While there, I'm going to teach a class. Not a new class, which would actually contribute to my challenge (that would be silly!), but a class I've taught before: The Houppelande: A Classy Tent-Like Garment.
This is kind of a compilation of several other peoples' ideas, but since I actually made a houppelande, and at the time I hadn't seen anyone else teaching about it in the area, I decided to take the plunge.
In the interests of continuing to document what I've done already for the challenge, I am posting the handout. Also, that way I can direct people here after the class if there weren't enough handouts.
The Houppelande: A Classy Tent-Like Garment
A Houppelande is a garment designed to show off your ability
to buy lots of fancy fabric, and then your ability to do nearly nothing while
wearing it.
Unlike the cotehardies and kirtles that preceded it in Western
European fashion, the houppelande is not fitted, and not terribly practical.
Most houppelandes have gigantic sleeves and gigantic trains, and are meant to
be worn with super-pointy slippers and gigantic headdresses, making it nearly
impossible to do anything useful while wearing it since you’d be dropping your
sleeves in the soup and tripping people (and yourself) on your slippers and
train.
A noblewoman’s duties included the following, which the
houppelande emphasized:
- Looking pretty—wearing beautiful cloth is certainly helpful in this
- Bringing a nice dowry to her husband’s household—and the proof of this is in the amount of fancy fabric she can wear and servants she needs to make her life simple enough to wear it
- Running a household—which is possible to do while wearing a houppelande, since your staff and servants do the dirty work
- Bearing children—a houppelande both makes you look pregnant when you aren’t and accommodates your pregnancy when you are.
The houppelande appears to have come into being suddenly in
the 1350s or 60s, and been blamed on many countries, but owned by none.
Its popularity continued until the mid 1400s, when it began
to diversify so much that it became several different garments, mainly the
Burgundian kirtle.
One of the nice things about the Houppelande is its
diversity. During its lifetime, it presented with a number of different sleeves
and necklines, and men’s houppelandes especially had differences in length.
Early on it usually had a high collar, and frequently no
belt.
Later, men’s belts moved about from below the hips to well
above, or nonexistent, while women’s belts stayed directly under the breasts
(emphasizing and accommodating pregnancy). Since men’s houppelandes were
usually knee length or a little lower, having no belt was much easier to deal
with.
By the end of the houppelande’s tenure, women’s necklines
had dropped and deepened, showing a lot of the garment beneath.
Sleeves could be anything from the angel wing to the fitted,
and were frequently a long loose sleeve with a large gap in it to allow it to
be worn on or hanging behind, displaying the under-sleeve. For some reason,
men’s houppelandes frequently had embellishments (metal bezants) on the left
sleeve only.
Like any fashion, it started with the rich as a way to show
off wealth, but then slowly descended through to the middle class. This descent
meant that some of the people wearing it didn’t have lots of servants, and
therefore needed to make some changes to make it a slightly more useful
garment. This probably resulted in the shorter trains, belts, and fitted
sleeves.
Patterns
To our knowledge, there are no extant houppelandes, so
people have had to come up with methods of making them by guesswork based on
other known forms of tailoring and images of the garment.
Keeping in mind that people probably would have used their
own tailoring knowledge to try and copy other people’s fashions at the time, it
is quite likely that any or all of these methods were actually used in period,
depending on what the person making them had to work with.
I am basing all of these patterns on a 60” wide fabric. You
could modify some of them for 45” wide, or less, but 60” will waste the least
amount of fabric.
Here are several ideas for the body:
Method 1: The Circle with Holes
The radius of the circle should be the length you want the
dress to be total, shoulder to hem (plus seam allowance for the hem).
Because you are making a full circle, you will probably need
to piece together several widths of fabric to make this work. For this reason,
any width of fabric could potentially work for this pattern, but narrower
fabric will result in more seams. If you wanted a train, you would just add
more length to one side of the circle (making an oval).
The dotted lines represent the edges of the fabric, and the
solid lines are where you cut.
Method 2: The Very Large Dress
This pattern comes from
Mistress Corisander Seathewaite’s article on the houppelande and the burgundian
dress.
She illustrates the layout of the pattern pieces a bit
differently than I do, and her layout results in a lot more waste (to my mind),
because she lays out each pattern piece end to end, meaning you need four
lengths of fabric total. I find that if you get them a bit closer together, you
can at least halve the fabric used, and quarter it if you aren’t using a fabric
that has two sides (for instance, I made my houppelande out of wool flannel,
which had no “good side”, so I could have repeated the upper part of the
pattern instead of mirroring it and reduced the waste a bit more).
You could use the waste fabric to make gores to make your
houppelande even larger in the skirt, but this will not look quite the same as
many of the illustrations because the pleats will start a lot lower.
Method 3: Rotated Point Quarter Circle
This pattern comes from Cynthia du Pre Argent, and it’s the
pattern I used for my houppelande.
She argues that this is the correct pattern to use if you
want the pleats on your houppelande to come from the shoulder, as in many of
the illustrations, rather than from the neck, as they would if you used the
first pattern, the circle with holes.
I am showing two different layout patterns: the first I
used, which I think results in the least amount of waste fabric, and which
would take advantage of a patterned fabric where the pattern goes from side to
side rather than top to bottom. For this pattern you would want four quarters,
and with my layout you would need to sew the two halves of the last quarter
together.
The second layout is Cynthia’s and would work best for a
patternless fabric, but would not require sewing one quarter together.
Rather than putting in
curves for the armscyes, you would leave two gaps where the sleeves go. The top
of the triangle is the shoulder, and one side would be the gap for the armscye,
and the other the neckline. You could insert a collar into the neckline, or two
triangles of cloth in the back to make a nicely curved or straight back rather
than a triangular hole. She argues that this is shown in some of the
illustrations, especially in men’s houppelandes.
Method 4:
Herjolfesnes (for narrower cloth)
This pattern comes from Dame Helen, and is based on
Herjolfesnes #63 from the Greenland dig. You
may know this as the “Greenland Gown” theory.
The layout is doubled, so you end up with 8 pieces, and sew
the straight pieces to the diagonal pieces except in the middle (the center of
this layout could be left whole rather than cut, unless you’re actually using
24-30” wide fabric).
The idea here is that you could use fabric from a very
narrow loom, which would have been normal for those in the lower-middle or
middle classes.
Upper classes would have had access to wider fabric, so
would not have needed to use this pattern-style.
However, it also has VERY little waste, so that’s a plus for
those of us who aren’t extremely wealthy today. 60” fabric is still expensive
and not always easy to find.
Sleeves and Collars
Here are some basic styles of sleeves and collars that you
might wish to choose from:
Trumpet, Angel Wing, Cape, Bag Sleeve
Sleeve Patterns:
Each of these sleeves can be as long and as wide as you’d
like your sleeves to be, given the requirements of the fabric.
The bottom shows two different sleeves whose patterns go the
length of the fabric rather than the width.
On the lower angel wing sleeve the curve on the top left
side is your arm length measurement.
For each of the curved armscyes, you will want to take your
arm length at the top of your arm and at the underside of your arm, and average
the two for the median measurement, then draw a curve to match.
The bag sleeve
pattern is Cynthia’s and includes a slit for fashion, or to stick your arm
through if you’re hot.
The bag sleeve can also be made with less width and no slit
for a more fitted sleeve, such as might have been worn by middle class people.
To make a cape sleeve, simply cut a rectangle as long as you
want the sleeve to go and as wide as you want, and pleat the top into your
armscye so that the edges of the fabric meet at your shoulder.
Collars
Butterfly Collar Fitted
Collar Deep
Collar
The Butterfly neck pattern needs to be doubled and then
connected with a parallel curve along the back of the neck (the pattern is for
the front).
The fitted pattern needs to be doubled with the fold
included. The front would not be sewn together, but allowed to fall open.
For the deep collar, simply leave the quarter circle pattern
open in front, or cut a v-neck for any of the other patterns. It is usually
shown with a lacing, but as the dress heads into Burgundian territory, that is
sometimes omitted.
Bibliography
A theory on construction of the Houppelande: Cynthia Virtue's rotated-corner, circle plan houppelande. Cynthia du pre Argent, mka Cynthia Virtue. Published 2000. Accessed February 2011. http://www.virtue.to/articles/circle_houp.html
The Houppelande C.1355-1450. Allison Poinvillars de
Tours, mka Lyn Parkinson. Published June 22, 1998. Stefan’s Florilegium. Accessed February
2011. http://www.florilegium.org/Houppelande-art
Houpelande Theory Class. Dame Helen (I’m afraid I
can’t find any mundane information on this lady). Published 2001. Accessed
February 2011. http://www.damehelen.com/houpe/index.html
Understanding Houpelande and Burgundian Clothing Construction.
Mistress Corisander Seathewaite, mka Nancy Bourn. Published ?. Accessed
February 2011.
http://home.james-gang.org/greydove/docs/houpburg.pdf
I love your writing style :) This was very informative and amusing, thanks for posting!
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