All posts filed under: Admire

Regency hair

Remember the Regency photoshoot Theresa and I did back in January?  There were so many pretty photos from it that I didn’t manage to show you even half of the good ones, and I was afraid the blog would get rather monotonous if it was just post after post of these photos! One thing I did really want to show you was our hair, as I think both our hairstyles turned out rather beautifully.  I usually go for earlier Regency, quite deshabille, with lots of loose tendrils, with my hair, but Theresa has a secret talent: she’s a master braider. Actually, it’s not at all a secret talent, because Theresa is so awesome at braiding that she has a braiding business and  runs incredibly popular workshops on it  in Melbourne. With a braider par excellence at my disposal, of course I had to go for super braided hair.  I’m not a period hair expert at all, so we just stuck to LOTS of plain braids, all wrapped around each other and a bun. I have …

Lingerie Touches for Frocks, 1932

I’m  got a bunch of blog posts half written at the moment, but they are all long and elaborate, and I just don’t have the time to finish them today. So instead, a quick, sweet and simple blog post, featuring a page from the March  1932 Fashion Services Magazine, with frocks that show ‘Lingerie Touches for Chic’   In addition to the lingerie touches (by which they mean handiwork and lace edging), there is lots of exoticism – Persian prints, and ‘scarab’ crepes (which sound like the pure silk variation of roshanara). Plus, Irish crochet is a la mode and skirt lengths are shorter – a whole 11 to 13 inches off the floor (and that’s in shoes!) .  

A textile tour of New Zealand: five fabulous places to visit

Jules asked about things that the textile and fashion enthusiast should see in NZ. Sadly, there aren’t actually many  exclusively textile and fashion focused places to visit in New Zealand – there is the NZ Fashion Museum, but it doesn’t have a building, so just does travelling exhibitions (and so far they have been more eye-candy than sink-your-teeth-into-them-and-learn exhibitions), and there are small scattered fashion and textile history displays at other museums.  Many of these are fabulous – just not all in one place. With that said, here are my five top picks of textile-y things to see and do in New Zealand.  I’ve picked things that are open all year round, rather than special one-off events like Art Deco Weekend, World of Wearable Arts, or Victorian Days, so that a visitor to NZ could feasibly see all of them in one trip. I’ve put them in North to South order. 1) Auckland War Memorial Museum, Auckland Much as I love Wellington, I have to admit that the best spread  of historic dress on display …