All posts filed under: 20th Century

HSF Challenge #23: the Ettie Mae Hooverette Dress

When it came time for the HSF Challenge #23: Gratitude (make something utilises the tutorials, patterns and research that so many of the historical costuming community make available for free) I was in a bit of a quandary. I’ve got a list of tutorials and patterns that I want to use that is a mile long, and kilometres of fabric and lace that have been gifted to me by generous people, but every one of these tutorials and patterns was would be a very involved project. Stupidly I’d scheduled the ‘Generosity’ challenge right at the end of the university semester, and I was up to my neck in marking. What to do!?! I had a browse through the HSF photo albums and finished projects for inspiration, and was reminded again of the Hooverette dress that Jen did for the Robes & Robings challenge. It’s simple, it’s sweet, I’m madly in love with it, and I want one! Also, Jen did a bunch of awesome research on Hooverette and wrap dresses from the 20s-40s, making reproducing …

Rate the Dress: Deco tones

Published by The Dreamstress

For once, you were amazingly unanimous about a Rate the Dress. With the exception of a two dissenting votes down and two perfect 10 votes, all the ratings fell from 6.5 to 9 for last week’s extremely matched brown-pink & blue Rate the Dress yet. Unsurprisingly, the end result was right in the middle of that range: 7.6 out of 10. As Beatrix said “not a showstopper but it’d certainly make you take a 2nd or 3rd look.” After all the muted colours and half tones last week, this I really felt we needed something bright and bold and crisp and refreshing to rate. This advertisement from the New York Public Library’s digital collection fits the bill perfectly. I thought about having a dress-off, but I don’t think it would be a fair battle as we can’t see enough of the orange ensemble to really rate it (though she would definitely win a shoe-off! The blue heels look positively common compared to the orange sandals) so you’ll be rating the green and blue outfit. …

Rate the Dress: Lanvin does fancy fancy dress – maybe

Published by The Dreamstress

Reaction to last week’s be-bowed pink and black confection was quite divided: you either loved pink and black and ruffles, or found it revoltingly saccharine. There were also two camps of thought on what it represented. Most of you thought commedia dell’arte. Like Isabella though, my first thought was definitely 17th century, and I do think that even if she was meant to be a commedia dell’arte figure, all the details of her dress were taken from 17th century costume – the match is just too spot-on. Personally, in many ways I liked the outfit, but like Hana, the overall look left me a teeny bit cold. It was just too perfectly matched and meticulous. I think it would look amazing in real life though, on someone who wasn’t exactly the same colours as her dress and whose hair got a teeny but frizzy and windblown as she danced! I’d probably rate it 7 10ths of a point lower the 7.7 out of 10 that it actually rated. This week let’s look at an actual …