that way. this is a depiction of four gentleman in a rhode island trousers orgator overalls and so what is this garment? fortunately, we were able to find a surviving parent. at the metropolitan museum and aat you see on your right is reproduction of that particular pair of gator trousers that are at the metropolitan. we went up there. we studied them. we patterned them. this is all -- and photographed them, copious photographed then and this is a schematic of what it is we found in what we find today are notes on here on how it went together, the stitches, how many stitches per inch, the , thele, the constriction order of construction to it all of that is copied on here. then we came back and did a reproduction of the garment and that is a reproduction using

.and techniques it is all done by hand in the 18th century manner. then we digitize it on that digitizing board which is our finally, built a prototype by machine. i would love to the it a buttice it all by hand unfortunately, we do need to use modern construction method because of the volume that we have to create. this is the prototype. we fitted on a number of people and it works really well. it's amazing how it solves in some problems -- originally what we have been doing indexes -- and this is -- what we had been doing is shaping it in the back of the ankle with talks. we found that in the 18th century one of the related really ingenious is at the actually -- all of the shaping is done in the inseam because the out scene is straight and that answered a lot

of questions. here we have a british general officer's uniform. this was actually, the buttons on this are the buttons that i showed him upstairs, the ones that are cast very similar to the antique. all of this embroidery is machine embroidered on that machine over there. there are several of these that survived. they are easy to study. but they were constructed in house and then we have the epaulets which i am not going to be but a get off -- new york. there we go. these were actually embroidered in pakistan but we do have the ability to do this here now and again it was all by machine. is an adaptation of a court suit we have in the collection. this would have been very formal attire. they are called court suits and

would have been worn at court. this particular one is generally worn by the person who portrays dunmore. we know that there are surviving american court suits in south carolina. there was one that was owned by a native survived in the charleston museum of art so it is not that they are not being worn, they just don't seem to survive. this is another one of the jefferson project, this is a that is now in the collection of the los angeles county museum of natural history . this was done in 1991, machine embroidered. it is great because it fits our current thomas jefferson. when people come here for a tour, i think they are really surprised by the complexity of the operation, the fact that we use modern equipment but we are trying to give the impression of is aast because clothing

strong cultural marker, you know? is only is it regional, it very personal, as well. it is an indication of who you are, now and in the 18th century. >> how has the clothing changed during the time that colonial williamsburg has existed? is an: originally, that interesting question. the first cost him his here was in 1934 for the dedication of the two go cluster street -- street.gloucester people in costamare the six hostesses. the -- the people in costumes were the six hostesses. 5, james koger andpenn the restoration architects decided that all the hostesses

and all the exhibition buildings should be in period attire and , 81 years, with the exception of six months during world war ii when rationing prohibited the use of every production of clothing, we have had people in historic dress. the way it has changed is we now view -- view these items as material culture and a something , ratherches, that tells than just to create on the ounces so i think that is a major shift in that happens in the 70's and 80's, long before i got here. that is the nature change, that it is now a way to teach about the past. announcer: and that concludes our programming today from

colonial williamsburg. tonight at 6:00, we will re-air of her coverage from the historic area including behind-the-scenes tour is of the custom-designed center. all is american history tv, we can, every weekend, on c-span3. beginning october 19, 1965 and continuing for five weeks, the battle of ia drang was in the words of walter concord, the biggest, the costliest, the most insignificant phot by american troops in vietnam. a cd is new special report on the battle, originally broadcast on november 30, 1965. ♪ walter: three months ago, the first air division shipped off from north carolina.