14th/15th Century Velvet Surcoat & Purple Gown

Fall 2014

I realized I was slowly moving forward in history as I sew, so I updated my SCA persona to a later period. I had been wanting to make a surcoat for a while, and East Kingdom Crown Tourney seemed like an excellent reason to make something new! Unfortunately, I decided this just under three weeks before the event, so it was a bit of a rush the fur was not added until later.

Historical Inspiration:

Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

While surcoats were worn for several centuries (by both men and women in various styles), I like the look of the "gates of hell" style, seen from the mid 1300's through the 1400's.

For additional pictures of the historical inspiration, see my Pintrest page for the gown here.

Construction:

Like my heraldic gown, the purple under-gown is a standard four-panel bust supportive gown with a curved front (as seen at La Cotte Simple). The gown is made entirely out of linen so I can wear it comfortably at Pennsic (and as I am still looking for a good source for wool), with the torso lined to the hip with a second layer of linen. It laces up the front using spiral lacing as seen in period. Likewise, the sleeves were again taken from Maistresse Mathilde Bourette's technique, because I saved my pattern from my previous gown. At some point I will make a nice, fitted sleeve with buttons, but thankfully the paintings I was working off do not seem to show buttons on the dress under a surcoat very frequently (I have come across only one example, and it was a little early period for the look I was going for here).

The surcoat was patterned through estimations and some draping as I wanted to see how it looked over my dress before making many cuts. However, I did find Lady Jehanne de Wodeford's handout The Sideless Surcoat to be very helpful in planning the rough pattern out. The fabric is black cotton velveteen, which has a short, dense pile that I was told mimics the look of period silk velvet. This was my first time working with the fabric and I was very pleased with how it worked up - the nap is slight so if you use the period method of ignoring nap (which can save a lot of fabric) it is not very noticeable at all, the fabric is machine washable (I have washed it three times so far with no crushing or visible wear), and it does not have the fake/synthetic look of most velvets. I certainly plan on using this fabric again. The neckline came out a little higher than I intended, but as one of the reasons I made this was to add some warmth to my mostly linen closet this worked out well (when paired with a gorget/wimple this keeps out wind and keeps in body heat very nicely).

Decoration:

I finally acquired some white rabbit fur for the trimming. I always loved the look of the 1965 Cinderella film and I have a sneaking suspicion that the Queen's ermine-trimmed surcoat worn by Ginger Rodgers may be a subconscious inspiration for why I really want to add some black tails to make it look like ermine. Also, who doesn't want a velvet and ermine piece in their closet? I will have to look at options for faking ermine and give it a shot.

To attach the fur I used a very long running stitch where I only picked up a small pinch of the leather and then plunged back into the fabric. This way there are no marks in the fun where I caught the hairs and the fur can also be removed in case I need to wash the surcoat. The fur is 8-12 inch strips whipped together to create a seamless look.

Conclusion:

Overall I am happy with the look of this piece. Crown tourney was dreadfully wet and muddy and both gowns ended up soaked almost to the knees in mud (trains + outdoor wet event = bad idea), but sure enough the cotton velveteen washed up beautifully in the machine (and was also quite warm during the event thank goodness). I will say that I wish I had cut the surcoat a little thinner in the plastron to create a more obvious curve - it looks a little more boxy on me than I had hoped. However, it is still very pretty and I am quite happy to have this as an addition to my closet.

(Sorry for the poor picture quality, at some point I will take better photos of this dress.

I do like that this picture captures the way the velvet looks in the light though.)

Bibliography:

Margaret Scott. Medieval Dress and Fashion. London: The British Library, 2007.