Past Board Member: Catherine Scholar, Finery Editor

Why costuming?  What brought you here?

I have loved historical fiction from childhood.  I remember reading the “Little House” books, the “Betsy-Tacy” series, “Anne of Green Gables”… and wanting those clothes so badly.  I grew up in the 70s with a super practical mother and there were a lot of flared pants, tunics and polyester in my wardrobe.  It just wasn’t pretty, and those clothes in the books sounded SO pretty.

My mom sewed most of my clothes, and my sister’s, at least until we got old enough to protest.  From baby dresses to our wedding gowns.  She taught us both from age five or so to sew and alter.  She also organized the costumes for our ballet school, so I saw theatrical costuming close up from an early age.  I watched as she altered things to fit different bodies, adding gussets here and hem extensions there, and made things look completely different with different trim or accessories.

Through middle school and high school I designed prom dresses and formals (with a very heavy 1980s Gunne Sax influence), filling my school notebooks with drawings.  My junior year I discovered the Renaissance Faire, Dickens Fair, and historical dance, and that’s when my focus shifted to historical costuming. 

I stay in the hobby because it’s an outlet for my creativity, and a way to connect with women of the past, and with like-minded clothing nerds in the present.

What’s your costuming focus?

I’m strictly a historical costumer.  I admire sci/fi/fantasy/steampunk costuming, but it’s just not me.  If it doesn’t involve corsets and petticoats, I’m pretty much not interested.  I love social history, and the idea that we can learn a lot about people from the minutiae of their daily lives.

Do you do anything else crafty or artistic?

I embroider (my grandmother taught me).  I occasionally dabble in fiction writing.  I wrote bad free verse in high school.  I sew modern clothes.  I go to the theater with my husband.  Mostly the creative output is costume-related.

What’s your day job?

I chase boys!

Ahem.  I’m a stay-at-home mom to two teenage boys.  Before they came, I worked as a technical writer and editor for a number of San Francisco tech companies.

What was the first costume you made?  Is there a picture?

I think it was 1979… my parents took my sister and I to Disneyland for the first time that August.  I was seven, she was not quite five.  That Halloween I made her a Mickey Mouse costume: black ballet leotard and tights, red shorts with white felt circles safety-pinned on them, white gloves that probably originally went to college formals with my mom, and the mouse ears from the trip.  Oh, and I cut a black felt square into strips and safety-pinned them together for a tail.

What was your first/most memorable costuming disaster/ learning moment?

The most memorable was probably my first hoop skirt, as part of my first Victorian ballgown when I was sixteen.  I made the gown of acetate satin, using the Past Patterns bodice and the skirt from a Big-3 formal gown pattern (remember, 1980s).  Buying a hoop was beyond my baby-sitting budget, so I used the skirt pattern from the gown pattern, made it up from old mismatched cotton sheets, put densely gathered ruffles all over, and boned it with metal strapping from the lumber yard.  And let’s not forget the wide elastic waistband I put on.  That hoop was HUGE.  Easily five feet across.  It was also ferociously heavy.  I’m sure, in hindsight, that I badly bruised my dance partners’ shins with it.  The first time I wore it, at the first-ever PEERS ball in a church hall in Belmont, I was dancing a polka and the waistband hooks failed and that hoop fell off with a CLANG.  I replaced the elastic waistband with a drawstring, which didn’t fall off but which did make my waist bleed, because it swung when I danced and I had not yet embraced corsets.  Needless to say I soon saved up my baby-sitting money and bought a cheap cotton hoop, which is still in my closet.  I pulled the steel strapping out of my homemade hoop and used it as an over-hoop petticoat for years, mismatched fabrics, rust stains from the strapping, and all.

I would like to say, though, that I am in no way ashamed of any of my early efforts.  I made some hilarious mistakes, but they were all my best work at the time.  Those early gowns went to a lot of Gaskell and PEERS balls, and I loved them.

What’s on the sewing table now?

I’m about to start a 1903 evening gown for the Murder on the Delta King event, pale gold lightweight silk taffeta and indigo ribbon flower accents.  I’m just waiting for my pattern to arrive from Etsy.  I found a shop that scales antique patterns to your measurements, so I’m giving that a try.

Costume you’re most proud of?

In 2009/2010 I collaborated on a Jacobean jacket with Tabitha Warren.  She painted silk taffeta in the typical Elizabethan/Jacobean swirl and flower pattern, with tiny insects and strawberries and all kinds of fun details, using extant embroideries as her guide. I made the silk into a jacket, using Janet Arnold’s pattern of the V&A’s Layton jacket.  I added gold braid, spangles, and lace.  I also copied a late Elizabethan embroidered shirt from the Museum of London, also in the Patterns of Fashion books.  I used period-correct materials and sewed and embroidered it by hand.  It was a tough time in my life and it was important to me to have something truly beautiful come out of it. The plan was for Tabitha to enter the jacket in the county fair contest, under both our names.  That never happened, but it still could!

What’s your costuming Kryptonite, the one thing you just can’t seem to master?

Hair.  I always have impressive ideas and logical plans, and it somehow never looks like I want it to. 

What’s your holy grail costuming project?  The one you dream of doing?

I made my decades-long holy grail costume last year, when I made the teal 1790 jacket and gilet in the Kyoto Collection.  I’d been sighing over it for years and finally just went for it!

I guess that means it’s time to choose a new one: right now I’m obsessing about 1890-1910 couture.  Pingat made a beaded cape in the 1890s that looks like a butterfly…

Tell us one (or two or three) things about you that others might not know.

I’m obsessed with monkeys.

I once performed onstage with Annette Bening.

I’m the only female in a house full of five alpha males.