75 Years of Costume Design

Brenda Rosseau: I think that clothing can be an amazing object to teach. The first costumes are during the colonial revival period are very, it’s not a realistic depiction. Though they were somewhat realistic, do you know, they gave ambience, they really weren’t used as items which teach.

The object really didn’t teach because they weren’t using accurate construction methods, they weren’t using the right foundation garments, and they were only sort of depicting that very sort of thin line of gentry as opposed to the other 95 percent that lived and worked here.

The road we’re heading down is a more diverse picture of Williamsburg in the 18th century. For instance, we have the Native American Initiative that we just finished working on.

It’s really fascinating. They’re all of materials that the English used, but the way they put them together is just so different. We’ve been doing quillwork, ribbonwork, beadwork – quillwork on the moccasins, beadwork on the moccasins, ribbonwork – just appliquéing ribbons to leggings and breechcloths. It’s fascinating.

We’ve been really, really fortunate in that a lot of those articles do survive in Canadian museums, primarily. So we have had access to a lot of images of the objects. We haven’t examined very many of them, but we have had access to the images.

So absolutely everything you see in that particular programming is based on an original object. Which you know, you really have to do. I think the most important thing about this kind of costuming as opposed to theatrical costuming is that you really do have a public trust. People come to you and they expect it to be correct. So that’s what we strive to do. We strive to make it correct.

© 2009 The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation