All posts filed under: 19th Century

Terminology: What is chinchilla

I’m not much for fur, but chinchilla has always fascinated me. I think it is the name. It’s just so darn cute! It sounds like a name Disney would invent for an animal. I’m never really thought about what a chinchilla actually was until recently. When I did begin to wonder, I had to look it up. The chinchilla is a rodent from South America. It looks like this: OH.MY.GOODNESS Squeee! Cute overload. It’s a fat little mouse with extra big ears and a squirrel tail! Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww! I think they were invented by Disney! Really, could you get any cuter if you tried? I think we need to see more cuteness: Awwwwwwwwwww! Of course, in fashion they aren’t concerned with how gosh darn cute the fat little mice with big ears and fluffy squirrel tails are. They are concerned with how soft and dense the fur is, because they kill and skin those gosh darn cute fat little big-eared, fluffy-tailed mice for it. Natural chinchilla fur is pale grey with a dark streak running along …

Rate the Dress – Vignon’s garland dress of 1878 or 79

Published by The Dreamstress

The ratings for last week’s 19teens party dress started out so well, and then the ratings plummeted. The dress naysayers didn’t like the colour and the garland, and felt the dress was too youthful, and even those who liked the dress complained that it was too flat and hard to visualise on a person and had niggling doubts about the shape of the garland on the bodice. Thanks to the first flush of approving comments, the dress came in at a 6.9 out of 10. OK! Point taken! This week’s garment is fully three dimensional. But…. …it still has a garland. I thought I’d challenge your lei prejudice with another placement and treatment of the idea. This dinner dress by Mon. Vignon from the Metropolitan Museum of Art combines restraint to the point of severity with a touch of delicate naturalism in the form of the embroidered garland that drapes down the bodice and wraps around the skirt. What do you think? Are garlands just a no go? Is the contrast between the rest of …

Friday Reads: The Prisoner of Zenda

Published by The Dreamstress

OK, first off, I need to start this post with a confession. I found out about the Prisoner of Zenda from a comment on this blog. Yes, up until a few months ago I had never heard of it. I don’t know how I (historical literature obsessed freak that I am) managed to miss it. It’s had eight film adaptions after all, launched an entire literary genre (the Ruritanian romance) and added the term ‘Ruritanian’ to our language! Once I realised the dreadful gap in my literary knowledge, I was determined to fix it. No luck at the Wellington Public Library, no luck in any bookstore I popped in to in NZ. And then, in a secondhand bookstore just down the street from ThreadDen in Melbourne – success! And, best of all, it was the only book in the shop that wasn’t Au$20 (really, I thought that books were exorbitantly expensive in NZ, but Oz is even worse!). So, here is my copy of The Prisoner of Zenda, read from cover to cover …