At 9:54 AM -0700 9/3/05, Kathryn Parke wrote:
Could someone walk me through the process of belting a houppelande just below the bustline? How did they keep the belts there, without having it "walk" itself down to the natural waistline? Was it tacked in places, and if so, wouldn't that interfere with the drape? And how were they fastened in back -- buckled, tied, pinned? This is for a stage costume, "accuracy" isn't the primary goal (don't hate me!) -- I want that look, but I'm not sure how best to achieve it.
Although this isn't a style that I wear very often (except for the masculine version with the more natural belt-line), my experience has been that if your belt is wide and relatively stiff, e.g., made from oak-tan leather, then if you buckle it rather snugly just under the breasts, the lower edge will ride right around where your waist starts flaring to the hips. (Women with a relatively long waist or narrow hips will have a different experience than me.) If you remember that the fashionable silhouette of the time included a gently rounded belly, it seems plausible that this method may have been part of how it worked.
Another factor may be that if your gown fabric is relatively heavy (as seems to be the case from how it is depicted) and the gown is relatively flared (ditto), then the change in volume of fabric between the upper and lower edges of the belt may also help keep it from slipping downwards.
Heather -- ***** Heather Rose Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] <http://heatherrosejones.com> ***** _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
