Dress #128: Late Victorian skirt suit

This hand-stitched paper ensemble is based on a style of skirt suit called a ‘tailormade’. The original suit, made of bottle-green wool with velvet lapels, dates from ca. 1900 and is held by the McCord-Stewart Museum (accession M977.44.2.1-2). Tailormades were typically made of wool, and fashioned after a man’s jacket; they would typically be worn with a ‘shirtwaist’, also based on men’s clothing. This suit was made by William St. Pierre, a tailor working in Montreal.

The dress is six inches tall, stitched by hand on 8x10 inch 100% cotton watercolour paper, which means that it will pop right into any commercial frame in that size, and be ready to hang on your wall.

Materials: Japanese paper and cotton floss on cotton paper; 24.5 x 20.3 cm (10 x 8").