Patterning and Making a Victorian Waistcoat
This was a project I started almost 18 months ago.
Research
I began, as most of us do, with inspiration that drifted across my Pinterest feed. I had been looking for outfit inspiration with which to expand my vintage and antique wardrobe, and as I went down image rabbithole after image rabbithole, I kept coming back to the same style and era of clothing, in a thousand micro-permutations; the late 19th century waistcoat.
I personally love this type of waistcoat because it takes a lot of its stylistic cues from masculine fashion of the time, with double breasted lines of buttons, high necked lapels, and lots of earthy, neutral colour tones. Seen as daywear, and drawing on sporty styles seen in hunting regalia and even in the rising fashion of bicycle riding, waistcoats in the late Victorian era were a staple of wardrobes for men and women alike. Of course, the shape and cut of waistcoats has changed significantly in the intervening century; modern waistcoats, with their larger armscye, deeper v fronts, and mass-production resulting in minimal shaping, simply don't provide the silhouette I am looking for.
Since I am accursed with a profound, scrooge-like quality, I flatly refused to pay for a modern-produced but historically-accurate pattern that I would likely have to adjust and tailor to fit my body appropriately anyway. As such, I turned my eye to the significantly more difficult, time-consuming, and intimidating task of drafting my own historically accurate pattern. This, in turn, led me to several publically available, free-to-use resources, including: