Cutters Guide

The Cutters’ Practical Guide.

Ladies’ Clothing.

Sixth Edition.

Written by W. D .F. Vincent

Published by the John Williamson Company, Ltd, 42, Gerrard Street, Shaftesbury Avenue, London, W.

Publish date unknown

Georgie Cummings

S3135363

The book is tatty, showing its age in the stains and fraying around the edges. The hard back cover is bound in red fabric with the title and authors name stamped into it; The Cutters’ Practical Guide. Ladies’ Clothing. Sixth Edition. The pages are yellowing from being unprotect over time, some are torn and cracking. The binding of the book is coming loose, a few pages hang on by only a thread, suggesting the book has been opening and closed countess times from when it was published in the late 1800’s to now, 2007. This book came to me through my grandmother, Anne Gillespie, a few years ago. She had the owned book for quite some time but only possessed it in the last 16 years as it was handed down to her through her fathers side of the family.

The book first belonged to Miss Bust. Anne simply knew her as only Miss Bust and never learnt of her given name which is now lost for the time being as there is no one else alive to help search their memories for it. Miss Bust was Anne’s great aunt and was born in England in the latter half of the 1800’s. In England she worked as a seamstress and this was her reason for purchasing the book to aid her in making clothes, drafting the patterns and sewing them together, all by hand. She most likely lived in the same area as Anne’s father, in Chester located in the North of England.

Miss Bust’s sister gave birth to Anne’s father in 1901. In 1920 his father died, he was hit by a car as he bicycled to work. He had always been defiant in asserting his right of way on the road, claiming that he was there first, the car were second. Through these events he left England as Miss Bust had offered him a job in a tannery which he would inherit as she had no children of her own. He moved there with his wife and settles in Preston, Melbourne.

In the late 1930’s Anne first travelled to England as a young child with her family so he father to study to become an Analytical Chemist. They lived in England for only a year as he was able to complete a two year course in one year because war was declared and they needed to return to Melbourne in 1939. Back in Melbourne Anne’s father worked as a qualified analytical chemist in the tannery. It is unknown to Anne how the book came into her father’s possession but it was most likely that once Miss Bust had passed and he inherited her belongings and business.

Anne’s father held onto the book for year before passing it on to Anne as she worked as a dressmaker before getting married, although she never really studied the book much as she had her own to refer to which was more relevant to the fashion of the time, so it was left in her father house. Her father passed away in 1992 age 91, a few months after his wife died who was age 85. Anne then acquired all of his belonging and amongst them was the book she had been given many years before. Again the book’s significance was forgotten and stored in cupboards under a fish tank, which at one time had leaked onto the book, giving reason to the tattered and moulded cover.

A few years ago I began expressing an interest in clothing and fashion design and it was only then that Anne remembered Miss Bust’s Cutters’ Practical Guide and thought it was be useful as it depicts patterns and ways of creating garments. Although the techniques for pattern making in the book are not so useful today, as corsets and bustles are no longer a feature in fashion, it had offered insight into the history of fashion, women’s lifestyles

The Cutters’ Practical Guide. Ladies’ Garments was a book that would have been relevant to it’s time. It was written to be used by seamstress’ and pattern makers to create fashionable garments worn in the late 1880’s. As the author sates in the preface the book is to provide “a work of reference for the experienced Cutter, so that he may strengthen convictions on some doubtful topic or obtain information on subjects that may not have come within the range of his experience.” Written and published in England made it relevant to Miss Bust as she would have used it as a reference to make the fashionable garments of the time and place, seeing as tailoring was still very much a hand made area of trade, requiring much skill.

The guide bears as a testimony to the craftsmanship in making everyday objects of the time. All garments would have been made by hand so that in a social context it was the wealthy who had garments made of high quality cloth and had intricate detailing while the plainer versions were cheaper and more affordable to lower class people. As it had been since the beginning of clothing, fashion clothes were used as a status symbol with only the wealthy having many garments that were in fashion and specific to certain activities that mainly the upper class took part in. An example of this is the referencing to riding clothes designed specially for ridding horses or going on hunts (although the actual hunting was done by the men) which was an activity only women of a certain class partook in.

As the guide is for drafting patterns to make the garments it also details about the fashion of body shape and the garments that create an exaggerated form of the woman’s figure in the late 1880’s. Bustles first became a fashion item in their own right in about 1869 after it was first designed to purely hold up the extensive draping at the rear of the skirt. By the 1870’s the bustle became a structure, like the corset, to accentuate the form of a woman’s body and its extravagancy showed other of the woman’s hierarchy in wealth, knowledge and fashion. From about 1881-1913 the bustle again became popular and was exaggerated to become a main fashion feature of women’s clothing. The bustle had such stayed in fashion for this time because of the illusion of the ideal womanly figure it created with the corset. The shape formed from wearing both the bustle and corset created a slim waisted figure with a large bust and bottom. When seen from the side the bustle balances the protruding bust creating a curved back with a full trailing skirt draped with layers upon layers.

The size of a woman’s bustled rear end and smallness of her waist was seen as a highly erotic and idealized conception of femininity and the amount, fibre and grade of the material gathered into these garments showed other women of their wealth and class.

The bustle, corset and other constrictive garments changed the way clothes where made and how women move while wearing them. Because the structure of the corset needed to be strong enough to tightly pinch the waist, exaggerate the bosom and the bustle needed to support heavy folds of fabric the methods of construction more common to carpentry than drafting for cloth. Wood and mental were incorporated into the garments and had to be illustrated and explained in the guide to educate seamstress’ on how to construct such garments. The Cutters’ Practical Guide states that on observing the female body the tailor will “emphasise the increased size of the female figure between the waist and the knee as well as the enlargement that takes place at the busts.”(Page 143)

The constrictive structure of these garments also involved health issues for women and limited them participating in certain activities, any activity that increased the heart rate was most uncomfortable and anything requiring the woman to bend was limited. This physical constriction in clothing, which was up held as proper and attractive by men, also symbolised the constriction of women’s rights and capabilities of the time. Later this led to the feminist movement of women demanding equal rights, being freer, able to enter the work force independently and to obtain a higher education at university. These changes in women’s social standing saw changes in their clothes and the corset and bustle where replaced by loose fitting non-constrictive garments as seen particularly in the 1920’s.

The passing down of this book from one female family member to another tracks the differences each generation have faced. Miss Bust could possibly never have imagined that so much would change in women’s life, shaped by their garments from the time she bought the book and used it for her own referencing. The guide shows a time before the feminist movement took over England and equal rights as we know them were formed. It is also hard for my generation, and even my grandmothers to imagine what it would have been like in a time when hand making was the common way and so much of a woman’s standing in society came down to her clothes and the form they created. But perhaps on that notes not so much has changed as women still judge each other my their clothing, not so much the extravagant form but the label and designer of the garment, which references to the wealth of that woman.

References:

• Anne Gillespie, my mothers’ mother.

• The Cutters’ Practical Guide. Ladies’ Garments. Sixth Edition, W.D.F.Vincent, The John Williamson Company, Ltd, London.

• http://womenshistory.about.com/od/suffrage1900/Womens_Suffrage_19001920.htm, updated 2007

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism, updated 12/04/07

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bustle, updated 04/04/07

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corset, updated 08/04/07