Sierra Boggess shared this image yesterday and can you see what has made me so excited? The fabric is thin. Well fairly thin- the flash and angle allows us to see her skin across the arm while the fabric looks more opaque closer to the armscye (where the fabric turns and follows the curve of her shoulder.) The sleeves are either unlined or lined with something very fine while the bodice is flat lined in a solid white.
I tend to double line my bodices and either not line or line my sleeves in a very thin material too.
Also if you follow the lines of the fabric on her sleeve you can see how very shallow the sleeve head is. This is both era appropriate and theatre appropriate as it means you can get your arms over your head. Notice the small wrinkles between shoulder and armscye? Yep. Modern patterns try to eliminate that by using a very tall sleeve head and that is what gives us limited arm range.
The effort to make a garment look good on the stand makes for a garment that is far less practical.
Anyway, just my thought process when I look at new/different images of the same garment 🙂 It’s all about the fit.
Oh and there is probably a bit of ease in the top of the sleeve head, I use three rows of stitches to do this rather than two as it does makes the fine gathers almost invisible.