Mantua Faker? What sort of thing is that, then?

Hello! I’m Lisa, the mantua-faker, and I am glad that you are here. There are two things I am especially good at: making clothes, and terrible word play.

Tl/dr: I like to make clothes, combining historical, vintage and modern styles, materials and techniques.

A “mantua-maker” is equivalent to a the profession of “dress-maker”, “mantua” being an style of gown, circa 1700. In my sewing, I make clothes, typically femme styles. Over the years, I have been involved in theatrical costuming and historical costuming for museum-based educational programming. My sewing training, from my mother and aunts, came through my great-grandmother, a professional dressmaker in the mid 20th century.

All that being said, I have a strong impulsive streak, very little patience, and an eye for coming up with alternative methods to solving problems. If you are here looking for technical perfection, complete historical accuracy, or other normal measures of merit, you are in the wrong place. Hence the “faker” part of the name. I like to think of my work as “historically-informed” rather than “historical costuming”.

Thanks for visiting, and I hope that we will be friends!