Getting Dressed in Victorian Menswear : Gonzo Cosplay from Muppets Christmas Carol

It’s finally finished! 10 weeks of work has culminated in an entire 1840s mens ensemble. I even managed to squeeze a few accessories in at the very end. If anything, I’m just even more impressed with the costume design and construction for The Muppets Christmas Carol. They didn’t have to include all of the extra layers and accuracy, but they did! The final tally for the Victorian Gonzo ensemble is 11 major pieces: shirt, trousers, braces, waistcoat, stockings, shoes, cravat, tailcoat, overcoat, gloves, and hat. Though I have often heard exclamations over how many layers women wore in the 19th century along with the myth of how difficult that must of been, we can’t ignore that men wore a similar number! This is a winter ensemble with the overcoat, but that’s the only additional garment for the weather- otherwise changes would have been made to the textiles and construction techniques to deal with heat. While this project was aimed at 1842, the year that Charles Dic