All posts filed under: 19th Century

AetherCon: The Steampunk Convention

This Saturday was AetherCon, Wellington’s first (hopefully annual) Steampunk convention. I really want to support any sort of historically inspired costuming in Wellington, so I agreed to do a talk on the historical origins of Steampunk Fashion. In the weeks before had lots of fun sprucing up costumes and finishing UFO’s and even making some new things. Unfortunately the day itself did not start well. It was pouring. A dear friend was kind enough to lend me her apartment – only three blocks from the venue – for dressing in, but I still had to get all my garments from my house to the car, from the car to the apartment, and then get the models from the apartment to the venue – all without getting the dresses (and models) soaked and bedraggled. Ergh. I put the dresses in plastic bags to transport between my place and the apartment, and stuck every umbrella I owned in the car. And then I prayed. Nothing else to do. I got soaked getting to the car and …

Rate the dress: Pink and black in 1869

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week there wasn’t a great deal of love for Maria Anna and her fabulously (there, I said it!) geometric gown. A few of you shared my excellent taste (there, I said it again), many of you were ‘meh’, and a few of you really disliked it. It came in at 6.4 out of 10 – not bad for 17th century Spanish princess, but not as much as that spectacular geometry deserved (yep, I’m going to keep saying it!) At least I won’t have much competition in the ‘it’s already been made’ stakes if I decide to make a reproduction of it! For this week’s rate the dress I’m going to present something with a lot of colour. We’ve had quite a few not-particularly-vivid garments in a row: time for something a little different. This striking gown was sold at auction a while back. It’s very vivid. And vibrant. While it is much more colourful than Maria Anna’s dress, it shares the same enthusiasm for crazy geometricisation and pattern arrangement. I clearly though the geometry …

The Turkish tea robe at the Honolulu Museum of Art

Published by The Dreamstress

A bit back I showed you a taster of the lovely textiles that I was lucky enough to see in the textile store at the Honolulu Museum of Art, and promised to show more images and tell you about them. Today, let’s look at an intriguing garment made in Turkey: This garment is a robe of silk velvet in a rich burgundy red, heavily ornamented with scrolling florals in gold. The gold is still bright and untarnished, indicating that it is real gold, probably made by rolling or wrapping thread in tissue-thin gold leaf. The ornamentation is made in the most intriguing way. First, paper models in the desired shapes were cut out. Then, gold thread was wrapped around the paper shapes, completely covering the paper. Then, the gold-wrapped shapes were sewed down to the garment. Some of the larger flowers must have been padded before wrapping, and are further highlighted by outlines in coiled gold wire, with details are picked out with knots coiled gold. The overall effect is of elaborate, sumptuous satin-stitch embroidery: …