All posts filed under: Rate the dress

Robe Ã l'anglaise, England (Spitalfields), c. 1750. Yellow brocaded silk, woven with brightly coloured large-scale oriental poppies, posies and swags, the ground figured with arabesques and wine silk spotted cartouches, linen lining, trimmed with pinked furbelows; stomacher trimmed with rosettes and braid, sold by Kerry Taylor Auctions

Rate the Dress: Sunny, sunny yellow, ca 1750

Today’s rate the dress is brought to you courtesy of the unprecedented heatwave that is hitting New Zealand. It’s so bright and sunny that I picked an equally bright and sunny dress to go with it – though I wouldn’t want to be wearing the heavy silk of this weeks Rate the Dress in the heat! Last week: a shot purple dress and matching cape A couple of you loved last weeks dress, but most people thought it was nice but not fantastic. Noted let-downs were the ‘seaweed-y’ trim, and that pesky centre front seam. Still, all the ratings were in the top half of the range, so I guess my comparisons to horrible purple rooms didn’t put you off too much – or you were feeling contrary so had to rate it well, simply because I made the comparison The Total: 8.3 out of 10 Middling. This week: I’m rather famous/notorious for being a fan of yellow, and I try not to lean into that too much with Rate the Dress. I wouldn’t …

Day dress and cape of shot silk, early 1850s, The John Bright Historic Costume Collection

Rate the Dress: Purple, purple, and more purple, 1850s

Published by The Dreamstress

When we bought our lovely little cottage four years ago, the master bedroom was painted purple floor to ceiling. It was awful*. When I saw today’s Rate the Dress it instantly reminded me of our previously-purple bedroom: not because it is necessarily awful, even really the same colour, but because it is a lot of purple, and because friends said of our bedroom “that colour might be really nice in something else, but not as a bedroom.”** Last week: a 1920s day dress in printed silk It was very easy to tell what people would give as a rating for last week’s dress, depending on what words you used for it. Those who found it ‘subtle’ or ‘delicate’ or ‘refined’ rated it above an 8, those who felt it was ‘blah’ or ‘washed out’ or a ‘sack’ gave it significantly less. side note: Catherine says it was a rice cake: healthful but not appealing. I happen to adore rice cakes. And a whole host of other very delicately flavoured foods with dry crunchy textures. My …

Woman's Dress Ensemble, United States, circa 1870, Silk taffeta, linen plain weave, and cotton twill weave with silk macrame fringe, LACMA, M.2007.211.773a-d

Rate the Dress: Raspberry pink 1870s with two types of fringe

Published by The Dreamstress

After all the excitement of the festive fancy frock-a-thon, it was hard to pick an ensemble that wouldn’t seem like a letdown for this week’s Rate the Dress. Hopefully this week’s pick is interesting enough to pique your interest, even if it isn’t a glittering evening gown. Last week: a sparkly, pleated, bow-bedecked 1920s frock Last week’s 1920s dress didn’t receive quite the enthusiastic reception that heralded the House of Worth frock of the week before – at least in the number of commenters. Those that did rate it, however, quite liked it (except the bow), and so it received exactly the same rating! The Total: 9.3 out of 10 I was very surprised by how many people didn’t like the bow (and didn’t realise that it was exactly the same fabric as the bodice – it just appears different because you’re seeing many layers of it). Rachel’s comment sums up exactly how I feel about the bow and the dress. Without it, I thought the dress would actually have been very boring and ordinary. …