I humbly request an image post of your top ten picks
Oh man, it’s hard to narrow it down that much, but here are 10 Really Good ones. I shall restrict myself to the ones that are squared off across the bottom, and only ones that are sewn up and more or less intact.
This one is made of satin with a net overlay, and if you zoom in you can see the net is made of teeny tiny little ribbons all hand knotted together. Wonderful! I’ve seen this kind of netting in a few dresses and purses, and some much finer lace netting used on waistcoats, but this is the only example I’ve seen of this kind of fairly large handmade net on menswear. The edges have a binding, which is a nice way to finish them off, and it’s got lovely little death’s head buttons. It doesn’t have pockets, which is very unusual for an 18th century waistcoat, but which I think was the right choice in this case.
Look at those appliqué velvet triangles! I love them!! All the dark bits are embroidery and tiny metal spangles, which have tarnished but would have originally been silver and very sparkly.
There are plenty of weirder embroidery designs from the era (I have a whole pinterest board for them) but I’m just so fascinated by the choice to put all these bizarre fish on here, along with a mixture of chenille seaweed and normal land flowers. It’s in pretty rough shape, but when it was new the colours would have been brighter, and there were more black lines and whiskers on the fish.
Lookit all the bugs!! There are multiple other bug embroidered waistcoats on the aforementioned pinterest board, but this one has an especially nice layout.
This one was posted in a facebook group, so all I know is that it was photographed at an exhibition in Bilbao, but I’m going to guess it’s also silk and 1780’s.
It’s just.. sublime. I love the tone on tone embroidery and the way the tree branches up to cover the whole thing in leaves, and the fringe around the edges. I’m not a huge fan of fringe in a lot of cases, but I think it works here. There’s also a monkey swinging from the tree, and it looks like there are some metal spangles on the trunk.
This one is printed to shape! It’s got all these funky little neoclassical designs which they engraved into a metal plate and then printed right onto the fabric!! It’s far from the only example, and some other waistcoats have similar little oval shaped printed scenes that are sewn on and mixed with embroidery.
Aesthetically this isn’t really one of my favourites, but you’ve got to admire it for the strips of green rabbit fur. It’s also got some tarnished silver spangles that would have originally been sparklier, and I love the contrasting velvet lapels.
Isn’t it awful? I love it! It looks like someone skinned Elmo and made him into a waistcoat. You sometimes see this kind of thick piled fabric woven from silk or wool, and sometimes it’s used for the outer fabric and sometimes for linings or facings. Most of the ones I’ve seen are more restrained than this.
At first glance you think “oh neat, ikat, I’ve not seen very many examples at all of ikat used in 18th century menswear” but no! If you look at the closeup you’ll see that instead of warp dyed threads, it’s actually embroidered to look like warp dyed threads! (The post about ikat I linked to has some technical difficulties that messed up the punctuation somehow, and some of the pictures won’t load, but it’s still a good post)
I can only assume that this was made because someone couldn’t afford the expensive imported fabric, and did their best to imitate it with what was more readily available.
Museo del Traje but I cannot get the damn source link to work and can’t find it on the website. It’s also probably silk and 1780’s-90’s.
I mentioned that some waistcoats have little appliqué bits with printed pictures on them, and this is one of those. I’ve seen very few examples of this weird lapel shape, and I can’t recall ever seeing another diagonal band like that. It’s strange to see such asymmetrically sized lapels, but somehow it works.
Ok, that’s 10! There are plenty more beautiful and interesting ones that I don’t have room for here, even without getting into earlier styles and ones on portraits and fashion plates (like that one triple breasted one).
I’ve got tons more on my extant 18th century waistcoats pinterest board, and if you want to see them sorted by more specific things like fringe or contrasting lapels I’ve got some sections for that on this board, and for pattern things like being woven to shape or having vertical stripes I’ve got more sections on this board. (Though the woven to shape section needs adding to, I only have a few late examples on it and that was waaayy more popular in earlier decades.)
