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Rate the Dress: Dance off, 18th century style

Last week I showcased a VERY pink, VERY 18th century influenced Worth gown.  Some of you were sure it was a fancy dress gown, and some of you were equally sure it wasn’t.  Some of you loved it, and some of you thought it was so dreadful it couldn’t possibly be a Worth.  Very mixed reactions!  The ratings evened out at 6.6 out of 10 – not terrible, but certainly not a glowing commendation of the House of Worth.

This week’s Rate the Dress is a dance-off: these two lovely ladies each posed as a dancer in almost the same outfit, but with slightly different details.  Your job is to rate each dancer’s outfit, giving each of them a different rating (even if one is, for example, a 6 and the other a 6.5) Which will you find the prettier dancing frock?

The first model has the advantage of youth.  She paired the  dun and pink frock with a lace border around the neck and sleeves, self fabric sleeves, a rose-trimmed hat with matching palest pink ribbons, and an embroidered or lace apron.  There are two plain rows of contrast trim around her skirt, and her bodice is decorated with a very wide zig-zag lacing effect.  On her feet are white satin shoes with shiny buckles (don’t they look just like American Duchess Georgiana shoes?)

Dancing girl, Levitsky Dmitry G. (1735-1822)

Dancing girl, Levitsky Dmitry G. (1735-1822)

The second model is a bit older, and has gone for a more refined pose, with a self-assured tilt of the head.  She paired her dun and peach pink dress with sheer puffed sleeves, a n embroidered or lace fichu and a plain sheer apron.  Her hat trimmed with pink ruching which frames her face, a falling veil and long peach pink ribbons.  Her skirt has three rows of ruched trim, and has slightly wider skirt supports than the first models.  Her bodice is decorated with criss-cross faux lacing down the stomacher, and a faux waistcoat effect where it opens over the skirt.  Her own white satin shoes peep out from underneath her skirt.

Dancing lady, Levitsky Dmitry G. (1735-1822)

Dancing lady, Levitsky Dmitry G. (1735-1822)

Two outfits, very similar, but with slight differences between the two.  Which do you prefer?  Who will win this dance-off?

Rate each  Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10 (and remember that your ratings must be different from each other, if only by half a point!)

A hoopskirt photoshoot – a few of my favourite shots

Every time my friend Theresa visits Wellington we dress up and do a photoshoot together.  She was in town this weekend, and one of the top things on her to-do wish-list was to take photos with me.

I know that one of her lifelong dreams has been to wear a hoopskirt, and I’ve never actually worn my Greek Key ensemble, so massive crinolines was the theme for the day.  I wore my new engageantes and 1860s bonnet, and put Theresa in the 1850s Raspberry swirl dress, which she fit beautifully.

We went first to the park where Madame O & I photographed the pet-en-l’aire ensemble, and then to the Massey Memorial, which is a much better photoshoot location at sunset than it is at high noon!

Here are a few of my favourite images from the shoot:

The 1860s Greek Key afternoon dress thedreamstress.com

1850s raspberry swirl ball dress thedreamstress.com

The 1860s Greek Key afternoon dress thedreamstress.com

1850s raspberry swirl ball dress thedreamstress.com

I particularly love these two because Theresa and I each took almost precisely the same image of each other:

The 1860s Greek Key afternoon dress thedreamstress.com

1850s raspberry swirl ball dress thedreamstress.com

The light was just amazing as the sun set.

The 1860s Greek Key afternoon dress thedreamstress.com

1850s raspberry swirl ball dress thedreamstress.com

Sadly, we didn’t have an artsy fashion student to photograph  us together, but we did manage to get a couple of kids out for an afternoon run to take some photos of the two of us at our first photo location:

1850s & 60s dresses thedreamstress.com

And then at the Massey Memorial we talked a group of teenage boys who showed up to enjoy the views and sunset with  a big bottle of “apple juice” into doing the honours with our cameras.  I think they felt we ruined the ambiance they were looking for, as they didn’t hang around for long…

1850s & 60s dresses thedreamstress.com

I hope you enjoyed those, and there will (of course) be more!

One less PHD – 1860s Engageantes

I’ve got a more elaborate finished UFO to show you for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge #8, but I haven’t managed to take photos of it yet, so for now here is a simple, soft entry, or a really elaborate, long-running entry, depending on how I think about it:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com
I’ve been struggling with engageantes (the false sleeves worn under pagoda  sleeves in the 19th century) for the Greek Key tea dress ever since I first made the dress.  My problem is that 1) none of the engageantes patterns explain exactly how one gets the engageantes to stay attached and up when wearing them, and 2) none of the engageantes patterns make up into something that looks like fashion plates depicting women wearing engageantes.  They just aren’t as full.

The second problem I’m ascribing at least in large part to exaggeration in styles in fashion plates.

The first problem…well, that’s a sticky one.

My most recent trial of engageantes (4 years ago) involved the pattern from Janet Arnold, scaled up slightly on the assumption that I’m built on a grander scale than the original wearer.  This is what they looked like as of last week:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

I had  them all sewn together, and used them on a model for the talk, basted into the sleeves of the Greek Key Dress.

There were two problems with the engageantes as they were: first, they weren’t actually done (too plain), and second,  basting into the sleeves was a headache: the engageantes were wider than the top of the sleeves, so we had to roughly pleat them to fit, and it was hard to keep the stitches from showing on the outside, and over time the basting would damage the outside sleeves.  So I do not think this is how engageantes were worn historically.

My best guess for historical accuracy at the moment is that they were basted to the chemise sleeves, but that’s not going to work very well for how I use and wear costumes, and at this point I think we can all agree that the Greek Key dress is not historically accurate.

So, in order to finish my engageantes, they needed to be made  both beautiful and workable.  First I sewed lines of van-dyked lace around the cuffs and the bottom of the engageantes, embellishing them, and adding volume to their poof.  Sadly, I only had enough for three layers around the cuffs, and two around the bottom of the sleeve: more would be better, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of this lace.

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

Then I worked out a system for attaching them to the jacket.  I sewed eyelet lace around the top of the sleeves, and threaded twill tape through it, so that they could be gathered around my arm.

Here they are ungathered:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

And gathered:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

Then I sewed loops in to the tops and bottoms of the jacket armscye, and ties on to the top of the engageantes in two places, so that they can tie to the loops on the jacket, but still be adjustable for length.

Here are the loops in the armscye:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

And the ties in the engageantes attached to the loops:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

And what they look like hanging down into the sleeve:

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

It worked like a charm.  They took mere minutes to attach and adjust, stayed up nicely, and were very comfortable.  The next pair I make will be fuller and longer (which will also make them fuller) but otherwise I think I’ve finally got the engageant problem sorted.

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

For me, there are two ways to look at this project: first, the PHD is the engageantes (and they really were a project half done, because they were sort of done – they just didn’t work!), and I’ve finally finished them – four years later.  The other way is to think of the whole Greek Key ensemble as an unfinished project, because it was never wearable without engageantes, and I had never managed to make reasonable, workable, finished engageantes before.

For the purposes of the HSF, I’ll count this PHD as just the engageantes, as it gets too complicated otherwise.

The Challenge:  #8  —  PHDs & UFOs

How long has this been a PHD?  :  Since June 2010

Fabric: No new fabric, but less than 1/2 a metre of self-striped cotton lawn originally.

Pattern:  Based  on the pattern for 1860s engageantes in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion  

Year:  1857-63

Notions:  3 metres of lace with a vandyke pattern ($2), 1.5 metres of eyelet lace ($2), 3 metres of twill tape (50cents)

How historically accurate is it?    Mostly not.  It’s machine sewn, which is a stretch for 1860.  The fabric is reasonable, the decorating technique and lace not, and my attachment method certainly isn’t.  So under 40%, but still worth it, because I learned a lot.

Hours to complete:  2.  Really easy except for sewing the lace rows so close to the sleeve gather.

First worn:  With the Greek Key dress for a hoopskirt themed photoshoot on Friday the 2nd with the fabulous Theresa, who is in town for a few days and made a photoshoot with me top priority!

Total cost:  $4.50 further in materials, and less than $2 original materials (so these would be a great entry in the Under $10 challenge)

1860s engageantes thedreamstress.com

And, of course, I’ll be showing you the full view of the photoshoot soon!