IMPORTANT: Some of the comments on this post (now deleted) were so out of hand I’m putting an extra warning up here. Your rating can be very poor numerically, but your comment still has to be kind. If your comment ventures into body-shaming or slut-shaming it will be deleted. If it’s marginal it will be edited to comply with basic standards of taste and kindness. If you think that being super negative and coming up with insulting analogies makes you clever 1) you’re wrong, it makes me think exactly the opposite (default negativity is lazy and based on the mistaken belief that disliking things makes you look smart – a position only held by not very smart people) and 2) I’ll delete your comment. The goal of Rate the Dress is to spread historical knowledge and to give us all a chance to look at the details of garments, and to think about why they were used, and were considered fashionable and attractive, in an entertaining way. To those who contribute to this goal: hooray! …

This week’s Rate the Dress goes from bold, bright stripes, to soft, subtle stripes. Last Week: a early-mid teens dress in bold stripes and bold cut Last week’s rate the dress wasn’t very popular with some of you. Whether it was the fabrics, the cut, or the fichu-effect lace, almost everyone found something to criticise. Except for Sarah, holding the flag for a perfect 10! Many of you also criticised the presentation, which isn’t one of the things that we take into account with Rate the Dress. Not every garment is robust enough to be steamed and pressed for presentation, and even when a garment is, a museum can’t always afford the time, money, and expert hours it takes to steam a garment, pad a mannequin, and create proper supports. If museums only shared photos of garments they had the resources to perfectly present, we’d have far fewer garments to admire and research. The Total: 5.5 out of 10 So extremely high fashion 1913-1914ish was not your thing! This week: an early 1840s dress with blue …