The Tissot Dress: Day Dress Version

I have loved the pink dress in Too Early by James Tissot for years and have always wanted to make it. This dress of course also appears in many of Tissot's other paintings as well. This past autumn I made a huge step towards my goal and made a day dress version. I also have plans to make an evening bodice so I can recreate the painting exactly.

Making this dress was an enormous undertaking, and involved hand pleating over 80 yards of fabric. Click here to read all about the making of!

My initial inspiration is of course the painting in which the pink dress features the most prominently, Too Early.

James Tissot. Too Early. 1873. Oil on canvas. London: Guildhall Art Gallery.

For the day bodice I took some inspiration from The Ball on Shipboard. You can see it on the woman ascending the stairs in the lower right corner. However, I don't like the exact design of the day bodice in that painting so I took at as inspiration only and then went my own way with it.

Detail of The Ball on Shipboard by James Tissot. 1874. Oil on canvas. London: Tate Gallery.

And here is my own version!

The Tissot Dress: The Making Of

or, How Katy Lost Her Mind And Decided To Hand Pleat Over 80 Yards Of Fabric

I have loved the pink dress in Too Early by James Tissot for years and have always wanted to make it. This dress of course appears in many of Tissot's other paintings as well. This past autumn I made a huge step towards my goal and made a day dress version. It was a huge undertaking and I'm still amazed I managed to pull it off. This is actually the first Victorian dress I've ever made. It's so nice to start simple (har har)! As of now I only have a day bodice, but I also have plans to make an evening bodice so I can recreate the painting exactly. Click here to see the finished day dress!

My initial inspiration is of course the painting in which the pink dress features the most prominently, Too Early.

James Tissot. Too Early. 1873. Oil on canvas. London: Guildhall Art Gallery.

I made the dress out of a lovely pink sheer cotton lawn. The color of the fabric is a bit more intense than in the original painting but I liked the brightness of it. The dress was machine sewn because it's from the 1870s and they had sewing machines then, and because there was so much fabric that had I tried to hand sew everything it would have taken the rest of my life.

The main decoration on the skirt is the ruffles. While it would have been so much easier to gather the ruffles, I had my heart set on pleating them. I used a Perfect Pleater because I really wanted 1/4" pleats. The other thing I had to consider was the sheer quality of my fabric. If I had used the full 3/8" return of the pleater, the fabric would have consistently doubled up on itself and merged into one solid color which I didn't like. I wanted some differentiation in the color once the fabric was pleated, if that makes sense. So I marked a 1/8" measurement on an old credit card and used that to mark how deep the return should be in each pleat. It made the process much more time consuming but I'm so happy with the result.

Note how the fabric doesn't completely overlap under each pleat and there's two shades of pink based on where the fabric is and is not doubled.