Tag Archives: Victorian

Menswear

The Cravat

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cravat

The cravat, a neckband, is the predecessor to both the bow tie and the neckband we know the best today, the necktie. The cravat derives from a type of neckwear style that was worn by the members of the Croats, a 17th-century military unit based in the Habsburg Monarchy, which is now broken into Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic.

To make things perfectly clear, the cravat is NOT EVER to be confused with the Jabot, a similar piece of neck-wear that was worn by men in the 17th and 18th centuries. Some cravats look like Jabots, but they certainly are not jabots.

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Costume History

1871 patented Narraganset Collar Company “Elmwood” paper fold collar for men, with original box.

I purchased this early 1870s man’s card stock weight paper collar for study and sharing in 2018. It came in an exceptionally nifty full color box, such is often found in 1870s -1880s collars. I’m guessing originally the box would have contained more than one, as these collars are rather fragile. The box has both a color lithographed top picture and a side indicator of size, both pasted on the yellow top of the box.

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How-To, Teaching

Turning a $1.29 Halloween Witch Hat into a Dickens Era Bonnet

So, I was kind of impressed with the quality of this velour witch hat from the 99c Only Store, and thought I’d try to convert it to some other sort of hat, partly because I’ve had luck with having my Costume Class Students turning a bunch of black feather covered witch hats into a series of c.1900 “Edward Gorey” style mourning hats as a class project inspired by having those fairly fancy looking witch hats get dumped by a store in November to less than $1 each. I checked to see if the hat was in fact adult sized in the head…

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