Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns

Book Two in the V&A's groundbreaking new series presents 17 patterns for garments and accessories from a 17th-century woman's wardrobe. It includes patterns for a loose gown, a jacket, a pair of stays and a boned bodice, ivory and wooden busks, shoes, a hat, a stomacher, linen bands and supporters, a bag, and a knife case. It also features a description of the stay-making process. Full step-by-step drawings of the construction sequence are given for each garment to enable the reader to accurately reconstruct them. There are scale patterns and diagrams for making linen and metal thread laces and embroidery designs. Multiple photographs of the objects, close-up construction details and X-ray photography reveal the hidden elements of the clothes, the precise number of layers and the stitches used inside.

Susan North is a curator in the V&A Fashion, Textiles and Furniture Department. Jenny Tiramani devised and produced patterns for the book with Melanie Braun, Luca Costigliolo, Armelle Lucas, and Claire Thornton. They are all founding members of the School of Historical Dress and worked together in the wardrobe department of Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre between 1999 and 2005.