Building the Absolutely Bonkers 1830s Silhouette

In between the columnar silhouette of the Regency era and the recognizable Victorian bustle period is the over the top Romantic era of the 1830s.

Just in this small sampling of fashion plates from across the 1830s, you can see that the silhouette was all about volume - big hats (and hair!), voluminous sleeves, and a big cupcake skirt - often decorated with ruffles or trim to make it appear even wider. Skirt hems have risen to the ankle, which changes the overall proportions dramatically from the preceding Regency period. In contrast to all that volume, the belted waist looks incredibly tiny.

As I mentioned in my blog post about Edwardian underthings, historical fashion relied on specific underpinnings to build the fashionable silhouette. This is in contrast to modern fashion, which expects the body underneath the clothes to already have the ideal silhouette.

The volume of the 1830s, in particular, requires support. The first couple layers close to the skin are very similar to earlier and later periods - a chemise and stays. Over that, though, are layers of stiffened petticoats to hold out those bell shaped skirts and sleeve plumpers to fill out the gigot sleeves. Below are some demonstrations of these underpinnings by museums - click on the links below the images to be taken to pages with commentary.

FIDM Museum - Shaping the Romantic Era

Metropolitan Museum of Art - Petticoat

V&A Museum - Drawers

For my own underpinnings, I started with this pattern for an 1830-1850 chemise from A Most Beguiling Accomplishment. As it is patterned from an extant garment, it is only one size and has no instructions. I started by tracing the pattern out onto gridded paper without making any changes to the size. Then I measured a few key points like chest, biceps, and length and made some minor adjustments before cutting out my fabric (a lovely white linen from Renaissance Fabrics). I actually had to re-draft the yoke and sleeves after basting together the first version, but the second went together very easily.

For anyone concerned for my modesty - I left nothing to chance and am wearing essentially a full opaque bodysuit underneath. The stays are my long Regency stays from RedThreaded. Stays didn't change significantly during the early part of the 1830s, so I'm just cheating a bit.

I next worked on the petticoats to hold out the fashionable full skirts. Using Fresh Frippery's suggestions for putting together an 1830s ensemble, I started with a corded petticoat.

It has been shut down now, but for a while American Duchess had a patreon and one of the benefits was monthly patterns. There were several 1830s patterns (most accompanied by short YouTube instructions), including one for a corded petticoat. This is super easy, but tedious to put together - you essentially sew about 90 yards of straight lines to sandwich the cording between layers of fabric. You can use just about any plain weave cotton for this, but I opted for a cream colored poplin from Mood Fabrics that was a delight to work with - very crisp and not at all slippery.

The corded sections help hold the fabric out in the bell shape instead of letting it collapse into folds.

Over that goes a tucked organdy petticoat. Organdy itself is quite a stiff fabric and the tucks serve the same function as the cording - keeping the fabric from collapsing in on itself. This was both easy and quick - it's essentially a tube of fabric gathered up to the waistband.

You can see the next and final element in the picture above - those ridiculous sleeve supports. They will eventually tie into the sleeves of the dress, but I tried tying them to my corset here and it was a bit of a disaster as they shifted every time I moved. They look a lot better pinned onto my dress form.

These are also made from an American Duchess pattern and are composed almost entirely of scraps from previous projects.

Now that all my underpinnings are complete, it will be onto the outer layers at some point - but in true Kerry fashion, I'm actually packing this away and going back to working on my Edwardian ensemble next.