EEEEC: Joana de Bairros’ Outfit in the Style of 1480-90s Swabia
Entry for Inspiration:
I was inspired by Meisterin Christian’s beautiful red and gold Swabian dress she made for Canterbury Faire 2023. I particularly loved the elegance of this style and it looked cool and comfortable to wear. I did some further research on Swabain dress from this period and fell particularly in love with this image:
I chose to use brocade rather than the velvet that the inspiration image seems to be made from. There are however a number of Swabian dresses from a similar period, as well as some on the same panel as the inspiration image, made from brocade so it did not feel incongruous. I had lovely dark pink brocade in my stash which I thought would be perfect for this project. As we cannot see the front of the bodice I chose to make it front lacing like Meisterin Christian’s as I felt that would work best for my shape and comfort. The figure to the left of my inspiration image had the lacing across the bodice opening that I wanted to use so I went with that along with some hook and eyes at the bottom of the bodice for closure.
While I loved the pearled neckline of the inspiratiion dress I felt that I did not have the time for this. I instead had found a beautiful gold and black trim on a trip to London and used that to trim the neckline. I pearled the trim slightly to allude to the pearls on the inspiration image. I found some narrow gimp trim in gold and the same pink of the fabric and used this to trim the sleeves like the inspiration image.
I chose to do slightly different ties on the sleeves as I wanted the dress to be easy to get in to and felt that having individual ties would help with this. I used velvet ribbon as ties as it stays tied better than satin ribbon. I had some gold aglets in my stash I used to finish off the ties. Another Babenburg dress had the three lacing rings with cross-lacing at the wrist so I chose to incorporate design into mine.
I made a chemise with a 3/4 sleeve to go with the dress and a gefrens made from gold fringe to go with the outfit.
I absolutely love this style and feel it works well for my body shape. It is also far more comfortable than any fancy garb I have made in the past. I have plans to make several more!