When one is in quarantine and slightly (very?) bored, one must find a project to entertain oneself.
Enter the new 2020 adaptation of Emma. Loved it! Gorgeous costuming, fabulous sets, candy pastel colours everywhere. All around, an absolutely delightful cupcake of a movie. And it suddenly gave me the urge to make a regency era outfit…
The idea for this project came about after seeing Matthew Williamson’s post on Facebook on the Second Boer War Re-enactment page. He took the “Boer War” What Price Glory tunic and reworked it into a proper Pattern 1896 khaki drill tunic.
The What Price Glory tunic is based on the Pattern 1906 khaki drill tunic and needs some alterations to be used for Boer War re-enactments. I figured I could draw upon the talents of my well known tailors (ie, my mom and sister) to duplicate Matthew’s project.
Puttees, also known as leg wraps, have been worn in various forms since antiquity. Every possible manner of wrapping them has already been invented. However, those re-enactors that don't have somebody to show them how to do it, end up having to figure it out for themselves with varying degrees of success...
Perhaps most commonly associated with the French Foreign Legion, thanks to countless books and movies depicting the Legionnaires in North Africa wearing the iconic white cap cover with neck flap, the havelock was known to be in use since about the middle of the 19th century by the British army in India. Being an extremely useful piece of kit, it's use quickly spread to other armies in other hot regions of the world.
What is now commonly known as a Haversack, in the British Army, was referred to as a bread bag. It is generally defined as a small bag with a single shoulder strap. In military use, it was usually made of undyed canvas, or black canvas if you were in a British or Commonwealth rifle regiment, and was used to hold a soldiers food rations. (There will be a lot more about the haversack and it's history, plus all about what was actually carried inside in a future blog post...)
The pattern for this haversack came from, "Soldiers' Accoutrements of the British Army 1750 - 1900" by Pierre Turner. It is the 1880 General Service model. I'm using a 100% cotton canvas in black this time.
(Picture heavy post)
A bergere is a type of hat that was very popular during the 18th century, mostly mid-century. Typically it is a straw hat with a very shallow crown and wide brim, most often decorated with ribbons and flowers. The word bergere means shepherdess in french, and the fashion for dressing up as a shepherdess or inspired by was also very popular during the 18th century.
Here you have a couple famous examples of bergere hats...
