Maybe Brilliantly Played, Costume Designer

So I just bought a sketch pad that is almost big enough for designing on...will only have to tape 2 pieces together instead of 4 like I'd have had to with typing paper. Sigh. Why does no one sell butcher paper by the yard instead of 50 yard rolls or nothing?!

Anyway, I was looking at my images of Stanze's bodice, and I had a moment of synthesis that might make her dress even more brilliantly made than its look alone is. Observe the seaming:

See how the bodice is constructed of nothing but strips a few inches wide, except for the front panel? This could be about the tailoring so that it will fit all her contours perfectly, but....


First, I have learned in my research that fabric consumption was VERY conservative. You can see from a few extant old patterns how almost every scrap of fabric was used--very unlike today, which will tell you to buy an extra 2 yards in order to cut everything along the bias or something. Tailors in the old days did not give two shits about bias cuts or grain cuts or anything like that; they cared about fitting as many parts of their pattern onto that rectangle of fabric as they possibly could. Second, Stanze and Mozart were middle-class, rather than aristocratic or rich enough to be the equivalent, so I'm wondering if Stanze's bodice isn't constructed that way to imply it was made in part with scraps, as a money-saving device?

I will never know why the decision was made, of course, since there is not a book about the costuming of Amadeus, but if her dress was meant to suggest something about their financial situation and Stanze's thriftiness in taking a dress made with what might not have seemed like enough fabric...then that's brilliant.