Jaarboek Kostuum 2018

Table of Contents

1. Geeske Kruseman
   Slashes and pinking 1460-1660 from the tailor’s point of view
   

   Spectacular slashed and/or pinked garments are as characteristic of early modern dress as they are foreign to the modern experience of clothing. As they are not always identified and/or understood correctly, this short article takes the point of view of the tailor to give some technical support. It addresses questions such as how slashes are built into garments, which types of slashes are built into which garments, how pinking is done and how its decorative effect works, and how the execution and applicability of slashing and pinking differ for fabrics and leather. All the examples are drawn from men’s clothing from the Low Countries, and the article also clears up a few misunderstandings about the typology and terminology of some Dutch men’s garments.

2. Jacco Hooikammer
   Republicaton of a field report from 1943, on the Brabant women’s cap called ‘lol’
   

   This article is a full republication, with commentary by Jacco Hooikammer, of a field report written in 1943 by Jan Willekens of the Dutch National Open Air Museum (NOM) in Arnhem. The subject of the report is the ‘lol’, a specific women’s cap of printed cotton worn in the Dutch province of Brabant, in the region between Breda and Roosendaal. In 1943, the lol was ready to disappear from the street scene.

   The article presents a short history of the NOM and an introduction to the field research, and ends with a full reprint of the field report. The aim of the article is both to communicate the data on the lol and to showcase the rich sources of information to be found in older fieldwork done by the NOM and others.

3. Ileen Montijn
   ‘What God has not given, Joosse will’
   The story of a licensing fashion maker

   This article is about Laurens Joosse (born 1936), who as a couturier occupied a unique place in Dutch fashion history in the seventies, eighties and nineties. Working single-handed for a small, wealthy group of clients, he produced licensed copies of clothes designed by Paris couturiers such as Dior, Balmain, Yves Saint Laurent and Givenchy. From the eighties he limited himself almost exclusively to designs by Givenchy which he deemed particularly suited to the tastes of his Dutch clientele.

   The article is based on an interview with Joosse by the author and two lecture texts by himself about his career. His work was on view in Dutch museums on two occasions: the first in 1990 in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, where a number of Givenchy models made by Joosse (which remained in the museum’s collection) were shown. The other was in early 2017 in the Gemeentemuseum, now Kunstmuseum, Den Haag, in the context of an Audrey Hepburn exhibition with a strong emphasis on clothes designed by her close friend Givenchy, who died a few months later.

   Laurens Joosse grew up in a middle class family of eleven children in a village in the province of Zeeland. After being apprenticed and working for 13 years with a gentlemen’s tailor in Vlissingen he moved to The Hague in 1967, where he found employment with Maison Kühne, a renowned ladies’ fashion house producing mainly licensed copies of Paris couture clothes. Soon he was in charge of the fitting department with a staff of fifteen.

   In 1972 Kühne went out of business. Laurens Joosse set up business for himself, encouraged and supported by his first customer, mrs. Van B., who was also an influential society lady. In the top floor of his 1960’s maisonette flat in Rijswijk, near The Hague, where he is still living, he installed his workshop and a fitting room, while his living room served as a reception area. He tells of his exciting first buying visit to Paris together with the former directrice of Maison Kühne. Couturière Madeleine de Rauch, who was closing up that same year, made him a present of his first pattern, for a formal dress, which he has used for decades. He also established good relations with Madame Jackie, vendeuse at Givenchy.

   Joosse has never had more than ten customers at the same time. He did not need to, producing by hand about fifteen models – dresses or suits – per season. These were made to order, in the wake of his twice-yearly trips to Paris to see the shows and make his own pre-selection. The high prices he charged were never a problem, he says, as ‘these ladies were mad bout fashion and couldn’t do without’. Besides, in Paris they would have had to pay three times the amount. He tells of his relations with his customers, confidential, discreet and cheerful at the same time.

   In 2017, Joosse made an appearance in a Dutch tv-show as a ‘senior trainee’ with the fashion designer Edwin Oudshoorn. The difference between the cutting and sewing methods of his day and the modern way of working could not be greater, he finds. The world of fashion has changed immensely, says Laurens Joosse - and actually, the world of haute couture, with the perfection of the coupe and clients fully entrusting themselves to their couturier, has really disappeared.

   (Laurens Joosse died in September 2020)

4. Roelie Koobs
   The orphans’ clothes
   Dutch orphanage uniforms through the centuries

   In previous centuries, there was a considerable chance for a child to become an orphan, due to bad hygienic circumstances and infectious diseases. Dutch city orphanages, of which the first was established in 1491, accommodated thousands of children. In order to control and protect the children, they were obliged to wear a uniform. Early images of these uniforms can be found on the entrances of orphanages, money boxes and paintings.

   What catches the eye, seeing these pictures, is the remarkable design of many of the uniforms. The costumes were vertically divided and the two halves were made of contrastingly coloured fabric. This style of clothing evolved out of the so-called mi-parti fashion that was used from the 11th century. In that period, soldiers and servants of noblemen wore garments in the livery colours of their master. Orphans’ uniforms usually had the colours of the city arms, although mi-parti was only used by court jesters by the time the first orphanages were founded.

   City orphanages knew strict admission rules which many children could not meet. Therefore new orphanages were established from the 16th century, as homes for poor children. These institutions accepted not just orphans, but half-orphans and neglected children as well. In order to distinguish poor children from city orphans, homes for needy children used differently coloured uniforms.

   Once in a while, the cut of the uniforms saw some changes in order to adapt to the fashion of the time. The shape of the collars changed over the years, and in the 18th century the boys’ collar changed first into a jabot and later on into a tie. Girls’ collars became scarves. Boys got long trousers in the 19th century, girls got shorter sleeves and wider skirts.

   Not all children in the same home were dressed identically. Children till the age of 12 usually had a uniform that slightly differed from the costume of the older orphans. Also, the uniforms of half-orphans and neglected children could be different from the proper orphans’ clothes. The difference could vary from a mark on a sleeve to a totally differently coloured uniform. Distinguishing marks could be earned as well, or given as a punishment. Some children felt a strong urge to stand out and applied changes to their uniform, such as tightening or decorating their clothes. This was strictly forbidden and punished severely.

   From 1806-1810, The Netherlands were reigned by King Louis Bonaparte, the younger brother of Napoleon Bonaparte. King Louis forbade all colourful orphan uniforms because they distinguished the children too much from the rest of society. The orphanages changed to uniforms in plain, neutral colours, often with a mark on one shoulder. From 1813, coloured uniforms were allowed again but most orphan homes kept using the plain clothes, perhaps for financial reasons. Only the city orphanages of Amsterdam and Haarlem went back to mi-parti. The national uniform obligation for orphanages was abolished in 1919.

5. Mieke Albers
   Dating of a 19th-century comb
   

   Close examination of the 105 combs in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam revealed two inscriptions on comb EEC-NM-10766, from the bequest of the Haarlem lawyer Adrianus Justus Enschedé. It is a decorative comb of a kind used by women throughout the 19th century to support and adorn their hairdo, an indispensable fashion accessory.

   To the naked eye, the plain horn comb reveals two minute inscriptions on the back of outermost teeth, and a rather remarkable snake-like ornament hinging on the top, almost neoclassical in style. Under a stereomicroscope, the inscriptions read ‘S.G.D.G.' and 'DONDEL', which raised hopes of identifying the manufacturer or the designer, a patent, and a more precise dating.

   Research among advertisements in Dutch and French newspapers of the period showed that the comb was designed and patented by the well-known Paris coiffeur Dondel, and first marketed in 1868 in both France and the Netherlands. The advertisements also clarify how the comb was intended to be worn, and the function of the hinged ornament.

   Background research into the manufacturing of combs in the Eure region of Normandy, in northern France, contributes data on the history of comb manufacture, the materials and technologies, and the distribution networks.

6. Birthe Weijkamp
   A woman, a style, a life
   The wardrobe of Germaine Brusse-Urtebise in the Rijksmuseum

   The Rijksmuseum Amsterdam acquired parts of the wardrobe of Mrs. G.A. Brusse-Urtebise (1903-1997), first in 1986 through a gift from herself, then after her death as a bequest. The Brusse-Urtebise group is an important one in the costume collection of the museum. A special exhibition prompted research into the biographical context of the clothes and accessories. Mrs. Brusse-Urtebise was a lifelong wearer of couture, and fashion played a huge role in her life; the composition of her wardrobe reflects this.

   Born a farmer’s daughter in the Belgian countryside, Germaine Urtebise made the most of a chance to go to school in Brussels and started out as a typist and secretary. Dreaming of better things, she found work in the fashion industry: first as a mannequin, then as vendeuse, and from the mid 1920’s as première vendeuse at Maison Borgeaud, an exclusive Brussels fashion house selling mainly licensed copies of Paris designs. She was able to afford a luxurious lifestyle and to buy clothes from her employer.

   In 1932, she married Adrianus Brusse, an Amsterdam businessman, and moved to Amsterdam. She continued to go to Brussels for her clothes, until, after the death of Madame Borgeaud, she switched to the Amsterdam fashion house of Catharina Kruysveldt de Mare. Like Borgeaud, Kruysveldt sold mostly licensed copies made in Amsterdam, but she also occasionally retailed dresses made in Paris. Since Mrs. Brusse was able to wear the show clothes sent from Paris, it is not always possible to trace whether the dresses and suits she bought from Kruysveldt were made in Amsterdam or Paris.

   The collection comprises designs by several important couturiers from the late 1920’s to the mid 1950’s. The wardrobe reveals Mrs. Brusse as a woman with a stable, well-defined taste. In spite of many choices that seemed daring, her style was a relatively modest one. She chose her clothes with care and wore them for years, even decades. In time, her clothes became more than something to wear; they turned into a collection, and she even, late in life, referred to them occasionally as ‘my children’ (she was childless). At some point, she started a notebook to keep track of what clothes she owned, where they were kept, where they had been bought and which ones had been gifted away.

   The Rijksmuseum does not own the entire wardrobe, only highlights made valuable by their design and/or their history. Their new status as museum pieces gives them a sort of eternity, in theory, but what binds them together is the fact that once, they were chosen and worn by this one woman. By entrusting some of her ‘children’ to the museum, Germaine Brusse-Urtebise has in a way immortalized this part of herself.

7. Sjoukje Telleman
   Restoration of a needlepoint lace fan from 1870-1890
   

   This article describes a folding fan dated to 1870-1890, made of cotton needlepoint lace on a bone and mother-of-pearl ribbing, in the collection of the Amsterdam Museum (inv.nr. KA14218). The author briefly reviews the history of the folding fan from its introduction in the Netherlands about 1620, through its great popularity in the 18th century, to its slow decline all through the 19th, and summarizes which constructions and materials were used to make folding fans, with special attention to needlepoint lace.

   The fan she describes is made in point de gaze à la rose, which helps to date it, as it is a 19th-century invention. It was in very poor condition: the lace had come loose from the ribs, two of which were broken, and both the gauzy lace and the patterned ribbing, extremely fine and therefore fragile to begin with, were dirty, broken, and brittle with age.

   After cleaningr, an almost invisible supporting fabric was applied to the lace, the broken ribs were splinted with glass fibre and a missing part of one rib was replaced with cardboard. The lace was then reaffixed on the ribbing. The delicate and discreet restoration will allow this beautiful object to be put on display.