Antique Jacket Around 1900

I have recently started to acquire a few antique garments that I found on the Swiss bidding platform Ricardo, where I also found this beautiful antique jacket. I went for my usual aesthetic, black and white 🙂

Because these might be of interest for other costume enthusiasts, I decided to take pictures of all of these garments and show them to you in a new format on my blog, Instagram and maybe Youtube (I still have to decide about that).

Today, I would like to show you a black jacket in detail. The jacket is decorated with lace and pleats and it is an overall beautiful and well preserved piece. Let’s go

The Antique Jacket in it’s Full Glory

I have taken these photos on my floor, the jacket is a size 34 and it does not really fit my dressform.

And here you see it from the back. The decorative lace was only used for the collar itself, not the area around it.

And a closer look at the pleats at the back:

Lace Details

Let’s have a closer look at the lace:

You can find two types of lace at the collar and a third type at the cuffs:

And another closer look at the collar at the back:

Here you see, that the lace decoration in the front was not repeated in the back, only the itself collar is decorated. The lace was handstitched onto the jacket.

The Sleeves Inside and Outside

Here you see how the cuffs were finished as well as the stitches, that secure the lace, done by hand.

The Jacket is flat lined, the raw edges were finished with whipstitches, done by hand.

At the top of the sleeves, we find two little loops:

If you have an idea as to what these loops could be for, let me know. I can only think of them being useful to secure it on a hanger…? No idea.

The outer fabric is gathered at the top:

The Insides

Seam allowances have been finished with whipstitches to prevent the fabric from fraying but it is not stitched down to the lining:

There are no tags anywhere, maybe it was a homemade piece?

There is a hook to hook your skirt to the jacket at the back as well as ribbon to secure the jacket around your waist:

Boning?

There is no boning in this particular jacket which could be another indicator for a homemade piece?

Closures

On to the closures. The jacket comes with the original hooks and eyes I believe, firstly, because they’re pretty rusty, secondly because I cannot find a trace of other thread or wholes anywhere:

Here you can see that the lace was hand stitched onto the jacket:

Several hooks at a time were attatched using the same strand of thread, something I never did before because my brain doesn’t think of easy methods to save time like this one:

There’s also a strip of sturdy ribbon to strengthen the jacket where it closes and you can also see that it is not completely handstitched in this shot. The big part was done by machine, it was just finished by hand.

And lastly a better shot of the eyes that were also sewn on by hand.

And that’s it for today’s post. I hope you enjoyed seeing some details of my antique jacket, let me know, if you like the format. Thanks for reading and I wish you a good one.

Love,
Ella