If your boss is Colonial Williamsburg, chances are you can’t just go to the Premium Outlets to buy work clothes.
From buckles to buttons, the clothing worn by Colonial Williamsburg’s interpreters, who are reenactors of 18th century colonial life in the historic area, is researched and hand-selected by a team of costume designers.
“You can look at a portrait of someone from the 18th century all day long, but only when you can see the clothing and the fabric brought to life will the full picture come together,” said Brenda Rosseau, manager of the Colonial Williamsburg Costume Design Center.
Hostesses in historic Williamsburg wore costumes for a 1934 visit by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, at the dedication of Duke of Gloucester Street, according to Colonial Williamsburg’s website.
Costuming now includes roughly 18 employees who research, build and maintain costumes for approximately 700 colonial interpreters in 1,100 positions, according to Rosseau.
That’s a lot of silk
The department has an inventory of approximately 59,000 articles of clothing, and each costume costs about $3,200-$4,000 to make, according to Rosseau.
Joe Straw, a spokesperson, for Colonial Williamsburg, declined to confirm the cost of the costumes. Instead he provided the following statement by email:
“Costumed interpretation is fundamental to Colonial Williamsburg’s mission of educating and inspiring guests by immersing them in the stories of America’s founding era,” he said. “Like other aspects of the Foundation’s work, our interpreters’ authentic costuming is possible thanks to generous donor support and reflects original research and world-leading tradecraft. That work is conducted by the Costume Design Center along with members of the Historic Trades staff, our Collections team and their colleagues. The Foundation has crafted costumes since 1934, and its inventory comprises items dating back more than eight decades to the early years of public interpretation. As with the Colonial Williamsburg’s collections, the Foundation does not address specific values assigned to costume items.”
In June 2017, amid financial shortfalls and debt, Colonial Williamsburg outsourced commercial ventures, including golf operations and facilities management, and laid off about 70 employees. At the time, CW President Mitchell Reiss said that in 2014, the foundation lost a total of $62 million, or $176,000 every day.
Solving the mystery of what they wore
Costuming begins with evidence. For certain costumes, this can be difficult, Rosseau said.
“To properly make these garments, you have to have an understanding of the people who were wearing them and how they were used,” Rosseau said. “And that’s hard because usually only the precious antiques survive.”
Ideally, to build an accurate reproduction, costumers need an image from the time period, documentation of the outfit and an antique, from which a pattern can be made.
Rarely are all three available, though, and for Rosseau that’s when the hunt begins.
“Doing research is like solving a mystery,” Rosseau said. “You’re mining in a certain period or location and it’s like following the clues until you can put together a product.”
For well-documented attire, such as clothing for Thomas Jefferson or George Washington, research can be fairly easy. But for clothing worn by the large population of African-descendant slaves, there’s little historical evidence about what they wore, aside from what was mentioned in runaway ads, according to Rosseau.
“We are now in a world where clothing is a disposable commodity,” Rosseau said. “Back then, if something was ripped or needed fixing, it would be stitched. Even clothing for the president.”
One of Rosseau’s favorite projects was a formal suit for Lord Dunmore, who became Virginia’s last royal governor in 1770, according to Colonial Williamsburg’s website. The team’s research began with seeing the original suit, taking notes on the entire outfit, and then taking closer notes and photos of details, such as the embroidery, said Rosseau.
To recreate a replica of the suit, costumers had to decide which fabric to use because the original blue, hand-stitched velvet would have tripled the cost, according to Rosseau. Instead, the team used yellow silk and sent the embroidery to London to be digitized. The actual stitching was done in Pakistan, which Rosseau said was the least expensive part of the project, and shipped back to Williamsburg, to incorporate into the final product.
“When you see an outfit you worked on come alive in the historic area,” Rosseau said. “Well, there’s nothing like it.”
WYD archives were used in this story.
Correction: In a photo caption, this story as published originally misspelled Rosseau’s first name. It is Brenda, not Benda.
