All posts tagged: 1865

Rate the dress: Green in 1865

Draped and layered 1910s dresses just aren’t doing it for you are they? First the blue chiffon and lace frock was compared to curtains and kids dress-ups, and then last week’s pale paisley 1910s frock was given the exact same criticism (only this time you said tablecloths) by some. And quite a few of you thought it was nice but meh. But some of you thought it was fabulous, so it did score enough 10/10 to bring it up to a respectable 8.2 out of 10 – which is pretty much exactly what I’d give the dress!. I’ve been doing a bit of research into 1860s fashions as a potential project for my HSF Heirlooms & Heritage challenge (not exactly a hint, because I’ve also discovered that thanks to some amazing family genealogy work I can trace a direct line of ancestors all the way back to Baldwin of Flanders in the 9th c (and, through Judith, all the way back to Charlemagne) so maybe I’ll get excited and do something early Medieval – or …

Rate the dress: Extremely red in 1865

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I tried very hard to pick an interesting dress, but some of you still complained that Jessie Franklin Turner’s harlequin inspired evening frock was boring. I think it’s just a difference of perception: for me, cut is what makes a garment most intriguing, but others may be more colour or fabric focused. While a few of you loved the dress, most of you, even if you thought it was interesting, found it uninspiring, and it received an very middle of the road, uninspired 5 out of 10. Since muted colours and fascinating cut weren’t your thing, how about very basic cut, and totally over the top colour? This military influenced dress from ca 1865 celebrates the new vogue for extremely bright colours sparked by the invention of the first aniline dyes at the end of the 1850s. Whether the brilliant red silk of the dress is the product of the new coal based dyes I am not sure, but even in a room full of violent mauvine purples and vivid acid greens, this …

Rate the dress: ruffles, flounces, puffs & bows in the late 1860s

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I presented the pseudo Roman ‘Julius Ceasar’ costume worn by Fritz Lieber in the 1917 version of Cleopatra. Despite the respectable official rating of 6.8 out of 10, I think the real rating should be much, much lower, because most of you were so bored by the outfit that you couldn’t even be bothered to comment on it. As Daniel said “Eh’. Ouch. Sorry. I’ll try to be more interesting! This week I present a dress that I’ve been interested in for months and months, but haven’t found the right time to show you. This dress is the antithesis of anything even slightly manly that might have been going on last week. When it comes to girly, this dress from the MFA Boston has it all: tiers of stiff, ribbon edged ruffles down the front of the skirt, a pleated flounce at the bottom, a wrapped lace and ribbon trimmed bertha with bows catching up the ruffled sleeves, a pleated sash, and three tiers of graduated poofs descending down the back of the …