Last year I was commissioned by a talented opera singer, Johanna Blackstone, to make her an opera dress for her to wear to her perfromances. A lot of research was done to construct the perfect dress for Johanna and as I had only briefly touched upon this period of dress while I was studying historical costume design in Italy, I had to do a lot of reading to make sure I got it right! First things first was the under structure, of course which consists of stays (the earlier word for corset) and full panniers. In the past I had made pocket hoops, however these smaller version were only wore in the day. Johanna need a dress for evening wear so it had to be grand! The stays were made from strong cotton and I cut 50 straight steel bones to fit into the corset. Next was the panniers I used a fantastic book "Corsets and Crinolines" by Norah Waugh to construct the perfect full pannier. When I had competed both the corset and pannier I started on the jacket. The jacket used to be sewn straight onto the corset in the 1700s but this is not necessary today.
So I used hook and eyes to close the jacket to the corset and the front stomacher piece I attached with press studs. The under skirt was made from a gorgeous blue and white Toile de Jouy fabric finished with lots of lace on the front edge. The jacket was made from blue taffeta, and I found vintage lace for the sleeve edges. The jacket and stomacher were finished with border, bows, ribbons and lace! Johanna actually makes her own wigs which has finished this piece of perfectly!
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