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| (Photo by Kevin Jepson) |
Jayne
Barnard has been shortlisted for both the Unhanged Arthur in Canada and the
Debut Dagger in the UK. After 25 years of award-winning short fiction, her
debut novella, Maddie Hatter and the
Deadly Diamond, released last year. A sequel will follow next year. Learn
more about Jayne and her writing at her website.
Today
we take a step back in time. The year is 1898, and Miss Maddie Hatter, Jayne’s
Victorian fashion reporter and fashionista for the Kettle Conglomerate of Newspapers
in the British Isles, sits for an interview.
Tell us, please, what you are wearing today, and why
that represents appropriate working costume for a young lady.
MH: As you will see from the
attached photograph, I’m wearing a dark, pinstriped skirt and vest. There is a
matching jacket, and a hat, as I am wearing on my book cover. But that’s an
outdoor setting. Indoors, and in the company of women, it is permissible to be
seen in one’s shirtsleeves. The cloth in both is a long-wearing, sturdy weave
of good British wool, that will stand up to travel on omnibuses, trains,
steamships and airships. Also once on a camel, but getting the hair off
afterward was quite a job.
The blouse—in subdued hues
to hide dust and ink blotches better—is done up to the neck. A tie for the
office, or a stand-up collar and lace-edged tucker for social occasions,
finishes the ensemble. On the book jacket, the open throat was suitably daring
for my adventurous journey.
Are your suits made for you, or ready-made?
MH: Ah, you are thinking of
the rise of pre-assembled, ready-to-wear clothing in the New York City fashion
industry. From a slow start in the 1870s, ready-to-wear clothing has been
widely adopted by office workers and shop-girls, freeing them—or rather us—to
wear the new fashions several years sooner than was possible when all we had
access to were custom-made outfits discarded by the wealthier classes as démodé or ‘out of style’.
Because it doesn’t do for a
working fashion reporter to be dressed quite as well as the society ladies I
report on, I favor darker colors and simpler cuts. In addition, my skirt is
still cut very full at the hips. By 1898, society ladies are wearing A-line
skirts that, being tighter from hip to knee than mine, assume a woman will
never need to climb a ladder, run to catch an omnibus, or leap out of the path
of a murderer, all of which I’ve done in the course of my investigations.
This lady in the photograph is your mentor, Madame
Taxus-Hemlock. She also wears dark clothing of relatively simple design. But
it’s not the same as yours, and how does she get away with that daring hat?
MH: First, Madame is a
widow, and wears black as most Victorian widows do. She could wear colours
after a year of full mourning (all black) and one of half-mourning (grays and
lavenders). Madame has age and respectability to her credit, and never needs to
run or jump nowadays, hence the slimmer, modern skirt with several tiers of
ruffles.
Her hat is outrageous even
by late-Victorian standards, and reflects her freedom from reliance on a
spouse, family, or employer. Freed from my family’s strictures I may be, but I
am answerable to a hidebound male editor who disdains lady reporters on
principle. If I turned up to work in a bright, frivolous hat like hers, CJ
Kettle would be confirmed in his opinion that I am too flighty to be a serious
journalist, and I’d be condemned to reporting on ribbons, ruffles and lace for
as long as I could stand to work for him. I prefer investigating mysterious
events, wherever and however they lead.
Your hat on the book cover is covered in frills and
even a clockwork bird. We’ve heard rumors that the little bird is far more than
mere decoration, and even that the hat is a disguise for the bird, in truth a
remarkably gifted automaton who helps with your investigations. What do you
have to say to that?
MH: I say, read the book if
you wish to know the truth about my charming little companion. And about the
Bloodshot Diamond, the Eye of Africa mask, and that eccentric explorer, Baron
Bodmin.
Thank you, Miss Hatter. May your future adventures
end with equally exciting tales for stay-at-home readers of Kettle Conglomerate
Newspapers.
Maddie Hatter and the Deadly Diamond
Miss Maddie Hatter, renegade daughter
of a powerful Steamlord, is scraping a precarious living as a fashion reporter
when the story of a lifetime falls into her lace-gloved hands.
Baron Bodmin, an adventurer with more
failed quests than fingernails, has vanished in circumstances that are odd even
for him.
While he is supposedly hunting the
fabled Eye of Africa diamond in the Nubian Desert, his expeditionary airship is
found adrift off the coast of England. Maddie was the last reporter to see the
potty peer alive. If she can locate the baron or the Eye of Africa, her career
will be made.
Outraged investors and false friends
complicate her quest, and a fiendish figure lurks in the shadows, ready to
snatch the prize . . . at any price.
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3 comments:
Interesting post...I left a request for fashion help on her site as I've not been able to find a photograph or drawing for the dress of one of my own characters. (-;
I love this! and your cover! I took History of Costume in college (Clothing & Textiles major) and fell in love. The book was huge and a part of me can't bare to give it away. Congratulations on the book.
I saw your message, Vamp Writer, and will get back to you tonight with some suggested sources.
Thanks, Vicki. I love that cover too. The illustrator captured Maddie's sassy spirit perfectly.
I too am deeply in love with textiles and clothing, but my editor made me remove some of the more lavish (she said long-winded) descriptions. It's still the first thing Maddie notices about most of the women she meets, though: how they're dressed and what that says about their status and personality.
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