All posts filed under: 19th Century

Rate the Dress: Embroidered tulle tiers and lacing

Oooh la la! Last week I posted an unusual interpretation of lace – oriental inspired silver metal lace from the 1920s, more sexy than the usual sweet lace image and you liked it. You really, really liked it! There were some tiny reservations about the table-cloth-y ness of the whole look, and the extremely low neckline, but they were teeny-tiny reservations, and the frock still managed a 9.6 out of 10 – that’s pretty much as close to a perfect score as it’s possible to get! (personally, you can have that dress. I thought it was fussy and over-done, and that neckline was scary!) I was rather stuck with this week’s Rate the Dress, and spent hours searching for a garment that inspired me. I finally settled on something, and hope the garment I have picked inspires an opinion in you, whether good or bad! This late 1850s evening gown, with its tiers of embroidered tulle, polychrome fringed sleeves and and fichu-robings, and laced front, is certainly striking – definitely more blooming rose than shrinking …

The Polly / Oliver jacket is done, done DONE!

Published by The Dreamstress

Well, only three weeks late for the Historical Sew Fortnightly Challenge, and 5 years and 3 months after I started it, the Monstrous Regiment inspired Polly / Oliver jacket is finally done! I’m very proud of the end result, but it does suffer from being five years behind the times where my sewing skills are concerned. I re-fitted and draped as much as possible, but there was a limit to how much I could rescue the original work (which wasn’t the best example of my sewing skills five years ago to start with, having been draped and started in a mad rush). There was many a time when I was tempted to can the project, scrap the fabric, and move on to something easier. Looking at it, I’m actually amazed that I didn’t. The sleeves were just as troublesome and difficult to finish as the rest of the jacket, I put them in, tweaked, adjusted , set them, re-set them, bag lined them, took that apart, flat lined them, set them, re-set them, re-set them, …

Rate the Dress: The Princesse de Broglie princess-off

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week’s Poiret (?) coat was quite divisive. Most people really liked it, and a few really didn’t (I’m pretty sure 3 counts as really not liking it!). Still, there was a lot of Poiret love and it managed and 8.3 out of 10. This week I’m mixing things up a bit. A few months ago I did a dress-off, featuring two variants on the same design by one designer. This week is a Princess-Off, featuring two different Princess de Broglies, by two different artists, from two different eras, with two very different frocks. Which will you prefer? The most notable Princesse de Broglie is probably Josephine Eleonore Marie Pauline de Galard de Brassacede Bearn, painted by Ingres in the early 1850s. Josephine was a noted beauty, and the mid-19th century ideal: refined, reserved, elegant, delicate, pure. She looks out of her portrait directly at us, the viewer, but her gaze is remote and aloof, not an invitation, but a barrier, like the chair she leans against. It separates us, the lowly viewer, from her, …