A ball gown fit for a pirate captain
How to show you are a pirate while being honoured by the Navy that hunts you in its spare time.
After the crew of the Sunset Dawn forbade their Captain to go to the Victory Ball in a denim mini skirt and t-shirt. They make Rose a ball gown fit for an unsubdued pirate captain.
General look
A white floor-length skirt topped with a blue uniform style jacket.
Jacket
The jacket is a waist-length type known as a double-breasted mess jacket. It is made of dark blue wool cloth and has long full-length sleeves. The collar is folded down and forms standard notched lapels. The front parts do not overlap. There are four buttons on each side vertically aligned, and the two front parts of the jacket are held close together with a small gap by two buttons connected by a small length of chain, located across the belly.
The jacket has gold cord piping around the edge of the sleeves, around the bottom edge going all around the lapels and collar. Also, the epaulettes are gold cord piped. The epaulettes are held closed by the same type of gold buttons and are further empty of any rank or insignia.
For contrast, and to hide the unavoidable rude sewing, the jacket is lined with red cloth on the inside. The lapels and collar are not red, as one might expect from a folded open design, but the same dark blue as the jacket.
On the lapels the jacket is decorated with an embroidered pirate insignia based on the Pirate flag of Rosalind Abigail Oak. The skull and sabre in gold wire superimposed over the red rose.
The piping forms a decorative pattern on the two front lower corners of the jacket, imitating the loops in the rank insignia on the cuffs. On the tips of the loops and on the intersection four brilliant-cut diamonds are placed.
Cuffs
Normally a Captain's rank would be represented by four parallel gold bands across the sleeves, sometimes topped with a star other times topped with a loop on the top band. On other occasions, the middle two bands cross over to form a diamond. For Rose, the crew decided on something different, because a pirate is not a normal captain, and they wanted her to show off some of their successes by adding more bling and flair.
Drawing inspiration from historical uniforms and something called the Austrian knot they folded all four lines into a loop like pattern, creating three lancet leaves, (left, right and up) all four bands have this pattern overlapping creating an intricate lacework. For the icing on the cake they fastened small brilliant-cut diamonds from their smuggling run to Sperrgebiet. The diamonds were placed on each centre crossing and each of the lancet leaf-shaped points, placing a total of sixteen diamonds on each sleeve.
Skirt
Michael didn't have much fabric choice designing the skirt, they only found two yards of tulle. So he took two cotton bed sheets as a base layer and topped the tulle over that. Both the underlayer and the tulle are pleated from the sides towards the back, the pleats facing backwards. The fabric is also cut to form a full circle skirt, giving it natural pleats in the front. The waist is simple and the skirt closes with a drawstring. The hem is straight and simply folded over for the inner layer, the tulle and cotton underskirt are cut straight off, ending just above the deck.
The waist will be hidden by a golden cummerbund so the finish doesn't quite matter. In the pleats a slit is hidden so Rose can reach her pistol she carries in a thigh holster under the skirt.
Shirt
The shirt came from Rose her own clothing locker, something she had leftover from her time as a Stewardess. It was a plain long-sleeved white cotton shirt, without any chest pockets, with simple small black buttons and a regular collar.
Neck decoration
During the Victory Ball Rose is awarded the rank of commander in the Order of the Netherlands Lion for her actions during the Battle at Klein Curaçao. Due to a mistake from the organizers of the Ball only a male version of this decoration is available. This consists of a Nassau blue ribbon with two orange lines, tied around the neck. From the ribbon hangs a gold and white medal in the shape of a Maltese cross.
Accessories
Sabre
Rose carries the sabre she inherited from Peter James Jacobson hanging from a black leather belt which is worn under the gold cummerbund. Just for the occasion she polished the brass parts of the sheath and touched up the leather with some shoe polish. The blade itself was sharp, clean and well-oiled as usual.
Decoration
On her jacket Rose gets to carry the second part of her Commander in the Order of the Netherlands Lion decoration, the design is the same as the medal on the neck ribbon, but slightly larger and is designed as a brooch. The brooch is pinned just above the waist on the left side jacket front.
Gloves
To give her outfit just that bit of an extra status look, Rose wears a pair of white cotton gloves. Which also nicely hides the four black and blue bruised fingers on her left hand. Which she got last week when her hand got struck by a hatch cover that slammed close when the Sunset Dawn rolled unexpectedly.
Hat or no hat
All other navy peoples will probably be wearing a headcover of some sorts with their uniform, but as the pirates do not have the resources on the ship to make such an item. Nor are they part of a navy obviously, they just want to show off their captain. Rose ties her long brown hair back, so that it is out of her face, with a simple black ribbon tied in a bow. On the ends of the ribbon, two more small diamonds are placed, just to catch that sparkle.
- "I don't think elves have pumps cap., and no, they don't exist in my size."
"Oh they go quit big Bosun." Said Rose with an evil grin.
"I wear the black sneakers."
- "Yes captain."
"Mam, could you lay off your sabre and jacket and pass again." The security guard asked.
Rose did as he asked and passed through the scanner again, it went off again.
"Mam, do you carry anything metal on you? Could you please take that off?"
-"I'm wearing a corset, do you want me to strip naked?"
"Uhm" The guard visibly uncomfortable. "No, you can pass, thank you, mam."
Later inside, Bobby asked: "Are you? Wearing a corset?"
-"Nope, but I did get my Стриж inside."
Acquiring fabrics
Three uniform jackets stolen from the magazine of the Parera Royal Netherlands Navy base gives more then enough dark blue cloth for Rose her jacket. In addition, the white cotton gloves come from this warehouse raid.
Unbeknownst to Rose three of her crew members had sneaked onto the navy base at night to find the jackets. She scolded them for it, because they were there as guests of the navy, and robbing the place was not in their best interest at the moment. They could've done that the last day and leave with a nice loot a.s.a.p.
The gold ribbon they find in a arts and craft store. And they pay for this one honestly.
The tulle they find in an overpriced posh fabrics boutique, where they have an argument with a very arrogant owner within seconds. They bought the tulle together with the red and gold cloth, but to balance things out they shoplift the red and gold string they use for the sewing and embroidery. And also the domed golden buttons which looked like the flower of a rose seen from above find their way out of the store via the pockets of the pirates without involving any payment.
Manufacturing
The design was in the hands of the boatswain Michael who grew up in his parent's clothing repair shop. After thinking up a plan of what he wanted he send some of the sailors ashore to find the desired fabrics. The blue cloth for the jacket became troublesome and with the help of the 1st mate Jan they planned a small robbery from the navy.
After taking the sizes, Michael plundered the chart collection of the second mate Marshmallow, he may have used some that were still valid but mostly they were expired, he used those to make patterns and then set the crew to work in cutting out the fabrics.
Most of the crew know how to sew, to repair the sails, or to close that rip in your shirt, or to put that button back on your pants that definitely did not pop off because of a gain in weight.
So there were needles and thread going about, but very soon they found out they hadn’t enough. So for the jacket, they had to be creative and they decided to split the rough sewing rope normally used to repair sails, and make tarpaulins. It took quite some trickery to get all the stitches to hide, but the end result was something they were proud of.
Jack looked utterly confused as the bosun pulled the cloth out of his hands.
Great start for the article! I really like what you have so far and how you’ve designed the outfit. The little details that shows that this is a pirate crew are great, and I like how the quotes give an insight into their group dynamic and what life on board is like :D " A white floor length skirt topped with a blue uniform style jacket." I like the idea, I think this fits well a navy captain/pirate. " the two front pieces are hold together with two buttons connected by a small lenght of chain." I'm not sure where this chain is located, would that be near the top of the jacket in the front? Though I'm sure a drawing of the outfit would clarify things. You have a few typos here and there but you can look at that once you're done with the writing. I like the insignia for the captain – you can also add a short explanation of why the crew thought the normal insignia was not good enough for their captain. " the tulle is cut straight off, ending just above the deck." Is it longer than the cotton under skirt? You didn't mention the length of that one. I really love the details that they use bedsheet to get the cloth necessary because they didn't have access to anything else :D And the pocket is A+ XD I like the other quotes too, with the corset, the shoes and the sewing :D – the one with the shoes should be reformatted slightly as you're missing some of the "-". Using the bold text and not bold text to differentiate spoken text is interesting. It helps make clear what's going on, though this looks strange and as if quotation marks are missing in the last quote.
Thank you :)
I've seen to the spelling errors, copying back and forth to MSWord, created more red wavy lines then I expected.
A drawing of the jacket, oof, yeah maybe. I've tried to clarify in the text. The chained buttons go across the belly.
Although I do have a tiny sketch of the full set sitting there in a corner.
I'm always struggling how to show spoken conversation. Do I use "" everywhere? and add, said by x, said by y, said by x all over. That looks odd to me, but that may be necessary as nobody else already heard this conversation a dozen times in his head before it's written down.
You liked the corset part? I'm really on the fence about it, hence the strike trough.
I think the corset part is funny and show the character. I wonder about there being metal detector if corset are a common undergarment in your world, but then there is no reason it has to be - and that would also justify the guard not realising she is not in fact wearing one, because according to all historical fashion specialist you can always tell when a woman is not wearing one because the clothes don't fall the same way. Ok for the way you've clarified about the chain. I personally chose to use the "" everywhere just for clarity even if it's not a proper novel - like you have in the corset extract. So that would give something like that: "Michael! I'm NOT going to wear pumps. Do you know how hard it is to walk on those? I'm not an elf, I'm a pirate!. Have you ever tried?" "I don't think elves have pumps cap., and no, they don't exist in my size." "Oh they go quit big Bosun." Rose gave him an evil grin. "I wear the black sneakers." "Yes captain."
Red Sunrise is set in our own real world, in the 'now' (although I don't want to hang a specific date on it) So corsets are not a common thing. And besides that under modern clothes they are easily hidden, if you want to. You may tell about how someone moves, if you know what to look for. Under historically accurate clothing designed to be worn with a corset, yes you can tell with/without.
Conclusion, corsets not common.
I think I'll put the "" everywhere for consistency and clarity.