All posts filed under: 20th Century

Rate the Dress: Colour + drape + embellishment = ? in 1912

I’m supposed to be on the beach on the Sunshine Coast in Australia not worrying about blogs and students and sewing (and hopefully not spiders or snakes or sociopaths either), but I have wireless internet, so I’ve been naughty and added up the ratings for last weeks daring 1830s ‘sexy sailor’ costume. Unfortunately it seems that most of you were too confused too comment, and those of you who did just rated it on aesthetics, since you couldn’t figure out the costume. What was the outfit supposed to be? Aesthetically it divided you, with most of you either loving or hating it, bringing it in at a middle-of-the-road 6.4 out of 10 Hopefully this week’s rate the dress, a striking 1912 frock from the Italian costume collection Abiti Antichi, will leave you neither confused nor uninterested. The display and presentation of this evening dress may not be ideal, but you can still clearly see the daring combination of gold silk satin with tone-on-tone embroidery, black velvet and net trim, iridescent beading, and a flash of …

Spring shoes

Published by The Dreamstress

Spring has come to New Zealand. In fact, it’s almost summer. My spring flowers are almost finished (and I managed to not inflict a single post with macro images of them on you this year), and I heard the first cicada of the year last week. To celebrate, here are a rainbow of pretty, pastel-y, spring-y shoes. There are pink ones: And purple ones: And green ones: And blue ones: And yellow ones: And some that have a whole garden of colours:

A confession

Published by The Dreamstress

I have a confession based on last week’s Liz Taylor Rate the Dress. I don’t think Liz Taylor is particularly attractive. And I really don’t think that she did the clothes she wore any favours, particularly the nipped-waist body-conscious frocks they put her in in her heyday. There, it’s said. You can now gasp in horror and question my taste forevermore. Or rush to the comment function to add that you feel the same way and have never been brave enough to say it before! So what’s this about? Well, first I feel that when she was quite young, she was generically pretty, but never interestingly or memorially beautiful. There was always something too round and bland about her face for it to be really striking or notable. And then she aged so quickly. At 17 she looked, 25, and at 25 she looked 35, and by the time she was 30 she looked like she was in her mid 40s. And her face always reminds me of those chicken breasts that the pump water …