Pulling myself up by my bootlaces - Regency edition

Those of you who follow my costuming adventures know how much I love American Duchess boots and shoes.  I didn't know about the company right when it started in 2011, because I hadn't yet begun doing historical costuming in earnest at that point, but I did start building my historic footwear collection in 2014 with a pair of Nankeens, which were their answer to the ubiquitous hard-wearing cotton boots you often see in fashion plates of walking ensembles from the early 1800s.  I followed that up with a pair of Highburys, a dyeable white sateen flat Regency slipper, and shortly after that, I bought a pair of Virginias, a slashed brown leather Elizabethan sandal type shoe (we were still going to Renaissance Faires just about every year at this point).  Sadly all of these styles have been long discontinued, but I still have them all, and look back fondly as the purchases I made to begin really filling out my historical wardrobe from head to toe.

Before I began to focus on making clothes from the 18th century for my Abigail Adams impression, it's safe to say that, other than vaguely historically accurate Renaissance Faire outfits, the costuming era I was most inspired by was the Regency.  I read every piece of literature by and about Jane Austen that I could possibly get my hands on, and I was becoming more and more confident in my sewing abilities beyond making up a Simplicity pattern, so it was only natural that I should be drawn to the gowns, the balls, the teas, and the camaraderie offered by local Jane Austen Society of North America chapters.  As my interest in creating a Regency wardrobe grew, and as American Duchess began expanding and improving and broadening their offerings, I basically lost all self-control and just kept building up my collection, until it had reached epic proportions:

That's ten pairs of shoes, just for the 1600s through the early 1800s.  Granted, the well-worn black wool buckled Dunmores for the 1770s (center front row) have definitely done their time, which is why there's a replacement pair next to them.  I LOVE these shoes, so I made sure to buy a second pair before they were discontinued, so those kind of don't count.  Right?  

ANYWAY.

The Nankeens and their brown leather cousins, the Hartfields (pictured right behind my trusty Dunmores in the photo above) are absolutely beautiful boots, comfortable, very flattering on the foot, and super duper close to period examples.  Some of the below images are shoes that American Duchess used as inspiration, others I found just by doing a Google search.

© Virginia Review

© Museum of London

© Victoria & Albert Museum

Apparently, having two pairs of Regency boots wasn't enough for me.  When American Duchess came out with the Emmas and Mansfields, I was absolutely, positively smitten.  

Here are the Emma half-boots, which I got in red (photo from American Duchess blog):

Here are the black Mansfields (photo from the American Duchess blog):

And the green Mansfields (photo from the American Duchess Facebook page):

Can you see why I was smitten??  They're just so beautiful - plus, they fill a niche in costuming that you can't find anywhere else, and they add a lot of versatility to outfits.  And yes, I got both the black and green Mansfields.

As I've mentioned in a recent post on Instagram, and in this video I did with Rebecca Olds of Timesmith Dressmaking for CoCoVid, my modern life is basically all purple, but in my historical sewing, red and green feature pretty heavily.  So, these boots go with a lot of what I already have.  Not that people in the 18th and 19th centuries were terribly concerned about everything matching - fashion plates tend to show people piling on the accessories with very little attention paid to whether or not the shoes match the shawl, or the gloves match the parasol, or whatever.  So having footwear in lots of colors allows for some freedom in just going wildly off-the-charts with wacky combinations!

One thing that I noticed about the Emmas and Mansfields, in contrast to the Highburys and Nankeens, was that they came with flat shoelaces rather than cord shoelaces.  Now, some extant shoes in museums have narrow ribbons or cords as shoelaces, and some have flat shoelaces, but it's really kind of impossible to know whether any of them are actually original to the shoes.  Museums often receive shoes without any kind of lace or tie, so they have to improvise.  And you'd have to squint really hard at the teeny tiny shoes on fashion plates and portraits to figure how people actually tied up their shoes!  When manufacturing historical footwear based on historical styles, American Duchess sometimes just has to use what's available rather than being able to go for strict accuracy.  By the way, I am by no means implying that I know more about historical footwear than a company that's been doing this for almost 10 years!  In fact, I checked with Lauren Stowell to let her know that I wanted to write a blog post about this process, but I was worried that she might think I was being critical of their design process. She said that she loves it when people personalize American Duchess shoes, because there's only so much you can do when they are produced in large quantities in a factory.  So just in case anyone was wondering, this post has her blessing!

For my personal aesthetic, I tend to prefer the look of cord-style shoelaces for historical boots, both because you do often see them on museum extants, and because on my feet, which are pretty big (size 8) for my 5'3" frame, narrower cord shoelaces help give the shoe a little bit of a smaller profile.  So, I went ahead and bought waxed cotton cord from Renaissance Fabrics and these really pretty pointed aglets (shoelace tips) from a seller on Etsy called Lua Media.  There's a whole saga about the aglets (nothing to do with the Etsy seller, they were lovely!! - just me being my usual scatterbrained self) but suffice it to say that once I got them, laced the shoes up with the cords and crimped the aglets onto the laces, I was really happy with them!  They definitely make a difference in the overall appearance of the shoes, and it just so happened that the green and red cord ended up being pretty close matches to the shoes themselves!

Here are the Emmas, with the shoelace that came with the shoe on my right foot (which is on the left side of the picture!) and my cord lace with the aglets on the other foot.

Here are the green Mansfields, same configuration.And here are the black Mansfields, same configuration.

 

So that's my long and involved deep dive into the process of personalizing my American Duchess boots with cord shoelaces that I made!  I hope this was enjoyable to read, and if you've been inspired to do any sort of personalizing with your shoes, I'd love to hear about it!