel faceted nailhead beads sans holes, and cut through at sections with lace appliques made of a combination of tape lace with brides and tape lace on net.

Final control over the flow and swish and puddle? Four layers of flounces that help hold the skirt's trumpet shape, that thicken the folding and puddling, that offer swish and a peep of froth. But I hurry myself.

Trim
Here is the front waistline, below. The skirt band suggests a belt, and the hanging applied applique, which functions as a Medievalesque extension to the belt. Note the quatrefoil designs. All the beads and nailheads are cut steel, but in two tones; they vary in the light, too.

The front hem is a happy, or uneasy, depending on your taste, mix of the Medieval, the modern, and the Classical Beaux Arts. The lace joining the upper, sheer part of the skirt to the satin part? Classical. The appliques set at intervals all the way around the skirt? Ditto. The cut-steel patterning, and mix of Medieval quatrfoils and Classical acanthus-esque motifs (the pointed ones), and the very nineteen teens lines and the mirroring curve shapes, like wings or...I don't know what they are called...they have a name: you can seen one hanging from a quatrefoil at the lower right of the image below.

A view of the skirt towards the back shows more motifs, in the central motif -- peer closely now, please -- there is what appears to be an "M". Whether this is symbolic of the owner, the maker, something else, or nothing all, remains a mystery to me.

Back bottom of the skirt.

Furbelows Below

I had to say it: had to. Furbelows are frills, and heavens, there are frills aplenty under this skirt! In order, top to base:

• Pale green gauze gathered frill, with applied narrow self ruche.
• White gathered gauze frill, with applied narrow ruche of a gauze ribbon.
• Satin knife-pleated frill.
• Deep flounce of light crinoline or some sort of stiffened cotton or linen, tucked.

Each individual element is in itself not difficult, and while good care was taken in the construction, nothing is entirely spot-perfect. It's the sum total that renders it not only an amazing thing to look at, but a dressmaker's tour de force. If only we could see it in movement!


By the way, this is the only time I plan ever to mount the dress, and I had it up less than half an hour, unless I give it to an organization that can conserve it. The top layers are sound, but the underneath is a mess, and the skirt is so heavy that it would soon pull itself apart.