this is rose you know her from Titanic
you know this outfit and this one but
are they accurate we got this fashion
historian hi I'm Raisa Britannia and I'm
a fashion historian to walk us through
what the movie got right and what they
got wrong with my three socks first
let's establish the setting Titanic was
based on actual historical events that
took place in April of 1912 enroute to
America here were at the height of
Gilded Age Society but also at the
beginning of modern fashion this film
was meticulously researched and the
costume designer made sure that Rose had
the latest styles straight from Paris
costume designer Deborah Lynn Scott
actually won the Oscar for best costume
design for this movie to research this
film she looked at extant garments and
museum collections but also fashion
publications from that time period let's
start with roses iconic suit the Titanic
set sail at noon and we see Rose wearing
this cream striped afternoon suit roses
afternoon suit looks almost exactly like
a suit that appears in a French magazine
in 1912 this is absolutely accurate the
perfect ensemble to be boarding a ship
in the afternoon so this is actually
accurate but let's draw roses Day dress
from the undergarments out anyway first
up the underwear for the underwear Rose
would have been wearing a chemise
drawers and stockings the chemise of
1912 is a little bit different from ones
that we've previously looked at this one
has a lot of delicate lace and a ruffled
edge at the neckline the drawers were
less voluminous and they were in
previous years mostly because of the
changing silhouette you can see that
she's wearing stockings here stockings
were made of knitted cotton or silk and
were usually light-colored for day
sometimes even with inset lace
next the corset we see Rose being laced
into a corset and one scene of the movie
where she has a really important
discussion with her mom you know to see
that boom
the year 1912 specifically it was a
really interesting time for women and
corsets because they were evolving and
shaping with a silhouette but the most
modern women started to abandon the
corset altogether this scene perfectly
illustrates this push and pull between
this more tight laced past and a more
modern future this is really the
beginning of the straightened silhouette
that we will see in the 1920s just ten
years before the dramatic silhouette was
called an s-curve and you can see that
in this picture here even though the
most modern women were already
abandoning corsets in 1912 the really
rigid traditions of the society in which
rose lives really demanded that she wear
one next layer over the corset she would
have worn a camisole and a petticoat a
camisole would have been worn to soften
that rigid line at the top the
petticoats at this time period were
pretty narrow as we can see in this ad
this exists somewhere between the full
Victorian petticoat and the modern slip
these two garments were typically cotton
for the day the next layer is the top we
can see that Rose is wearing a really
high collared shirt waste and
accessorized with a necktie the woman's
shirt waist was derived from the man's
buttoned and collared shirt and was the
first truly modern garment of the 20th
century men's fashions started to
influence women's wear beginning in the
late 19th century but by 1912 it was the
norm the Shirtwaist was also an
egalitarian garment worn by both upper
and lower classes when women's wear
started to take influence from men's
wear we got garments like this which
were more comfortable and casual and now
the suit we know that this is the most
up-to-date fashion because it appeared
in the January 1912 issue of lamode
which was a popular French fashion
publication this particular example is
made by the couture house linker and
company Bros would have gone to a
couture house to be fit and had this
garment made specifically for her the
tailor made was the name for a women's
walking suit much like this one the
tailor made was often warned
Travel which makes this entirely
appropriate but there were other
afternoon styles for different
activities you can see in this deck seen
that there are other women promenade
anxia off similar ensembles a very
important part of ocean liner culture
was showing off the latest fashions that
you probably just bought in Paris
this costume hints at a very short-lived
fad from this time period called the
hobble skirt as you can see the
circumference of the skirt kind of
narrows at the ankle and it was said
that it really restricted the strides of
women and they had to hobble around the
next layer her shoes you can see her
shoes right here when she steps out of
the car and they look like these and
then there's the gloves the very first
thing we see of Rose is her white glove
gloves completed any gilded age ensemble
and women wore gloves any time they were
seen in public women would have
coordinating gloves with each outfit and
as you can see her white gloves
perfectly match her cream suit moving on
to the hair when Rose removes her hat
later indoors we get a good look at her
hair she wears her hair up which is
accurate for her age and station hair
was really only worn down by adolescence
and young girls after Wednesday Butte on
Baum you would wear your hair up we do
see Rose with her hair down at other
points at the movie this could be
anachronistic but it was likely a
character choice to really illustrate
that Rose was an independent spirit and
she really desired to break out of this
constricting society over her hair would
be the Hat this hat is the most iconic
feature of this costume and it really
facilitates this dramatic reveal it for
character this style of hat was
extremely fashionable for the time
period hats actually reached their
widest around 1910 when the brim would
extend past the shoulders at that time
it was called a merry widow hat which is
after a Broadway play called The Merry
Widow
we can see the Rosa's hat is made out of
a heavily stiffened straw and decorated
with a wide taffeta
here you can see another kind of
decoration used on hats at the time and
yes that is a taxidermied bird
there was this trend of having taxidermy
birds atop women's hats this was so
fashionable that it eventually depleted
bird populations and some species were
even driven to endangerment or
extinction unsurprisingly these large
hats were the subject of satire at the
time because these hats were so large
the pins used to secure them were
equally large at this time some women
would use these really long hat pins as
weapons to fend off predatory men and
these especially long hat pins could
prove quite dangerous and this
phenomenon was so widespread that the
media termed it the hat pin peril here's
what roses day suit would have looked
like compared to the movie so this is
entirely accurate but let's add a bird
let's move on to Rosa's evening wear
another aspect of oceanliner culture
were these lavish nightly dinners
onboard because this is a nightly affair
we see a couple different dinner dresses
on rows this was the height of gilded
age society and these women were
spending more money than ever before on
their clothes so much so that they would
have a different dinner dress for every
night these costumes were modeled off of
real dresses so these are also accurate
now we're going to draw every layer of
the evening dress first up the underwear
the underwear would be the same but it
would probably be silk instead of cotton
for evening she would be wearing
stockings and we do see that she wears
black ones in the scene when she's
dancing with Jack for both of these
evening dresses darker stockings would
be appropriate and then the corset when
dressing for dinner Rose might switch
out her corset for a finer one made out
of silk rose would have likely purchased
her corset from a specialty shop in
Paris if she was already there shopping
and then the next layer
an alternative to the camisole and
petticoat was this single garment called
the princess petticoat which is similar
to what would later be called the slip
for an evening dress this fine
a princess petticoat made out of a
coordinating colored fabric would be
standard and then the main event the
dress you can see the inspiration behind
roses costumes in the designs from these
very prominent designers from 1912 as
you can see in these examples a lot of
these dresses incorporated layers of
sheer fabric that were then embellished
with beading the fashionable silhouette
of 1912 was actually remarkably similar
to that of 1812 you can see a high
waistline with a narrow skirt both here
and here this is an era in which
Parisian designers were really creating
the most forward-thinking designs one of
the most modern of modern designers was
lady duff-gordon who went by the name
lucille when she was a designer and
actually she is a character in this film
you can see Rose introducing her here
lucy lady duff-gordon she designs
naughty lingerie among her many talents
but she wasn't just a lingerie designer
she was actually a pioneer in the
fashion field
she actually instituted the practice of
draping fabric on a model instead of
flat patterning which is standard
practice now but she really pioneered it
and now the shoes we get a close look at
Rosa's shoes when she steps onto the
railing here we see that they're made of
satin and dyed to match the color of her
dress
then her jewelry we can see in this
scene that the necklace and earrings
that Rose wear match and that's because
they were likely part of a set called a
pair or but we all know that the most
important piece of jewelry in this film
is the heart of the ocean this necklace
was designed by director James Cameron
and based on the Hope Diamond the Hope
Diamond was the biggest and most famous
diamond in the world and also a similar
blue color
and then her gloves we see all of the
women in the scene wearing over the
elbow or opera length gloves just before
going into the dining room women were
expected to wear gloves any time they
were in public but they were allowed to
take them off when dining and then her
hair her hair is down and loose and this
scene but at dinner we see that it's
properly done roses hair is adorned with
bits of jewelry very similar to this
image of actress Lillie Elsie because
the fashionable hairstyle was so
voluminous you needed a lot of hair
sometimes you would even use hair pieces
to create additional volume so when
brushing their hair women would save the
hair that was on their hairbrush and put
it into a little receptacle on their
table and then use that to create these
hair pieces finally her makeup every
single aspect of this costume is
accurate until we get to the makeup if
I'm going to fact-check this I'm going
to say that this makeup is extremely
1990s in the early 20th century women
actually wore very little visible makeup
and that's because to do so would align
them with what society called painted
ladies and those were really women that
were not considered respectable like
actresses or courtesans it wouldn't be
until the following decade that
cosmetics would really become socially
acceptable we can see that rose has the
darkened eyebrows eyeliner and darker
lipstick much like Kate Winslet would
wear off-camera makeup is often the
least historically accurate aspect of
period films and that's because actors
and characters have to be appealing to
modern audiences so here's what roses
evening dress would have looked like
compared to the movie version pretty
much the same Titanic is as historically
accurate as period films get it's really
only the makeup that betrays the period
in which the film was made the
historical accuracy of this film is
really owed to the meticulous research
done and that was out of respect for the
trout
they did their research and it shows and
that's probably why this is an enduring
classic
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