Early twentieth century lace cape

 

I saw this lovely lace cape in the Lace Gallery at Nottingham Castle. It dates from about 1900 and is made of silk gauze and machine-made lace, embellished with cords and soutache. Soutache is a narrow, flat, decorative silk braid which was often used to embellish dresses, mantles and smoking caps. It was also known as Russia braid and was sold in skeins in haberdashers for domestic embroidery projects.

Bold lace patterns, such as those made with Maltese lace or Irish crochet, were fashionable in 1900 and manufacturers made machine-made version in this style to compete with the handmade laces. However, a report from The Times newspaper in 1904 notes that the London store, Dickens and Jones, reported that their buyers were finding it difficult to source good quality handmade Maltese lace. This provided a gap in the market that the machine lace manufacturers were very happy to fill.

As you can see from this 1901 fashion plate, the S shaped figure was fashionable at the turn of the century. This was achieved by corsetry that pushed the bust forward, accentuated a tiny waist and pushed the bottom out. It resulted in a top heavy silhouette, so this cape would have covered the top half of the figure revealing the tiny waist and small hips below. The combination of lingerie materials and lace was also popular at this time for dresses, coats, hats and parasols, therefore this cape would have been the height of fashion.