Pink Dress from Augsburg, 1525
Close up of Goldhaube
This dress is taken from Die Augsburger Monatsbilder, a set of 4 murals done in Augsburg, Germany in the 1520's. There is a mural for each season, and each mural depicts three months out of the year, depicting activities done in each month. These murals give a glimpse of the clothing and hats worn by a wide spectrum of social classes in Augsburg. Here is Winter,Spring,Summer, Fall. . The whole thing is luscious eye candy, worthy of drooling over and going in for the close ups.
This lady comes from the month of May, with the raucous bathing scene and she is seated playing cards in the middle of it. She looks to be very well off by the goldhaube on her head, the wide gold guard on her dress and the gold chains around her neck. Her husband, who has his hand on her shoulder, also has a rich head covering, what looks to be a black haube with gold embroidery. The material of her dress has a luster to it and stiff folds, that looks to me to be silk.
The shoulders of her dress are far off of her actual shoulder line, unlike these girls in the background from April. The lady in the purple, has had her dress fall down of her right shoulder.
These women from June, who obviously are not in the same social class as the woman in pink or the ladies in April, need to be able to move their arms and do manual labor. Notice the woman in front with the green dress and no sleeves.
The curve of her bust is pronounced, as are the rest of the ladies in the murals, so this suggests to me that they are not wearing corsets underneath their gowns, but rather the bodice provides the support. The method of closure is not visible, but front lacing is the popular method for German gowns during this period. I am thinking that the front lacing panel was hidden under a panel in the front, you can see this in the fine details from two paintings by Hans Meilich.
The sleeves are what drew me to this dress, I think the sleeves truly make this dress something special. In looking through the rest of the murals, slashed sleeves on a woman are rare, they seem to be more of a masculine ornament for this time and place. However, I like them and hope they will give a cooling effect in summer
I am bringing the class of this dress down a little to meet my persona and materials. I need a cooler dress for hot summer days, so I am making it out of linen, not silk. Also I will be bringing the shoulders of the dress higher up onto the shoulder so I can move my arms in it.
plan to make this dress out of a medium pink linen that I already own. The guards will be black instead of gold, this color scheme has more representation in period than pink and gold and better fits the middle class person that I am. Plus I already have lots of lightweight black wool fabric that will be perfect for this. Other than these few changes, the dress should be the same.
November 8, 2003
Well, this dress didn't get made this summer, due to over scheduling of the weekends, finding a new job and starting grad school. I did make another dress instead of this one to wear as there were several techniques that I wanted to experiment with on another dress before breaking into this one. Check out The Orange and Black dress to see what I've been up to. I do have the bodice cut out for the dress and hope to start work on it sometime in January, after I finish the warm winter clothing projects.