It’s been quite fun and extremely frustrating diving into AI video generation tools over the last few weeks. To be sure, I’ve had more success with AI-generated video than with AI-generated graphics (see the Magic Tea Shop short stories The Teashop At The Corner Of Worlds and The Teashop on the Longest Night). I’m slowly learning. Here are my two fashion recreation pieces for June! They are from Magasin des Modes Nouvelles in 1787, which I found in the Gallica collections and translated.
The gown is made of striped taffeta, with narrow stripes of green, white, and violet. It is lined with the same fabric. The sleeves, made in the “sabot” style, are trimmed with cutwork cuffs of fine cambric linen.
Beneath the gown is a petticoat of rose-colored taffeta shot with white, together with a bodice of the same fabric. The bodice is laced with broad green silk cords threaded through long, polished steel buckles attached at the sides. Around her neck she wears a large plain fichu, crossed in front and fastened behind at the waist.
She wears an apple-green felt hat, painted dark pink underneath. Beneath the hat is a white gauze “cornette d’Amour.”
Her hair is dressed in many small curls, with two large curls falling on either side of her bosom, while the hair behind hangs loose in the style known as “à la Conseillère.”
On her hands are white kid gloves.
On her feet are pink taffeta shoes trimmed with green ribbon.
The coat worn by the young gentleman depicted in Plate I is made of dark green-black cloth. It is lined with silk of the same color, edged with pink piping, and adorned with large gilt buttons engraved with the capital letters of the alphabet.
Beneath this coat are breeches of canary-yellow gabardine, with seams stitched in sky blue. They are fastened below the knee with the breeches’ garter, which is somewhat long and ends in a tassel of blue silk.
A moiré waistcoat with broad yellow and pink stripes, its pockets cut very high.
Stockings with broad blue and pink stripes.
His shoes are fitted with buckles of a very broad oval shape.
The young gentleman’s hair is dressed in five curls, three below and two above, arranged in a broad square Greek pattern. His hair is tied behind in a queue.
His shirt is trimmed with cuffs and a cambric jabot. The jabot is pleated from top to bottom, as are the cuffs.
In one pocket, he carries a watch suspended from a simple black English leather cord, from which a seal key hangs. In the other, he carries either a portrait or a regulator, also known as a compass-watch, from which a gold chain adorned with gold charms hangs.
Here is a mockup I created for the project. You can see the alphabet buttons on this version and a more accurate hat. I really struggled with the hat during the AI generation. I ultimately had to go with what the AI video rendered. But I think the hat might have looked more like this one at LACMA. While researching breeches, I found these, which are almost an exact match minus the blue tassels.
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