All posts filed under: Rate the dress

Overdress of a robe à l’anglaise, Chintz: painted and resist-dyed cotton tabby, English dress made of Indian export chint, c.1780, Royal Ontario Museum, 972.202.12

Rate the Dress: Rosy pink Robe a la….

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m going to try to keep up a regular blogging schedule again This week’s dress is a floral bedecked pink frock that’s an excellent example of transitional styles in the last quarter of the 18th century, and is also an illustration of British colonialism in that period. Rate how it looks, but think about the circumstances that made it possible. Last Week and-then-some: a mid 1860s dress in green Good: green. Bad: mis-matched green (quite possibly not the dress’s fault: the tabs may have been a perfect match to begin with). Good: silhouette. Maybe: Those tabs. The dress would be too boring without them, but you couldn’t really call them good. Bad: No trim on the back of the dress The Total: 7 out of 10 It was a dress to be OK with, but not to love. This week: a 1780s dress in Indian chintz I think this 1780s Anglaise (more on that later) is such an interesting dress, because it shows how cuts and definitions of different types of garments blend and become hazy …

Rate the Dress: Grass Green 1860s

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m very fond of pink and green together, so it’s not surprising that I gravitated towards a green dress after last week’s pink dress. In an odd way, this week’s dress also remind’s me of last week’s dress. Will it remind you of it too? And if so, for all the right reasons, or all the wrong reasons? Last Week: a 1906 day ensemble in deep pink One of the interesting things that comes out of Rate the Dress is how much our prior perceptions colour the way we see a garment, whether they are distinctly personal, or a general product of the time and culture we live in. Usually this is a good thing, or at least neutral. Last week it got out of hand, and revealed some of the unpleasant underbelly of the society we live in. Luckily a quick clean up of the comments and a reminder to be kind got things back on track, and led to an amazing discussion: mostly about the dress, but also about negativity and positivity, how …

Day Ensemble, American about 1906, Boston, USA, Wool twill (broadcloth), silk twill, soutache braid, silk tassles, and boning, Gift of Miss Mary Perdew, MFA Boston 53.167a-b

Rate the Dress: Edwardian Rose

Published by The Dreamstress

IMPORTANT: Some of the comments on this post (now deleted) were so out of hand I’m putting an extra warning up here. Your rating can be very poor numerically, but your comment still has to be kind. If your comment ventures into body-shaming or slut-shaming it will be deleted. If it’s marginal it will be edited to comply with basic standards of taste and kindness. If you think that being super negative and coming up with insulting analogies makes you clever 1) you’re wrong, it makes me think exactly the opposite (default negativity is lazy and based on the mistaken belief that disliking things makes you look smart – a position only held by not very smart people) and 2) I’ll delete your comment. The goal of Rate the Dress is to spread historical knowledge and to give us all a chance to look at the details of garments, and to think about why they were used, and were considered fashionable and attractive, in an entertaining way. To those who contribute to this goal: hooray! …