All posts filed under: 19th Century

Rate the Dress: Fancy dress for 1830

The Halloween run-up purple and black dress from last week was very divisive. You either loved the dress, or hated it. One thing you did agree on though: the fringe was not good. Perhaps my anti-fringe stance has influenced all of you after all! The pro-black and purple-ites won a slight victory, bringing the rating in at 6.7 out of 10 Last week I gave a taste of the season, and I promised a proper Halloween Rate the Dress for this week, but when I came to pick something, I realised what a mistake my promise was! How was I ever to live up to last year’s Victorian Batgirl? How was I ever to find something else that was said ‘Halloween’ so clearly, that was from a different period (because the whole point is variety), and that wasn’t so historical that the costume would make no sense from a modern perspective. So I thought about the timeless trends in costuming: things that make Halloween costumes Halloween costumes, and it boiled down to three things: scary, …

What exactly is a guimpe?

Published by The Dreamstress

I ran across this object recently, and was most intrigued: The MFA Boston describes it as: A guimpe of gathered and puffed white net, high round neck, open down front elbow length sleeves, foundation of tarlatan covered with net, white tulle ruching around neck held in place with narrow coral velvet ribbon. While interesting, this still doesn’t explain what a guimpe is (other than a sort of lacy blouse thing which you obviously had to wear under or over another garment, which you can tell from the photo), or what you do with it. So I did a little research. Apparently a guimpe is a short blouse worn under a pinafore/jumper dress, or a fill in for a low-cut dress. It’s very similar to a chemisette or dickey. It was a word that was particularly common in the mid-late 19th century, and it comes from the Old French word for wimple, which is why the white thing that nuns wear around their necks/heads are also sometimes called guimpes. Here is a very early gown with …

Rate the Dress: Purple and Black in 1870

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week you disapproved of Elizabeth Taylor’s very frilly, very feminine, very pink and white, and not very historical Civil War era-ish dress for 1957’s Raintree County. It came in at a dismal 3.7 out of 10. The only thing that saved the score from being one of the lowest ever was that most of you felt that Liz would look good in anything. This week I stick with a bi-coloured gown, but it’s all a little darker and scarier and quite a lot less lacy. To get you in the mood for Halloween, here is a purple and black dress from 1870. And a back view that shows you much more of a rather scary orange paisley shawl than it does of the dress itself: What do you think of the striking striped frock? Are purple and black just a little too-Halloween-y at any other time of the year, even if the purple is verging on violet? Do the stripes and the fringe charm you or scare you? Rate the Dress on a scale …