The Mysterious Pleats
For a long time, I've been interested in the 15th century Italian style. The doublet and hose are similar to contemporary styles in the rest of Europe. One of the distinctively Italian garments of the time is the giornea, a sideless tabard-like garment usually shown with rows of carefully arranged pleats. A good example is this fresco by Francesco del Cossa around 1480. There is some pictorial evidence of the pleats being held in place by tacking them to tapes at intervals down the length of the pleats. This was part of the technique I used in my reconstruction. Looking at the shape of the pleats where they attach to the yoke, they appear to be cartridge pleats. There is often no distinct seam line shown at the junction of the pleated section and the yoke, but I can see no physical way to build the garment with no seam at this point. Looking at the width of the pleats at the hem, the pleated section must be cut wider at the bottom than the top. I have tried constructing this section as a half circle with no pleats at all where it attaches to the yoke. While this creates a pleasing amount of fullness, the folds at the seam are not the right shape, and the pleats at the bottom are much larger than they should be. The pleats are also quite uncontrolled, and even when folds are marked and tacked to tapes, they refuse to behave properly. In my most recent version, I have greatly reduced the flare of this section, with the bottom edge being only twice the length of the top. Another major problem is how to control the pleats along their length. If you simply pleat the fabric onto the bottom edge of the yoke and attempt to control the pleats with tapes, they will tend to wander between tapes, folding as they will according to the grain of the fabric. While there are some examples of giorneas that seem to simply be composed of perfectly falling folds, those in the fresco above and many other contemporary images are shown as packed rows of round pleats, with a sharp line between each fold. To recreate this look, I decided to sew along the valley of each pleat, creating a series of pinch pleats or organ pleats. To further augment the roundness of the pleats, I padded the entire garment with about 1/4" of quilt batting. Here are some pictures. The camera and lighting aren't the best, so please excuse the quality. A cross section of a test section, showing the shape of the pleats and the padding between the layers Cartridge pleats at the yoke The inside of the front of the giornea, showing the tapes holding the pleats in place Front view Side view Back view While some giorneas are shown belted in the front and not in the back, I'm not happy with the way the back of this one hangs when unbelted. I may make one in the future with a pleated front and unpleated back that is meant to be left unbelted.
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