Redesigning Historical Romance Novel Covers to be Actually Historical

Hello and welcome to Fashion History 101, which will be taught through pranks, okay, you know,

historical

romance

novel

s, how the

covers

rarely reflect actual

historical

clothing, the goal of these books is obviously to sell the notion of attractiveness. humans, which I guess I don't understand the point of this because I think historical clothing is fabulous, but I guess maybe it means that there is some kind of modern beauty standard that must be met in order to sell these books, which fortunately o Unfortunately, fortunately, for the purposes of pure hilarity, it often means that we end up with book

covers

that are completely ahistorical, clearly a modern 21st century person in disguise, so naturally I thought that one day wouldn't be a good time to sit down and really contemplate. what these dresses would have looked like within the period they are supposed to represent on the cover, no way of course, I mean this is how the book covers should have been designed because they have a very specific purpose and are clearly for that purpose, but for educational purposes on the history of clothing, let's take a look at some historical

romance

novel

s and see what can be done with them.

The first selection we have is called Duke of my heart. Taking place in the year 1819 in London, this is in no sense what we are getting from the dress on the cover. This to me says approximately 1740 1730 1750. She is about a hundred years too early to represent the time period in which the book's story supposedly takes place. Starting with the hairstyle, the hairstyle she has on the cover is not in any sense even vaguely historical from any time period, so instead we're going to put her in a little regency hairstyle, this is 1819, so we are at the end of the regency period just moved into the romantic period in the late 1820s and early 1830s, the fashion and a kind of general artistic architecture, the artistic aesthetics of this period very much reflects the iconography Greek and Roman and kind of a classical era, so the dresses that we wear that we see in this period are very thin, very column type, we see a lot of simple, clean silhouettes and the hairstyles in this period we have the curls that frame the face and We also have this type of Greek tiaras that are very popular in In this period, we say that it is an evening dress and this is only because the dress that she wears on the original cover looks like a court dress, so we say that it is in a kind of haute couture night Clothing and hairstyles from couture evening wear styles and the Regency period could often incorporate flowers, roses for the evening.

Short, puffy sleeves are very common, so we'll give you short, puffy sleeves. You can also wear a little shawl because this is a very common way for these women to keep themselves a little bit warm in these dresses that are not very substantial in this day and age, so we're going to eliminate the three-quarter length and make them into little puff sleeves, plus to lift them. from the waist to the underbust region, which is a feature of most dresses fashionable from the mid-1790s to the mid-1820s, we will also give the fabric of the dress some pizzazz.

The print is very common in In this period we are starting to see a bit of this flared line from the 1820s, so I'm going to give her dress a bit of a swoosh. They would put quilted rolls on the hems or heavy trimmings in rows at the bottom to hold up the bottom of the skirts also if it's a night where you would be wearing elbow length gloves so we'll put a pair of gloves on. I know the woman on the cover doesn't wear gloves and that's a very scandalous thing to do, so let's rectify that situation and give her some proper gloves so the next cover on our list is called something like Love, which takes place in 1888 and It's about two people in a kind of Midwest to Western United States. one of them is an outlaw and the woman who wants to be a seamstress so we're looking at work and professional style attire so let's start with him he's wearing a pair of jeans which is historically accurate so he can really stay on your jeans anyway, denim fabric is

actually

a type of fabric, it's not necessarily a garment itself, it's a heavy cotton twill weave dyed with indigo and has

actually

been around for a while in the Levi company, which was a manufacturer of this specific type.

From the specific work pants site, I think it's May 20, 1873 as Gene's birthday, which is actually the day they filed the patent for the specific little copper rivets that just make the pockets and so So pants in general are safer and somewhat standardized to the jeans format, but of course denim fabric has been around for a long time, that's all to say that in 1883 jeans were sold widely, especially in this western situation in America, and he would definitely be wearing jeans, so the woman. whose name is olivia she owns a successful business and aspires to become a seamstress she has run away from a possible arranged marriage with a man who was interested in her money so she is probably upper middle class to upper class the problem with the image cover story is that she's clearly wearing an evening dress in what is clearly a daytime situation, so while she may be well dressed, she probably won't be wearing an evening dress, it looks like she's more in mid-century attire 18 60 50- elegant evening dress, so we have to take her more to the 1880s, which means we have to take her to the bustle period, specifically the second bustle period, only this time we are removing the cage crinolines big and we're actually just making kind of cage structures today at least we call them lobster tail bustles, which is really just a kind of cage that's used only on the back of the skirt and that means that in The second bustle period we have dresses much slimmer in the front, of course.

I have to talk about the hair they are going to use for the classic romantic period hair flowing with the wind, which I suppose is not historically inaccurate, but for the purposes of this project, let's style her hair properly like a proper woman would. from the 1880s. The 1880s are also very, very well known for their very covered dresses, the dresses go up to the neck, they are day dresses with long sleeves, I should say that because evening dresses can have more neckline and not sleep, we're starting to see a lot more in this period reflections of the tailoring that's happening in menswear as well, so we're seeing a lot of these types of jacket fronts as bodices.

The other thing that is really popular is stripes in this period, they come in all kinds of colors. There are pink, purple and brown striped dresses, so let's put her in a nice purple and white striped dress. Cover number three is for The Woman's Guide to Celestial Mechanics which supposedly takes place in 1816 in England, it's not that. you would really know from the cover of the book that they look like they are from the mid to early 2000s, one of these women is a countess and owns this vast estate, the other is a scholar so one of them is probably a little better dressed than the other one, I guess the woman on the right in the red dress is supposed to be wearing some kind of evening dress.

The woman on the left looks a bit like a Renaissance peasant blouse, but I'm going to interpret this as. which is in underwear and then hypothetically has a petticoat, there's actually a really interesting regency chemise that has these sort of puffy, puffy sleeves that I assume are meant to hold up a sort of puffed sleeve on an outer dress that's an existing garment , so it's fair game and we're going to put it on that because it remembers what exists on the cover. Let's put her on a couple of short stays in this regency period. The short stays really only come from the bottom of I guess the ribcage is a little bit up, so we're going to put a couple of short corsets on it because why don't we eliminate the petticoat and just call it the skirt part of the shirt?

It's a little complicated, not entirely. behave as it behaves in the original cover image. Chamisas or any regency silhouette would have a straighter cut, so they wouldn't have as much volume, so we will be a little more conservative with the amount of fabric we use. She is showing here, so the other women said that she will be an evening dress. There are many examples of beautiful regency red evening dresses in the world. There is a beautiful one. I think she's actually German, but you know what she can have. She had a dress made in Germany, but it's this beautiful red velvet dress that I think would work perfectly for this situation.

She has a pretty regency style puff sleeve. We can see a little bit of her camisole peeking out the bottom of that sleeve and the sleeve. It's the main point of interest in this dress because it's a regency dress and therefore there's not much else to it. Of course, she has that high waist and then we're going to have a little bit of her camisole peeking out again. from the neckline too, so she covers the number four called Venus in winter. This one follows the life of Bessop Hardwick, who is a real historical figure, which means we actually have precise references and dates to work with, which puts us around 1550.

This is very essentially what we think of as tudor bodices with these wide strips of trim across the front and down the front and sides all of this was very common, we'll keep it although in a slightly different configuration the bodices in this period are quite high or have this curve that makes them reach quite high in the chest, this central area of ​​the chest would have been covered with some type of partlet and were often highly decorated with gold embroidery, black work because it is a kind of center. characteristic of the outfit, so why not just cover it with decoration?

They also seem to have the essence of the shoulders that were very popular in this period, although in this period they could be quite pronounced, very high, very prominent, so come on. To make that a little more characteristic, they are not stripes in general, but they have pain. What would look like stripes on the sleeves and shoulder rolls are actually thin strips of fabric underneath, which is the shirt being pulled. through puffs or they are fake shirts that are sewn on these trim strips or these panels would just be embroidered in gold, embellished with beads, often they would also put a small chain or a small belt right at the waist in this period.

We haven't gotten to the big drum-shaped Elizabethan skirts yet, but we're using cone-shaped gills or we're just using little pads on the hips so she would have had a little bit of definition in the waist area. skirt, these would have been cartridge pleated, which it looks like she has or could be pleated in terms of what happens on the doll, we're not going to do the lace that she has, that's a bit more of an early Jacoby kind of thing. With these big, thick lace cuffs, instead we're going to replace them with what's called a rough suit, which are the two roughs that go with the doll, as well as a matching one on the neck that she doesn't have. a badass on the neck that's hideous the badasses are like a big deal she's a noble woman the badasses at this point are on the upward trajectory to becoming the big, ridiculously elaborate things they would become in the early 17th century and then, Of course, each of those little curls have to be set with hot irons, those setting patterns can become very elaborate, especially in the early 17th century when coarse becomes ridiculous, the setting patterns for these can become simply unbelievable. , it was a blatant display of wealth because here is something I can afford to wear and pay someone to have it professionally washed and reset frequently and in all of her portraits we have she wears a small rough so it makes sense put it on rough for this portrait.

I know we find those weird ones and we really don't like them very much, especially for the beautiful aesthetic covers of romance novels, but listen to me, we are putting her on the spot, it will be guilty and it will be beautiful, she probably wouldn't either. having your hair down at this point in your life and we see this in all the true advantages of hard work portraits, we might see a little in the front in little puffs but for the most part it would be very cute and secure under a cap and then under a french hood our next selection is an extraordinary union that takes place during the american civil war focuses on a woman who is a spy, first let's start with the hair, her hairstyle is actually quite good, 1860s mid century XIX, this period is very simple, it is very elegant, the hair is actually parted in the center or in a V and then tied up in alow bun, just like the back of the head, this also applies to black women.

We have pictorial evidence of that, so his hairstyle is actually pretty cool. We have images of women dressed in daytime clothes with just little sprigs of leaves in their hair, which is interesting, so let's put something in there. her hair just because it looks cute at first, when I was looking at this cover, I thought this isn't the worst, this is something beautiful, like late regency, and then I realized it's the American Civil War, so we're in the 1860s and this is completely the wrong time period, we can keep her in a white dress, white is definitely still something she can wear, she wears it in several different situations and presumably can get her hands on all kinds of clothing, so In this period of the 1850s and 1860s there is a style of manga known as pagoda manga that becomes very popular.

It is a kind of very wide sleeve similar to a robe, it is a little thinner at the upper arm and then becomes nice and wide and bell shaped at the bottom, they could be trimmed and very often had fringes on the bottom. They really loved fringes in this period, the sleeves later went up and up until the 1890s. These guys have tall, upright heads with sleeves just at the top of the shoulders, they are given this kind of triangular shape on the front to make the shoulders look a little whiter which makes the waist look smaller and of course big wide crinoline skirts help.

To make the waist look absolutely small, it is time to inevitably address the history of the Scottish highlanders of the 18th century. I feel like this is a romance genre in itself, so the next story, which is love with a Scottish outlaw, takes place in 1727, I think there's a lot going on with this cover, first of all, the woman is wearing a dress. Pretty decent regency, but as we've discussed before, this isn't the regency period, it's not even close to the regency period, unfortunately, there's not much you can do about it. the time period if you are writing a Scottish novel and the time period has to take place before 1746 before the highlands have eliminated all their culture until, like in the early 19th century, it is George IV who somehow rekindle this obsession. with Scottish culture all the time before that, it's the Highland clearances, they're trying to take away tartans and Scottish dress and Scottish culture, so it's nothing to have an affinity for Scottish culture or the Highlands , not just for the dress, but any way of life you really shouldn't wear a regency dress you should wear some sort of dress from around 1720 one thing we see very often in a lot of the dresses from the early 18th century are these big robins wide ones that go down the front of the dress and are worn a bit like robes, predominantly there is the sack dress that has no shape at all, but it is just a very large and wide dress with a large cape in the back, there is the mantua style dress which more or less carries the style of the 1690s where the back of the dress was draped up and up to form almost the essence of a bustle and then of course a little less frequently we have dresses tighter, we're going to put her in one of these tighter dresses because I know that's what the romance genre probably wants, but we're still going to keep some of these elements of the very classic dress from the early 18th century: we have the big, wide sleeves with large, wide cuffs, which is largely a feature of early 18th century dress.

Interestingly, they have put her hair up in this cover design, which I highly commend them for doing, unfortunately this is one of the few periods where we have evidence of portraits of people with their long hair down. Half a ton of hair up, so we'll give it a little updo and a couple of those 18th century curls falling down. I know we're going to hate this, but he really needs his hair powdered, whether it's a wig. It doesn't necessarily have to be, it could also just be his natural hair. These styles are very easy to do naturally.

Now I'm not entirely sure what's going on with the t-shirt situation on the original cover. T-shirts are not constructed like that in this period. The shirts from this period are, I mean, when you think about puffy poet shirts and pirate shirts, they have a deep V in the front to get the shirt on and off your head, but for the most part it's these. very big, very fluffy, but closed in the front, shirts that are gathered into a fist at the sleeve, so they are long sleeved, they have collars that you could tell are turned up, the other thing is that she wouldn't be with bare legs.

It's probably a bit cold in Scotland and it's standard practice to wear tights. These stockings reach to the knee and are held up with garters. She would wear stockings. He would also use hoes and once again, the stockings of him would be. held up with garters, okay we need to have a little chat about tartan because in theory the cover designer did vaguely correct research for this, digging into the tartan record it appears to be wearing some variation of the Buchanan tartan , which is the area. it all proves that the problem is that clan tartans didn't exist before all the romanticization of Scottish culture in the regency period, this whole idea that there are very specific clan tartans that are very specific to this region and can only wear this tartan if you're from this clan, it's all nonsense for the 18th century, much of this was invented based on a source that was supposedly discovered in the 18th century, although it can't necessarily be verified that it actually existed in the 18th century and not only.

Completely invented by the people who introduced this source, the theory on the origin of these clan tartans is that people based in different regions of the highlands would have had access to certain dyes, certain materials, trading with certain people, access to other trade routes elsewhere. of the world and that would dictate what dyes they had access to and therefore what colors they would theoretically use, where we have this idea of ​​different clans using different specific colors, there is some evidence base and basis of truth for that, but it wouldn't be as strictly respected as we necessarily think it would have been today, the kilt starts out as a very simplistic and very practical garment, it's not sewn and it's not really a garment, it's a plaid, it's a piece of cloth. but for men it was a very long cloth of between six and nine yards that was spread on the ground and pleated in the middle to give it that nice volume in the back and then laid on the ground.

Tie a belt around you, stand up and you would indeed have that draped kilt shape. These are very practical pieces of clothing that are very versatile and existed for a reason and there we have our cover redesigns. They're not about to hit bestseller shelves anytime soon because This is not what marketing for the historical romance genre is for, but we know that very well anyway. I hope this was helpful to you in terms of learning things about the history of clothing. If not, at least I hope it was an entertaining little journey through some. maybe relaxing sketching and painting content if you want to stick around for more costume history, historical costume construction, and general naughty content, stick around, oh I'm supposed to tell you to subscribe, do that, otherwise, Don't do what I wish.

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