{"title":"Antique","description":"\u003cp\u003eI still don't know exactly what draws me to something this old, a nightgown monogrammed by a hand I'll never know, a pinafore that's outlasted whoever wore it first by a century. Some of these needed more than mending, seams gone soft with age, and restoring them properly has become something closer to a practice than a task. Once a piece is ready, it goes out from Melbourne.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"the-white-hours-antique-cotton-lawn-nightgown-with-hemstitching","title":"The White Hours · Antique 1910s Monogrammed White Cotton Nightgown","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSturdy white cotton · crosshatch weave against the light · pale blue padded-satin monogram · crossed-band neckline with drawn-thread openwork · hand hemstitching · antique trousseau piece · 1910s–1920s · L 111cm flat · fits AU 10–14 · very good condition\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAt the chest, in pale blue, someone's initials: a hand-worked monogram crowned with a little spray of flowers. The letters are raised in padded satin stitch, each one first outlined and filled to lift it from the ground, a method borrowed straight from the trousseau linens of the period, where a woman's initials were the mark that a thing was hers and had been made ready for her. The neckline answers it: two hand-finished bands cross at the V and fall into points, edged with drawn-thread openwork, a small formality on a garment meant only for sleep.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eDrawn-thread work is exactly what it sounds like: threads are counted and withdrawn from the weave, and the ones that remain are gathered and knotted into open, latticed borders with a hemstitch, so the decoration is subtracted from the cloth rather than added to it. Hold the gown to the window and the ground weave declares itself too, a fine even crosshatch of warp and weft with the light caught in the grid of it. This is not a wisp of boudoir cotton but honest cloth with the body of good household linen, the kind chosen for a trousseau in the 1910s or 1920s, when a bride's linens were sewn, monogrammed and counted before they were ever slept in. It was bought to be worn nightly, boiled on washday, wrung, line-dried and worn again for years, and that thrift and good judgement is precisely why the gown is still here, sturdy long past its century.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44149778186374,"sku":null,"price":240.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3214.jpg?v=1783581952"},{"product_id":"petal-hour-handmade-1910s-20s-pintucked-cotton-lawn-baby-gown","title":"Petal Hour · Handmade 1910s-20s Pintucked Cotton Lawn Baby Gown","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eCotton lawn · pintucked yoke · hand-worked dot embroidery · scalloped sleeve edges · handmade, no label · 1910s-20s · 43cm length flat · fits newborn to six months · good to very good\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLift this gown and it barely registers, the kind of featherweight that only very fine, very old cotton achieves. Tiny raised dots scatter across the yoke, each one worked by a needle rather than printed, close enough together that the fabric seems to hold its own small weather.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThere is no label, no tag, nothing stitched in to name a maker, and that absence is its own kind of evidence. Infant wear of this calibre in the 1910s and 1920s was rarely bought ready made; it was sewn at home or by a local seamstress, one gown at a time, for one particular baby. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe fabric itself is a version of what dressmakers called dotted Swiss, a sheer cotton first woven by hand in St Gallen in the eighteenth century and, by the early twentieth, a favourite for christening and day gowns in exactly this kind of soft pastel. The loose A-line body, gathered rather than fitted, sits comfortably in that same window, echoing the drop-waisted ease that was moving through women's and children's dress alike in these years. She is a gown of the 1910s-20s, made by a hand that is now anonymous, for a baby who is more anonymous still.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLook closely at the front and four rows of pintucks flank a placket of small glass buttons, all original, all still working. The sleeves end in a narrow scalloped edge, picot-like, sewn by hand rather than pinked by machine. The hem is turned with a slim rolled finish rather than bound, and along one side, above the fold near the hem, a small patch of lawn has been mended, a repair, done with care rather than urgency. The neckline, gathered onto what was once a finished edge, has softened and frayed a little with the decades, the raw thread now part of the gown's surface rather than a flaw hiding beneath it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44164586274950,"sku":null,"price":130.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3431_copy.jpg?v=1784190125"},{"product_id":"french-lot-1900s-1910s-hand-crocheted-lace-eyelet-pinafore-apron","title":"French Maid · Antique 1900s-1920s Hand-Crocheted Lace Eyelet Pinafore Apron","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eCotton eyelet · hand-crocheted lace trim · pointed bib front, pinned at the bust · gathered waist and skirt · unsigned, from a French lot · 1900s-1920s · 77cm total length · 45cm skirt width · faint age discolouration only\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHold the bib to the light and every eyelet reads as a small, tidy flower, machine-embroidered with the even, repeating precision that only came with commercial broderie anglaise cotton. The lace edging it is a different hand entirely, looping and doubling back on itself in a single unbroken thread, the unmistakable rhythm of a crochet hook.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis one came to the archive inside a French lot gathered in the 1980s, already old by then, its own making decades earlier than its collecting. The style, a pointed bib pinned rather than buttoned at the bust, with a gathered skirt tied behind, belongs to the turn-of-the-century pinafore worn over a dress for household work, the machine-made broderie anglaise cotton dressed up afterward with a hand-crocheted edge. That combination, ready-made yardage finished by hand, sits comfortably in the 1900s-1920s, when commercial eyelet cotton was common but a hand-worked trim was still how a plain apron became someone's good one.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLook for what is missing as much as what is there: no neck strap, no button at the bib, just a bare point meant to be pinned directly to the dress at the bust, the ordinary fastening for pinafores of this age before safety pins gave way to snaps. The waist gathers into a 45cm skirt below a plain 26cm-wide bib, and the tie at each side runs a generous 61cm, long enough to cross and knot behind over whatever dress sat beneath it.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44175480586374,"sku":null,"price":145.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3646_c8d3755f-7e47-4475-969f-d1940cd6a226.jpg?v=1784616716"},{"product_id":"five-hands-antique-edwardian-french-broderie-anglaise-corset-cover","title":"Five Hands · Antique Edwardian French Broderie Anglaise Corset Cover","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eCotton with broderie anglaise eyelet and lace trim · five mismatched buttons · French seams throughout · Edwardian, French 1900s-1910s · 38cm strap to hem, 51cm bust buttoned · hand-restored\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNo two buttons on her agree with each other. One is mother-of-pearl, one a small disc of ceramic, two are covered in cloth, and the last is carved with a fluted, spoke-like pattern nobody in the archive has managed to name yet. Five hands, or five decades of mending, closing the same five holes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEvery interior seam is French seamed, the raw edge folded in and stitched twice so nothing inside her was ever left to fray, the kind of finishing a hand takes real time over. The lace panel at the bust is broderie anglaise, eyelet cut and buttonholed into hearts and drop shapes, edged in a scalloped trim that does not quite match the lace at the underarm, a small honest sign that this piece was made larger at some point from what began as a smaller garment. She belongs to a lot gathered in France in the 1980s, sitting untouched for decades before I began the slow work of bringing pieces like her back myself: soaking, whitening and restoring by hand, one at a time, my own ongoing project. The corset cover herself is Edwardian, cut and stitched decades before that. She arrived grey with age and has since been restored, by me, back to the white she was always meant to be.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eShe closes centre front with those five mismatched buttons, and gathers at the underbust into a fitted cuff rather than falling loose. The straps run 11cm from shoulder to garment, wide enough to sit flat rather than dig in, and the shoulders themselves remain sturdy with no strain to the seams. A rust-toned stain sits on the underbust cuff, pictured plainly rather than hidden, the one mark age left behind that restoration could not lift.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44180015382662,"sku":null,"price":250.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3949.jpg?v=1784780657"},{"product_id":"long-shadow-conchon-quinette-antique-french-dress-shirt","title":"Long Shadow · Conchon-Quinette Antique French Dress Shirt","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eSelf-stripe cotton bib, collar and cuffs, basketweave natté body · bib front · mother-of-pearl button cuffs · Conchon-Quinette, France · 1900s-1910s · 84cm front length, 101cm back · sturdy, unisex cut\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEach cuff now closes with a mother-of-pearl button rather than a cufflink, the old cufflink holes stitched fully shut, Edwardian buttons pulled from my own collection rather than bought to match, so the repair reads as considered rather than convenient.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe cloth is actually two: a fine self-striped cotton on the bib, collar and cuffs, the parts meant to be seen, set against a plainer basketweave natté cotton across the body and sleeves, sturdy enough to survive a century of wear without thinning. The label reads \u003cem\u003eVetements Natte, Conchon Quinette\u003c\/em\u003e, the name of a real French ready-to-wear house headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, with factories through Auvergne towns like Sainte-Florine and Brassac turning out clothing for men, women and children from catalogue order rather than bespoke fitting. This one is cut generously through the body in the era's typical unisex shirt shape, made sometime in the 1900s or 1910s. She belongs to a lot gathered in France in the 1980s, and restoring pieces from it by hand, one at a time, is a project of my own that I am still slowly working through. She arrived needing exactly that: a proper soak and whitening, both done by me.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe back drops dramatically longer than the front, 101cm against 84, a shirt-tail cut built for tucking rather than standing loose. A deep pleat runs down centre front, which is where the 66cm hem measurement gets its ease from rather than true width. Both side seams carry a visible repair where they meet the hem, small honest mends rather than hidden ones. The armholes are cut close at 21cm despite the generous body, which is why she wears best on a smaller modern frame even though the cut reads oversized: a good sleep shirt, or worn open over jeans.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"caitiedid","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44180035043462,"sku":null,"price":230.0,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0657\/5960\/8966\/files\/DSC_3976.jpg?v=1784781236"}],"url":"https:\/\/checkout.caitiedid.shop\/collections\/collections-antique.oembed","provider":"caitiedid","version":"1.0","type":"link"}