Fortuny on the brain…
Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.
While I’m working up the nerve to call the SF Pleating Co. for price quotes, I found this YouTube video of a short lecture on the history of Fortuny. A REALLY short lecture, briefest of brief lecture, but a mere taste of the history of Fortuny and his Delphos gown… But interesting, nonetheless.
Click to view
Shot of side seam, Delphos gown, c. 1930. From the Whitaker Auction Smugmug site.
One thing I started noticing right away that for some reason wasn’t apparent from still photos: The pleating is actually irregular. It’s not perfect little knife pleats, but it’s also not “broom stick” pleating which is more like intentional wrinkling. While Fortuny patented a pleating machine that was ostensibly used to set the pleats for his gowns, the end result is actually pretty visually similar to arashi shibori (or pole wrapped shibori). This slick little video gives you a glimpse of how it’s done (not that I’m suggesting buying this woman’s kit, just it is pretty much the only video on YouTube that actually showed the process well enough to understand how it’s done):
Arashi shibori is the technique I mentioned I wanted to experiment with, since as you can see, it yields highly regular pleats, and can be done with a bare minimum of equipment (PVC pipe, fishing line, and water). Most modern arashi is apparently done on the diagonal, but it can be done on the straight grain, too.
So, pleating aside, how was the fabric assembled to make the dress? And how much fabric did one dress take? The one thing to keep in mind is (obviously) that any pleating process reduces the width of the fabric considerably, and the more dense the pleating, the more fabric is actually taken up. One of the frustrating things about researching the Fortuny gowns is that for all the info out there on the internet (which, ain’t gonna lie, is usually my first stop when I’m starting out on a project), for all the beautiful photographs of Delphos gowns, and all the lavish praise that’s heaped on Fortuny as a genius artist and inventor, there’s almost nothing out there dealing with how these gowns were assembled. Pro tip: if all the info on a particular designer deals with his vision and not with the practical aspects of his craft, he’s probably considered an artist not a designer and therefore academics will devote page after page of wank about how his art revolutionized modern society, and not a whole lot about what the guy actually did or how he accomplished it. Which is irritating for people like me, who need to know the “how” not just the “why”.
Interior view of Delphos gown, c. 1930, showing Fortuny signature in red ink along selvedge. From the Whitaker Auction Smugmug site.
Anyway, what I’ve been able to scare up is that a Delphos gown typically took 4 to 5 panels of 37″ wide fabric (un-pleated). (Thank you FIDM Museum Blog for that tiny little crucial tidbit that doesn’t appear anywhere else) The panels were hemmed along all raw edges (probably by hand, though of course no source I’ve found yet mentions this) and then pleated. After the pleating had been set (using magic, one assumes), the panels were then hand-stitched together at the shoulders and sides. You can see in the picture at left that the pleats wrap around the neckline seam in a continuous fashion, indicating it was seamed first, then pleated, then stitched together, and finally a cord was inserted to draw the neckline close. In some designs, the shoulder seam was apparently reinforced on the interior with an unpleated piece of silk. Murano glass beads were strung on rattail and the rattail was stitched to the sides of the gown (and occasionally the hem and the neckline) to weigh the garment down.
I have been able to track down a line drawing of one of Fortuny’s patents for the Delphos gown, which you can see here. It’s basically an Ionic chiton (which, popular history suggests, was exactly what inspired the Delphos dress: The Charioteer of Delphi). Still no official word yet on the type of silk fabric he used, but I’m starting to think it’s probably something similar to habotai, which can be found in a variety of weights and takes both dye, and heat set pleats well.
And on that note… I think I need a nap. I was up all night obsessing about the Delphos gown and couldn’t shut my brain up! Though I do remember having one weird dream about a heartbroken Conan the Barbarian… Don’t ask me, I have no clue either!