Dating a jacket [S. Worthen | Weblog]

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Dear F'list,

Several of you are costume historians or historical costumers. Others of you are consummately interested in the details of the past.

I'm hoping you can help date this painting on the basis of the clothing styles therein - the more precisely, the better. A specific year would be miraculous. This is for my mother. She's particularly interested in possible dating for the jacket.

If only this were medieval, I'd have even greater confidence in your abilities, but hopefully you can, nevertheless, help.

Here's the clothing (and the person wearing it).

~~If you'd like close up details of anything else, let me know.~~

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There are 40 comments on this entry. (Reply.)

Late Victorian or early Edwardian, I would guess. 1890-1900? But yes, it is a period where one can pin it down to years if not seasons, if one knows enough. Good luck!

Actually, based ont he hair and hat, I want to say about 1908?

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Yes, up to WWI when fashions changed dramatically to get more practical.

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Looks late Victorian, or possibly early Edwardian. Hard to tell exactly because she's sitting down, but I'd venture a guess that it's a walking suit. (See V&A specimen here.)

Yes, definitely - it's from la belle epoque. Between 1890 and 1914, though I'd date it to the earlier half of the period.

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Is 1892 too early for the hat and hair? There's a painting reference which *might* be to this one, but might not be, which exists for 1892.

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Good question. Let me do a bit of research quickly.

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OK, it's not outside the realm of possibility (see Wikipedia for a rundown of 1890s fashion). If you look at the first picture, it's quite similar to what she's wearing in the picture and it's dated only a few years later (1897). The sleeves are a sticking point, though, as is the hair and the hat. However, this page has a few fashion plates that may be of interest - note especially the "Walking dress, c. 1890" and "The Princess of Teck, 1892", as well as several of the plates from The Delineator. In general sleeves would have been much larger, but it's not impossible in a sporty outfit that they wouldn't have been.

(Edited for dumb, sorry.)

Edited Date: 2008-04-15 05:38 pm (UTC)

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So, unlikely, but possible for the sleeves. Less likely for the hat and hair.

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Yes, pretty much. Having put more thought into the matter by now, and also woken up a bit more, I'd say the Gibson Girl era is more likely due to the hat and the hair - dresses were expensive but hair not so much, so mixed "looks"of fashionable headgear and slightly unfashionable clothes weren't uncommon at the time. (That's 1908 to 1913 or thereabouts.)

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Which is usefully in line with fjm's c.1910 initial instincts. I like it when people can generally agree on these things for good reasons and by independent thinking.

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Also, the way people updated clothing was through hats and retrimmed skirts and jackets. I keep going back to the collar. The collar of the mannish style circa 1890 is much closer to an Eton collar. This picture has just a *touch* of the Bohemian look. Enough to say "I'm a woman of the world" without being racy.

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It's the 1910s. You can tell from the hat. The jacket is a very slighty older style, the "mannish" look at the very end of the century (think cycling habits), but the collar and sleeves in particular also suggest 1910s (earlier the sleeves would have been a bit closer to leg o mutton).

You'll have seen the same style in all the street scene movies shot just before WW1.

Ah yes. Ladykathryn's picture makes my point about the sleeves perfectly.

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I should have specified that it's French. The artist was active for the entirety of all proposed dates so far, so that's no limitation.

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So there's no chance it's from 1892? I asked ladykathryn too upthread - http://owlfish.livejournal.com/830140.html?thread=4026812#t4026812

(1892 is a reference which *might* but might not refer to the painting. It could be some other painting.)

The consensus is clearly that it's more likely to be a decade or two later.

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ps. These are the outfits I've always wanted to wear.

So why don't you? (Other than that you'd be thought eccentric, if elegant, if you did so on a daily basis.)

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Because Droopy and Brown closed. I used to dress very similarly in the early 1990s.

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I would put it at the turn of the 19th-20th century, with a slight inclination to the later side because of the hat.

The hat has shape but not a lot of detail - any idea what kind of a hat it is?

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Unfortunately I haven't the foggiest idea what that style of Edwardian hat is called, so it might take me a little while to root it out, but I will have a look for clearer examples when I'm off work. :)

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You're lovely! If you forget, it doesn't really matter - I suspect hat details on this level are of greater interest to my curiosity than my mother's needs.

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If only it were medieval, I'd have greater confidence in my own abilities! As it is, I'd go with early 20th Century, pre WWI.

I agree with everything that's been said above about the key items being sleeves, hairdo, and hat, and also with a rough dating to 1908. Definitely not 1892. Here's another useful link to help with the hair/hat combination:

http://www.fashion-era.com/hair_hats_190015.htm

(Note the gradual shift towards a center part in the hairdo and the increasing size of the hat.)

When comparing with fashion plates, we should keep in mind that fashion plates represent the height of fashion at a given moment, and that real people's clothing would have emulated them to varying degrees, depending on personal resources and desire.

PS. Gretchen Rogers' Woman in a Fur Hat is one of my favorite paintings from this era.

You want hat? We got hat.

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Who painted it? And I agree about the post-1900 date. There's a picture from around that time of my grandmother and her sister, and the hats look a great deal like this.

The artist is named Edouard Vuillard.

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Here is his Wikipedia entry, and here are some of his works at Olga's Gallery. Best of all, here is a list of his works on-line.

Good luck!

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I agree with early to mid 1900s. The skirt looks a little full for 1910-1914 when lines started to slim down.

Could still be late 1890s though, because of the full front on the blouse. Blouses started to slim down through the early 1900s as well.

It looks like there's side button trim on the skirt though which would really point to a 1900s timeframe to me.

As others have pointed out too, the sleeves are slender. 1890s would likely have had wider sleeves up by the shoulder.

The hair is also large but it's split into wings and gathered up behind which points to a 1905-10 timeframe rather than being bouffant in the front, which would be more 1890s.

The ginormous hat high on the head also points to the earlier end of the 1900s rather than strictly mid, when hair styles got sleeker and closer to the head and hat styles start to go 'flatter'.

ETA Pattern/photo links:

1890s shirtwaist with puffy sleeves: http://pastpatterns.com/212.html
1890s women's jacket: http://pastpatterns.com/210.html
Pattern for similar shirtwaist: http://pastpatterns.com/400.html
Pattern for walking skirt ca 1900: http://pastpatterns.com/1865.html
Pattern for skirt ca 1910: http://pastpatterns.com/5239.html
Pattern for suit ca 1902-05: http://pastpatterns.com/7168.html - note the 'pigeon front' on this suit which is absent from the one in the painting.

The woman in the painting has a flat fronted suit with a short jacket but the skirt is full which again, points to the early 1900s but after the 'pigeon front' fashion of the very early 1900s.

So the initial assessment of 1908 is a pretty good one IMHO.

1913 Riding Habit: http://www.corsetsandcrinolines.com/timelineitem.php?index=191045

Looking through a few more pictures ... I might actually revise my opinion and say that it /could/ possibly be from the early 1890s, though the sleeves aren't as puffy as most fashion plates, but the shape of the skirt and the length of the jacket and the general shape of the sleeves are also consistent with 1890s walking suits. Again it's the hat and hairstyle that look out of place for the 1890s.

1905 suit: http://collectionsonline.lacma.org/mwebimages/C_T06_MM/full/M63_25_2a-c.jpg

Appears to be a 1906 suit - don't speak Danish:
http://tidenstoej.natmus.dk/Dragt_Billeder/F4528.jpg

1907 walking costume: http://images.vam.ac.uk/indexplus/db_images/website/large/2006AP4961.jpg

1910 coat and skirt: http://www.manchestergalleries.org/the-collections/search-the-collection/mcgweb/objects/common/webmedia.php?irn=2651&size=237x300

Edited Date: 2008-04-15 09:43 pm (UTC)

Thanks for all the links! I am closing in on 1908 as the date.

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Also re the hat: there are lots of Punch cartoons from around 1910 because the hats blocked views at the cinema. Hence the old "Ladies, please remove your has" cinema cards.

I'd agree that it's probably 1906-1911. High-ish, but not waspy, waist, straight-ish sleeves, and the hat is really very close to the pics of 1910 hats. The bentwood rocker is also of a type that only began to be made in the 1880s, and neither the room nor the woman seem to be at the height of fashion. I think the hat is the part to concentrate on, but OTOH, that's the least detailed section.

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On the theory that that is not actually a short jacket ...

1910 "going away suit":
http://www.thebowesmuseum.org.uk/uploads/collections/fullsize/1964-819-cst-934.jpg

Thanks to everyone who helped me to date Edouard Vuillard's painting. The date on the label was ca. 1890 but this didn't seem right for a number of reasons. In 1890, Vuillard had a different sense of space and used paint in a different way. Considering style and technique alone, the work was more similar to his works of the first decade of the 1900s. On the basis of your suggestions of 1908-1910, I image-Googled "1980 hat" and found a photograph of a woman with an almost perfect match to her hair, hat, and jacket.

http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/pfsWAruFsRrceA5W79eBcw

I'd say it's likely to be late Edwardian - 1909-10 perhaps? The sleeves are wrong for the early 1890s, and the hat looks more Edwardian than late Victorian. It looks more like a short bolero jacket, which would put it around the same period, I think - they had them around 1894 too, but generally then the sleeves were ginormous. The skirt's a bit full for anything later than 1910, but there isn't really the "monoshelf bust" of the very early 1800s.

You're one of the few people who've commented on the skirt fullness - interesting to know.

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One problem is that a middle-class woman might well be wearing an outfit a year or two behind the "cutting edge" of fashion. Hobble skirts came in around 1909-10, but were very much for avant-garde women.

The setting looks way too light and airy to be middle-class Victorian, BTW - only the really trendy went for that sort of "Arts and Crafts" look before the turn of the century. At least, in England - I know far less about French interiors of the time.

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It also struck me as possibly a cycling outfit in which case the hobble skirt of the 1910s would be impractical.

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Yep - if you look at the patterns, there's /big shift/ from the gored walking-type skirt of the 1890s to a slimmer line in the early 1900s but still gored and then as

gillo mentions, all the fashion plates switch over to hobbles, straight line skirts that get narrower and narrower until you see a resurgence of a slightly wider, but shorter skirt around WWI and then skirts just creep up and up and up into the 1920s before getting longer and fuller again in the late 20s and early 30s.

During the early glamour days of cinema, you get flowing lines again, with skirts that are narrower through the hip and thigh, then flaring out from the lower thigh or knee or lower before things hike up again around WWII.

Wars shortened skirts back then due to fabric shortages.

And if it's not clear, the Edwardian era is one of my favorite fashion eras. :)

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October