My Schiaparelli Bow Knot Sweater

It's been a rough few months (year? year plus?) for me for sewing. But I've been doing a lot of vintage knitting! Occasionally, I will even finish a project. And here is project I'm pretty crazy proud of - a reproduction of a designer 1920s sweater. And because this post ended up being so long, here's a quick picture in case you don't make it any further.

Taken outside Longfellow House, during a break in a tweed ride. Check out that sweater!!!

Elsa Schiaparelli was a fashion designer in the 1920s-1950s. She was a rival of Coco Chanel, and a protege of Paul Poiret. You may have seen her weird shoe hats, or crazy hand motifs.

These are both from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

But it was her trompe l'oeil sweater designs that launched her successful career in 1927, and this sweater in particular is the one that started it all.

The V&A owns this one, and the Philadelphia Museum of art has one too, but they can keep them! I made my own!

Here it is in Vogue!

So what was revolutionary about this sweater? First of all, there's the really cool, slightly surrealist, optical illusion of the bow and collar on the sweater. Apparently Schiaparelli wore it to a society luncheon and immediately started getting orders for more (according to the V&A write-up). It is also constructed in an interesting way - made with a technique called Armenian knitting. If you don't knit, there are a few ways of incorporating more than one color into knitting. I give you permission to skip this paragraph if you don't want the explination, though. One method is called intarsia, where you switch from one yarn to another. You can make blocks of color, but you have to keep a lot of threads going, and you get a finished product that's one thickness all around. Another technique is fair isle, where you carry the yarn you aren't using along behind the one that shows, so you can switch back and forth between the two colors frequently. This gives you an extra thick fabric and intricate looking patterns, but you can't make big swaths of a single color or you end up with long "floats" of the disused color on the inside, which will snag and ruin your tension. Armenian knitting is like fair isle, where you carry the yarn that isn't showing across the back of the work, but every third stitch you catch it in the stitch you make with the active color. This allows you to make longer patches of one color, more like you'd traditionally use intarsia to accomplish, but you get an extra thick fabric with a great tweedy, heathered effect as the non-active yarn peeks through ever so slightly. Check out the inside of the neck, which you can see in the picture of the sweater lying flat. That area of the sweater is white on the good side, so the black thread is showing on the inside, but it is caught by the white every few stitches. Armenian knitting!

The story goes that Schiaparelli saw an Armenian woman walking down the street in a sweater that had a "steady look," which came from the extra thickness and stability of this technique. If you imagine the 1920s, sweaters were a sporty and newly popular item for women's wear, but apparently they had a problem holding their shape. The combination of this special knitting technique and Schiaparelli's snazzy trompe l'oeil bow made this sweater unlike anything else that was available. It is an iconic 1920s fashion revolution. (https://www.philamuseum.org/doc_downloads/education/ex_resources/schiaparelli.pdf)

And now that you understand the importance of this sweater, here is mine!

LOOK AT THAT BOW

Fake sailor collar! Nice.

Honesty time. This sweater is not 100% finished. I wore this to a tweed ride, and I was running late. The sleeves are just basted in (and my sleeves turned out a little too long, and rather than re-knit them I just decided to set them in extra high to get rid of the excess, but I really need to do it carefully and well when I have more time). Also I didn't block it at all, which will probably help with the way the bottom edge flips up. It has a couple rows of crochet to edge it, or the Armenian stockinette would just roll up, but blocking will help finish the job. BUT I WORE IT SO I WIN. Some day I will finish it and wear it again, and then I can take more pictures! But you get the idea.

So, what do you think? And do you want your own? Good news - you can do it!

If you can knit, this is the pattern I used:
http://reelknitting.typepad.com/index/2009/06/free-pattern-the-schiaparelli-bowknot-sweater.html
Have at it. The good news is that the chart is fantastic, and I'm really pleased with how the bow looks. This is not just a Schiaparelli-like sweater, this is recognizable as a reproduction. A copy. Unquestionably 1920s. The bad news is that it's only for a 34 inch bust, which I am not, and it calls for expensive yarn that I didn't want to source from the UK. For my sweater, I compromised and used the chart, but ignored the instructions. I wanted to use real wool (rather than acrylic or something), because I thought it might matter in terms of how the front and back threads interact, because wool is less slippery. Also there's something legitimate about using real wool. That doesn't mean I used expensive wool, though - just cheap Patons from Michaels. I tried to find more serious yarn, but had trouble finding anything in an appropriate gauge, in both black and white, that wouldn't cost well over $100 to finish the sweater. And in the end, I used a lot - I wish I'd kept track, but I think I needed 6 skeins of black and 5 of white? This is a HEAVY sweater. It's big (in what I hope is a shapeless hanging 1920s way), and it's heavy (in a 2 layers thick, wear this sweater on cold days and skip the coat way).

In terms of process, I started by knitting a healthy swatch for gauge (a few times on different sizes of needles - I ended up using a size 8), then did the math to make sure it would go around my bust. Since I wanted a 1920s, sort of shapeless and straight looking sweater (if it weren't for the 1920s I'd rather have something more fitted and curvy) I aimed big. I used worsted weight yarn, even though the pattern definitely called for something finer. I'm sure the originals were made with something finer, but I also think that they were made with many more stitches per inch. So I don't recommend doing that unless you want to re-graph the whole pattern to make it human sized again. That's more work than I wanted to do. The Armenian knitting technique grew on me, and it was important to me to try it because it is such a critical part of what makes this sweater special in its historical context. But it was kind of a pain, and if you know intarsia I wouldn't fault you for using the chart to do that instead.

Besides, if I were going to do the work of charting a design, I'd make this one. Because it is my favorite! Isn't it gorgeous? Oh, I hope I make it someday...

The Met also owns this one. But if they ever get tired of it I could take it off their hands...

If you don't knit (and don't want to learn on this project, which would probably be wise), you can check out this tutorial for a faux Schiaparelli sweater. It's just a matter of stenciling and painting a bow onto an existing sweater, so no knitting is required!
http://www.rookiemag.com/2012/09/how-to-fake-your-own-schiaparelli-sweater/

Or if you're not feeling crafty at all, shop carefully and you just might find a perfect sweater anyway. This is an iconic sweater from fashion history, and it still inspires designers today. I keep seeing this one, by J Crew, turn up on ebay!

And this is one of my favorite things about this sweater. It might be a little odd if you make one and we happen show up to the same event in them, sure, but this was an early piece of semi-mass-produced clothing. There are original Worth dresses in museums that I'd kill to wear and love to copy exactly, but I'd always feel a little odd wearing them, because they were one of a kind and mine isn't the one. Don't get me wrong, if you make exact copies of museum-owned dresses that's super cool. But if I lived in the 1920s, I could (maybe sorta if I was lucky) have bought one of Elsa Schiaparelli's sweaters. There wasn't one sweater for a fashion show or a particular rich client, there were dozens made to sell. So making my own now and wearing it to 1920s events just feels right to me, somehow. If I can stand the heat, anyway, because it turned out to be so warm!

Tweed Ramble

I went on a tweed ramble. Which is like a tweed ride, but without bicycles. Which is an excuse for people to look snazzy and sporty and (possibly) wear tweed (if you haven't heard of tweed rides, they are a thing). I took the opportunity to channel cute 1920s ladies who wear pants and dress like unconvincing boys. PANTS. I never wear them (even in modern, everyday life) so don't get used to this.

Apparently when I wear pants, I run around climbing rocks, posing like Captain Morgan, and yelling "Look at me, I'm so rugged! Rugged I say!"

Or I lean against fences, feeling autumnal and casual. I'm in the sunshine in this picture, but the day ended up being colder than I'd expected. Luckily my good friends from The Quince and Quail lent me a spare jacket from their car! https://www.facebook.com/TheQuinceAndQuail/

Have you noticed yet how much I love taking pictures in trees when I'm all dressed up? This was a perfect tree, too!

True friends will climb trees with you.

THE BEST TREE EVER. I was a little afraid to get down, though. My shoes were really slippery on the bark.

Hanging out in a cemetery. Oh yeah.

 

 

 

 

Just chillin. We were trying to capture the feeling of the picture that was the cover for the facebook event.

The picture from the cover of the event page. Do you think we have the spirit down?

Ladies dressed sort of like boys! Or at least, wearing sporty knickers. This awesome 1926 picture is just what I'm talking about... http://www.vintag.es/2015/03/womens-street-fashion-of-1920s.html

 

 

 

 

Casual Picnic

More old pictures... we had a nice casual picnic and I brought out a new parasol. I like the blue flowers on white fabric. I also threw on a cream 1920s dress that I wear a lot (the one from TJ Maxx, isn't that insane?) and the sunglasses that I got to go with my knitted bathing suit. Plus a scarf in the hair, which I hope still looks 1920s and doesn't fling me into more modern territory...

Nice casual picnic. I made bread and nothing else... good planning

This duck had NO fear. But it also came to no harm, so I guess it will never learn. We named her Esme.

We really did play Mah Jong. I've figured it out! Enough for us to play, anyway.

The outfit

Oh man, I love the Boston Public Gardens. Best place ever for casual picnicking

Nahant 2015

I'm realizing I have old pictures I never put up. These are a couple from Nahant... I don't have a lot of pictures of that, but Julia and I did awesome matching hair and blue and white outfits.

Knitted Bathing Suit

About a year ago, I started knitting a 1920s bathing suit. There have been ever so many summery 1920s events popping up, I was on a run of good knitting projects, and I was feeling crazy. Then I never actually got a chance to wear it, so I never was inspired to do the tedious finishing work of weaving in ends. But FINALLY, I have worn the suit. Into the ocean, no less. Check it out!

FINALLY! There it is... and yes, I had to find an orange parasol to go with it. Also be sure to check out my rolled stockings (subtle, but such a 1920s thing), silly sunglasses, and matching knitted diagonal stripe headband.

The pattern comes from a collection called "A Stitch in Time" by Susan Crawford, which is full of fun patterns that date to the early 20th century, with updated instructions and inspiring glossy pictures. In fact, I loved the look of this bathing suit in orange and cream so much in the book that I used the same color scheme myself.

For yarn, I used Patons Grace (I think the colors were fiesta and natural?). This is a 100% cotton yarn, as suggested by the pattern. It was gorgeous and easy to work with, but at some point I had a realization - cotton yarn usually gets sold so that people can make dishclothes. So fundamentally, I decided to wear a giant homemade dishcloth into the sea? Awesome plan. As soon as I hit the ocean, it absorbed a lot of water and got quite heavy. After wearing it for a little while it was definitely sagging. I was wearing a modern swimsuit underneath for support (in the final analysis the suit was a little too big on me, even dry, and I had decided against the arguably more historically accurate "floppy boob" look). This turned out to be lucky, or things could have gotten VERY racy. If you really bother to look up the pattern, you'll realize that it's worn backwards from the original knitting instructions (which were for a high fronted,v-backed, technically 1930s suit), but like the author/photographer/someone for the modern pattern book I agreed that it looked better with the v in the front. And since I was wearing it for 20s instead of 30s anyway, the low-back look wasn't the look I was going for. But yes - I couldn't have pulled this off without some kind of foundation to prevent wardrobe malfunctions.

With that all said, it totally worked. You can wear a hand-knit cotton bathing suit into the water. I even did a pretty great job floating in the super-salty water (I can't actually swim...). It's a weird experience, and it takes FOREVER to dry when you're done (think days, not hours), but it works. I wonder how the experience would differ if I'd used wool yarn? But that's a project for another day.

A Collection of 1920s Outfits

Ok. I haven't written in a while. For what it's worth, I never stopped doing fun things - I just got unforgivably lazy about tracking down pictures of them. A lot's been going on. But I just came back from a 1920s event where I changed clothes every few hours, and that seemed worth documenting. Oh yes.

I missed getting crappy cell phone pictures (you're welcome for that, by the way) of a couple outfits - namely my dancing dress, bathing suit, and lazy kimono outfit. Maybe if I get pictures of those from someone else I can add them. I've never loved 1920s clothing as much as other time periods (oh, how I love defined waists...), but it's been growing on me recently. It can be devastatingly simple but still neat, and good accessories make such a difference.

Boat dress! I made this for the lawn party at the Crane Estate at some point.

Tea dress, with terrifying Mary Pickford curls (which are wonderfully fake!). Yes, that's totally tea in my glass. You can't really see the details of the dress - it was a lucky random find in TJ Maxx of all places, but it's PERFECTLY 20s. Like... gauzy white with a long front panel of white-on-white embroidery, and a dropped waist with a slightly gathered skirt. The shopping gods were with me that day.

Dinner dress, which I used to wear for performing years ago (Mother made it when I was a teenager), and which my sister has worn sometimes recently. But I spiffed it up with new accessories (check out those bright shiny gold character shoes!)

And here's the shocking blonde wig. Are you shocked? What do you think of me being blonde? I'm currently deeply in love with this tiara, with its pretty emerald cut green stones and gold deco-ish frame.

 

 

 

Pajamas! And a reproduction teddy bear.