Dido A Stitch in Time

Clothes are the ultimate form of visual communication.

By looking at the way people dressed,

we can learn not only about them as individuals,

but about the society they lived in.

I'm Amber Butchart, fashion historian,

and in the words of Louis XIV,

"I believe that fashion is the mirror of history".

So, taking historical works of art as our inspiration,

traditional tailor Ninya Mikhaila and her team will be recreating

historical clothing using only authentic methods...

Oh, look at that! It's changing colour in the air.

..and I'll be finding out what they tell us about the people who wore them...

I'm assuming the king wouldn't be dressing himself, though, right?

..and the times they lived in...

..and seeing what they're like to wear.

Ah!

For almost 200 years, this painting was described simply

as a portrait of Lady Elizabeth Murray

and it was assumed her unidentified companion was a maid.

Only in the 1980s was it discovered that, far from being a servant,

the other girl was in fact Lady Elizabeth's cousin, Dido Elizabeth Bell.

Hers is a story that takes us from the slave ships of the Mediterranean

to the heart of Georgian high society.

When I look back through the history of Western art,

what I'm inevitably confronted with is a lot of faces

that look like mine,

ie they're white.

So what really drew me to this portrait of Dido and Elizabeth

is the fact that it's so unusual to see a picture

from this time that depicts

a black subject and a white subject with equal status.

There is something about Dido that I find incredibly human and really

compelling, and I also think that from the tiny amount I know

about her back story already

that it's going to lead us into some much darker areas in the history of

fashion, and I'm really keen to confront those areas and to explore

them further. From what can be seen,

Dido's dress appears both elegant and simple,

but I'm interested to find out from Ninya what type of gown it may be.

This portrait - dress-wise, a little bit of an enigma, isn't it?

-It is.

-It is quite difficult to work out exactly what she's wearing.

What are your thoughts here?

There are so many possibilities with how we could interpret that garment.

Unfortunately, like so many portraits,

we can't see her back and it's particularly obscured by all these

kind of layers of sashes and things in exactly the places where we would

look for clues as to how it's constructed.

And this sort of basket of fruit that she's carrying, as well.

-Yeah.

-Do we have any other portraits that we can sort of compare in terms

of types of garment that we think she might be wearing?

Yeah, there are, actually, helpfully, lots of paintings of 18th-century women

wearing these more relaxed exotic styles and, helpfully,

they're not all holding something in front of them like Dido is.

-Great!

-So this lady here, for example,

you can see how very loose in cut this gown is.

It's a simple crossover

and I do think that the neckline

that Dido's got there, with this V-shape,

can only be achieved in the 18th century, really,

by having a crossover wrapping front.

Yeah. This is very, very similar, isn't it?

Yeah, I think that's a real strong contender

for how the front would look if we could see it.

Now, some of the reading I've been doing about this portrait

describes it as silver

and it's my understanding that at this time silver was quite

a popular colour for wedding dresses.

-Wedding dresses would have been a bit more formal than this.

-Mmm.

What kind of fabric do you think this is?

Well, I don't believe it is silver.

I've got a sample here of some silk that has silver thread woven into it

and it doesn't drape in the same way that I think the fabric Dido is wearing drapes.

It's quite stiff -

because the only way to incorporate silver into a silk fabric

in the 18th century was to weave actual threads of silver, so it's metal.

-Right.

-And although it's a soft metal,

it still changes the nature of the fabric.

-Yeah.

-And I think this is too stiff for what we want to achieve with Dido.

Yeah. It almost stays into the shape that you fold it, doesn't it?

-It does, yeah.

-It's that...kind of stiff.

-It's lovely, it's beautiful and it would make a lovely formal wedding dress.

-Yes.

-But that's not what we're doing.

-No.

So what I think we should be looking at is satin.

Silk satin is really a very, very typical choice for these kinds of

-informal robe and wrapping gown and a-la-Turque styles.

-Yeah.

I think we definitely want a satin that's a very cool kind of ivory, possibly,

or even a light grey, which could be interpreted as silver,

but not ACTUAL silver.

We have very little information with which to piece together Dido's story,

but what we do know is that she was born in 1761,

the illegitimate daughter of Captain John Lindsay and Maria Bell,

an enslaved African woman on a Spanish ship captured by Lindsay.

At some point in her infancy,

Dido was sent to live with her father's uncle, Lord Mansfield,

Britain's Lord Chief Justice and one of the most powerful men of his day.

I'm keen to find out if the portrait can unwrap any secrets of Dido's

life, so I'm meeting art historian Vicky Coltman at Scone Palace,

Lord Mansfield's birthplace, where the painting now hangs.

Now, I've completely fallen in love with this portrait,

but I'm very interested to hear you contextualise this for me.

How unusual is this for a late 18th-century portrait?

Well, in terms of later 18th-century British art history,

this is a really atypical image,

mainly because we have these two women, one with a black complexion,

one with a white complexion,

presented more or less as social equals

and it's extremely rare to find that on canvas because what we're dealing

with in this period is a long pictorial tradition of black servant

portraiture, in which they're shown as very much subservient to their

female mistresses.

And what we see here is an image from that mid-17th century period

which is absolutely typical.

We have here this black servant on the right.

Also notice how he's looking up towards the female sitter.

And, really, he's there to say to you and I, the external viewers,

"Direct your gaze to her".

So he becomes a kind of interlocutor for her beauty.

And so, if we then leap forward over 100 years,

what we can see immediately is how there's none of that subservience.

I think this is an image that speaks of things like sisterhood,

companionship.

One theory is that Dido has maybe been dressed in clothes that aren't

-her own to highlight some kind of exoticism.

-Mm-hm.

Do you think that could be the case?

So, Dido's dress... So what people have made of this,

and you're quite right, is they've looked at the turban and they've

suggested that her dress may be indebted to the idea of masquerades,

which are very popular at this time,

which are kind of fancy dress parties.

I'm not so sure. But what we can say is that it looks to me to be very

shiny and glimmery for a day dress,

so I think it is unlikely that she's going to be in the poultry yard or

the dairy wearing this dress.

I, personally, am slightly sceptical of the sort of over-exoticised

-readings of this portrait. A lot has been made of the turban.

-Mmm.

The turban was very fashionable headgear at the time, I think,

and definitely due to it being a sort of slightly exotic object,

but I think that that doesn't necessarily confer on Dido this kind

of exotic, objectified status.

And that would also fit in with the style of dress,

from what we can work out from the actual portrait itself.

And the fact that it's more dynamic -

she's not wearing any kind of panniers or hoops under her skirts

in the way that Elizabeth is.

I find Dido as a subject much more compelling.

She looks like the one who's fun, the one who I want to hang out with,

the one that I want to spend time with.

I absolutely agree. I think Dido looks incredibly mischievous, actually.

I'd much rather hang out with Dido.

While I'm finding out about Dido's life,

Ninya is trying to discover more about the style of her dress.

What's really frustrating about Dido is that her bowl of fruit and her

-sashes and her arm are all exactly...

-In the crucial area, yeah.

..in the point that would really tell us what's going on with that.

-Yeah.

-Because the other possibility that you were playing with...

-Was it this one or the...? No, this one.

-Oh, the back, yes.

..was that the back might be cut as a loose sack-back.

Yes, to give it a bit more fullness below and also because that's a

-fashionable element.

-You know why I don't think it can be a sack-back?

I've just thought of this, is because the way that this top edge of the pleats is covered up

in the 18th century is with an extra strip...

-Yeah.

-..which then goes down here and it's the robing, isn't it?

-And it's a classic...

-She doesn't have it.

..look and it doesn't fit with anything else in the cut of that twirl, so,

yeah, I was uncomfortable about that, thank you.

-The other possibility is that something like this jacket...

-Yeah.

-That's very simple, isn't it?

-Yes.

-And actually quite loose.

If you imagine that as full-length and this gusset here expanding out...

Well, I kind of had that thought, too, and I like that.

I did put that back onto this one.

-Oh, that's that one?

-Yes! But it hasn't worked, Ninya, look.

-Oh.

It's kind of... It's nice, the back is nice and the seams are nice,

but the way it hangs down now,

it's neither one thing nor another, that, so...

Yeah. It doesn't work for me.

That garment is not a classic Western garment like her cousin is wearing.

-It IS different and think that's the point - they're making her different.

-Mmm.

So we don't know whether she had that herself or whether it was part

of the painter's clothing.

We don't know anything about it, sadly, do we?

We don't know the story that led up to the painting

and what her thoughts were.

And we assume she was put into that to make a contrast,

but she might have chosen it.

And what's this one?

That is a bed gown.

Do you think that's a possibility?

It is.

I think you're going to have to do another twirl!

SHE LAUGHS

Well, we have the new twirl.

What I really like is this all-in-one...

-Yes.

-..sleeve. I think it's just the most convincing.

Yeah. And hers isn't actually huge.

-Some of them are very big, but hers is not.

-You could probably make that a little bit...

-Smaller?

-Smaller.

-And that definitely.

And that tight. That's really snug on her, isn't it?

Yes, and it really runkles down.

-It must have a little button or something there, I think.

-Yeah. Yeah.

-Three twirls lucky!

-Oh, thank goodness!

THEY LAUGH

Raised by the Mansfields, alongside her cousin Lady Elizabeth,

Dido grew up in luxury at Kenwood House,

a world away from the experiences of most black people

in England at the time.

SI Martin is an expert on black British history

and I'm hoping he can tell me more about Dido's life at Kenwood.

This is, you know, a far cry from the way that most people

in Georgian Britain would have grown up.

But I would imagine that,

for a black woman, it's especially unusual.

There was something very particular about Dido's situation,

though it wasn't unique. There were other black people,

particularly people of mixed background,

who had - similar to Dido's own parentage - one white male father

and usually a black enslaved mother, who were lucky enough to enjoy some

degree of the luxuries that Dido would have enjoyed.

But it's true to say that her experiences overall were very different from

the vast majority of black people living in Britain at the time.

-And she worked within the grounds as well, didn't she, at the home?

-Yeah.

Was that usual?

Yeah. Work of the sort that Dido was engaged in,

low-level household duties, looking after the dairy,

working with Lord Mansfield, note taking, light accounts -

these would be the occupations of a gentlewoman of the period

and perhaps Dido considered herself as such.

But they wouldn't have been the duties with which the lady

of the house would have bothered herself and I doubt very much

if Lady Elizabeth would have had anything to do in those domains at all.

One interesting feature of the likeness of Dido in the painting

is that she is wearing both a turban and an ostrich feather.

Yeah.

And although, at the time,

the wearing of turbans had become quite fashionable among some parts

of the upper classes, it's also a signifier for a lot of young black people in domestic service.

So Dido's life here at Kenwood - her family,

the relationships that they had - she was clearly cared for.

Although we know that she was fawned on,

and that she was a great favourite and confidante of Lord Mansfield,

Dido is illegitimate.

She did not always dine with her blood relations, as they were.

She is definitely outside family.

This would have been a very difficult issue,

just to negotiate socially and culturally.

To meet others outside the family, even within the family,

it would have caused problems and that would have set her apart.

I'm starting to get more of a sense of Dido's world,

but I feel that many of the details of her life are still hidden.

Last time I saw Ninya,

details of the dress were proving equally elusive,

so I'm looking forward to finding out what decisions have been made.

This is the pattern. It's a very common style amongst various ethnic

garments across the world.

It's the idea that you want to use as much of the material as possible,

have no wastage at all, because materials are very expensive and

time-consuming to make

and it's making the most of the materials as you cut, so planning ahead.

So, if you look at this, this is...

..the neck. It's going to come out of there.

-Ah, yeah.

-This is the sleeve.

-And this is the body.

-Great.

And this piece that we cut out of there to make the sleeve fits very

cunningly down here.

-Ah, that's clever, isn't it?

-Yeah. To increase the size of the skirt.

Oh, I see.

The joy of it is, because it's such a simple cut,

all the beauty is going to come from the material itself.

-Oh, and it is so beautiful, this satin.

-It is wonderful.

-Excellent.

I cannot wait to see it.

-Wow, look at that.

-So you can see how you could interpret that as silver.

-Yeah. Absolutely.

-And it's not, it's just pure silk, but...

It does look silvery, doesn't it?

-Yeah.

-It really does.

-It's very pleasing.

-It's a very pale grey.

But it's pure silk, and there's no actual metal thread in it,

so it's going to be ever so soft and drapey and gorgeous.

Yeah, it's just absolutely beautiful.

It has wonderful depth, doesn't it?

Yeah. It really does, it really does.

So this is looking very exciting.

Yes, I've done about six versions of this turban.

Wow.

But using muslin rather than the real silks.

So, here, I'm just doing the draping of this line here.

So would you like to have a go at trying to emulate that pleat there?

Yeah. I would love to.

So, you want to pull this back on itself, like that.

OK.

So... And then will it all be pinned...?

-Yeah.

-How is it going to be sort of secured?

Once we've played around with it and draped it happily,

then I'll sew it so that you can't see the stitching.

I see. Right, right.

Which will also be helped with disguising it

-because of the jewels on her turban.

-Yeah.

So if there are any stitches that can't be helped but to be seen,

then they will be covered with jewels.

Right. So...

Oh, that looks fab. I love those pleats. So, just pin it a bit here.

So that... It doesn't move.

Now, my instinct is to try to make it a bit more elaborate and use this

to create some kind of, like,

fan shape at the side or at the back,

but that wouldn't be quite accurate, would it?

No, this is quite a subtle little addition, I think.

You don't always need so much accessorising to...

I have to disagree. THEY LAUGH

So, will this all form the lining?

Will we be tucking this in on itself...

-Yes.

-..to create the lining?

-And then, once it's all pinned, I'll sew around the outside.

-Mm-hm.

So it will be like a proper brim.

Yeah. This is fun.

-This bit - you can see immediate returns...

-Yeah!

..doing this. It's quite satisfying.

I think that's rightly pinned, so we'll just put it on there.

Look at that. Lovely.

-I'm happy with that.

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

Very little written evidence of Dido's life exists,

but she does appear in the household account book

still held at Kenwood House

and I've been given special permission to see them.

I'm here in the glorious surroundings,

this amazing neoclassical room,

which is the library that Dido would have spent quite a lot of time in.

What I've got here is some of the household accounts

and so, in here, we do get some very small glimpses of Dido's life.

"Dido, quarter allowance due October the fourth, £5."

So she was given £20 a year, paid in quarterly instalments.

Towards the end of the 1780s,

Dido's allowance was also supplemented by birthday gifts and Christmas gifts as well.

We can see one here.

"To Dido at Christmas, by Lord Mansfield's order."

Now, this one is probably my all-time favourite.

"Washing and glazing Dido's bed."

Now, what that tells us is that likely her bed

was decorated with chintz hangings.

Now, chintz was glazed fabric and was very,

very fashionable at this time as well,

so it does give us a sort of insight into Dido's world,

into Dido's life here.

While the account books give us a tantalising peek into Dido's home life,

we get a more tangible insight from the diary of Thomas Hutchinson,

an American visitor to Lord Mansfield.

"A black came in after dinner and sat with the ladies and,

"after coffee, walked with the company in the gardens,

"one of the young ladies having her arm within the other.

"She is neither handsome nor genteel - pert enough.

"He calls her Dido, which I suppose is all the name she has.

"He knows he has been reproached for showing fondness for her -

"I dare say not criminal."

Hutchinson's attitude highlights Dido's position perfectly.

She was well-loved by her family,

but, as the daughter of a slave in 18th century England,

she was never going to be accepted as their social equal.

The fact is that, when this portrait was painted,

Britain's participation in the slave trade was at its height.

By the 18th century, demand for English cotton was booming.

Easily washable and colourful,

it was becoming the fashion fabric of choice for the middle classes

and a valuable trading commodity, driving the Industrial Revolution.

However, the great wealth this brought the nation

was built upon enslaved labour in Britain's colonies.

To find out more, I'm meeting historian Alan Rice.

So, how important to the cotton industry around here

was slave-produced cotton from America?

Well, in the 1780s and 1790s,

slave-produced cotton started exploding onto the scene here,

so a town like Manchester and its environs becomes a kind of world centre of cotton production

and that kind of bursts through and helps to fuel

what becomes the Industrial Revolution.

And how important was the cotton industry for the British economy?

Very, very important. If you look at 1780,

2-3% of the exports from Britain are finished cotton goods.

By the 1820s, 1830s, it's gone up to 22-23%.

So it's exceptionally important for the British economy,

in that it's a fifth of the economy.

Also a seventh of the population, the working population,

-are working in cotton-based industries...

-Right.

..in the mid-19th century.

We don't tend to think of Britain as having such involvement in slavery

because, with America, you can still go and visit the old plantations

-and there's more of a sort of physical legacy.

-Mmm.

But here, what we tend to forget, I think,

is that there is such an economic legacy of slavery.

The late 18th century is that moment

when Britain is the most active slaving power.

Liverpool is going into a frenzy of slave trading

and is the largest slave port in the world.

So, Dido's mother, Maria - we don't know much about her.

We know she was on a Spanish slave ship at some point.

What would life have been like for her?

Well, life would have been pretty grim.

She'd be chained in the hold of a slave ship -

usually 300-400 people in a very close space -

often the women separated from the men

so that they're available for the crew and the captain.

And they'd only been brought up from the hold once a day,

maybe twice a day for exercise,

and they would be made to dance at those points,

to keep their limbs moving.

We don't know much about the specific ship that Maria was on.

We know it was captured by Captain Lindsay

and that he took Maria under his wing.

Now, we know nothing about that kind of relationship, other than the fact

that it ended up with him having a black daughter with Maria -

Dido Belle. And out of the millions of black women

taken on board slave ships,

and their immediate descendants,

I think it's an incredible thing that we have a likeness

and a portrait of one of those individuals.

Most of those lives, we have nothing to remember them by.

As Lord Chief Justice,

Dido's great uncle was one of the most powerful legal voices of the century.

His ruling granting freedom to an escaped slave, James Somerset,

is considered one of the most significant milestones

of the abolition movement.

In his will, as well as leaving her some money,

Lord Mansfield wrote, "I confirm to Dido Elizabeth Belle her freedom."

Despite his landmark ruling,

slavery wasn't abolished in the British Empire for another 40 years.

No-one was more aware of Dido's precarious position than her great uncle.

At times, learning about Dido has been an emotional experience

and I'm looking forward to seeing the gown of this once-forgotten

vivacious young woman be brought back to life.

Oh, wow!

Oh, my God!

The iridescence of the silk is just amazing, isn't it?

It's like a pearl, isn't it? Yeah, it's really beautiful.

I feel like I'm about to go to a costume ball in the 1920s.

I was not expecting that at all.

I was very sceptical of this idea that she may have been dressed

with a specific costume purpose in mind,

whether it was being dressed by the artist or whether it was the idea

that this wasn't her actual clothing, but putting it on...

..I feel very, very differently about that idea.

And it's not just that I'm wearing historic clothing,

that it feels like a costume,

but it's the drapery and the fact there is a kind of orientalised idea, I suppose.

It's very non-functional, isn't it?

That isn't a shawl to keep you warm.

-Yeah.

-It's there to just make you look nice.

But it's also...it is very...

I do wonder how much of an artistic affectation that shawl is.

I mean, if we experimented, for example, with taking this off,

-and then you'd see the lovely sleeves as well.

-Aw, aw!

-Sleeves are so beautiful.

-It is actually in the painting that the blue is very subtle.

-It's muted, yeah.

-It's just touches, isn't it?

-Which is slightly distracting, but...

-I think it's nicer without.

Does it feel less fancy dressy now, or does still feel fancy dressy?

It feels slightly less fancy dressy, but, I mean, it's beautiful.

The extra length, it just means that you can see the rouching

and the way that would have sort of sparkled in candlelight.

-Creating something where there are creases shows off the satin to the best.

-It really does.

It is a very beautiful satin.

-You could just watch it drape for hours.

-Mmm, mmm.

It's quite hypnotic.

Anna, how do you feel about the turban?

I think it was quite successful, actually.

It's definitely got that hat-like feel, rather than a turban.

Yeah. There's so much in the painting that you can't see

that I think all you can say is it's one of the possible solutions,

and it's definitely a successful solution and a plausible one,

-but it's not necessarily what she was wearing in the painting.

-Yeah.

-It could have been one of our other theories, couldn't it?

-Yeah.

I do want to just lounge around in this forever.

-I just wish we had a ball to send you to.

-I know.

THEY LAUGH

Why do I never have a ball to go to?

THEY LAUGH

Wearing this gown as we've interpreted it

has actually changed my mind about my theories around Dido

and around what she's wearing in this portrait.

Initially, I was really quite certain that she was wearing a version of fashionable dress,

a version of dress that was just becoming fashionable.

You know, slightly more informal,

with these sort of orientalised elements to it.

However, having worn the ensemble,

I'm not so sure that that's the case any more.

It did feel quite like wearing a costume.

Dido still remains tantalisingly just out of reach

and, in some ways, I feel a bit disappointed

that we haven't fully got to the bottom of this story.

I feel very close to Dido and I feel like I've kind of let her down.

I do feel like it's sort of symbolic of wider issues within history at

times, especially reflecting marginalised histories that are more

difficult to find out about.

There's more work that needs to go into this

and I feel like we will get there with Dido -

I feel like there is more information out there -

and it will just take a bit more time and a bit more research.