All posts filed under: Rate the dress

Dinner dress, 1910—12, American, silk, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2009.300.1303

Rate the Dress: Ring a Ring o Roses

This week’s Rate the Dress moves from orderly paisley, to a more unruly pattern that mixes shapes, textures and floral types with wild abandon.  Will asymmetry, fringe, and wreaths of roses over orchid lei beat out last week’s rating? Last week: a green paisley 1850s dress   Last week’s 1850s frock made some of you remember how disappointed you were to discover that adult life involved far too few balls (after all, what’s the point of being an adult if not tea parties and balls?), and made others think of their least favourite salad greens and dressing combination (as a farmer’s daughter, I’m very alarmed if you’re buying lettuce in that shade of green, but I have no quibble with anyone who wants to claim that mayonnaise is revolting, particularly as a salad dressing). The Total: 8.1 out of 10 Well, it definitely beat the bustle dress of the week before! This week: I’m keeping with the feminine, romantic feel of last weeks dress, but in a very different era, and with a gold tinged …

Silk gauze dress, c. 1855-1860 Gift of Jane M. Gincig and Patricia Larson Kalayjian, FIDM S2011.1087.189

Rate the Dress: Green gauze & paisley

This week’s Rate the Dress tones down the colours, with an 1850s dress in fresh green with touches of white and small formal paisley motifs.  From contrast to calming green: how will the ratings compare? Last week: a bright blue and burgundy 1870s number Well, moths were all the rage on most of the internet last week, but not here on Rate the Dress!  With very few exceptions the ratings were #teammothbowsarebad.  The colours were actually pretty popular, and a few people really did like the dress wholeheartedly.  The rest of you?  Not so much! The Total: 6.6 out of 10 Ouch.  Even the rating is giving the dress side-eye. This week: 1850s ruffles in green silk gauze The overall style and silhouette of the dress is much simpler than last week: a classic second-half-of-the-1850s ballgown silhouette, with tiers of ruffles either woven a la disposition, or edged with a wide border print ribbon. The border features a highly fashionable paisley motif, with a slightly blurred aesthetic that indicates it was created with a warp …

Rate the Dress: Bright blue & burgundy 1870s

One of my favourite things about Rate the Dress is the way it encourages me to find thematic links between different eras, and garments that seem otherwise unrelated.  This week’s 1870s Rate the Dress keeps with the theme of buttons playing peek-a-boo amongst the layers, and adds in a bold and unusual colour scheme that Poiret would have definitely approved of. Last week: Poiret plays with buttons Last week you either liked/really didn’t like the button trim, and thought the back bow ruined/made the dress, and were completely enamoured/turned off by the scalloped hem, and loved/hated the chemise effect and chiffon sleeves.  If any element of the dress was someone’s favourite, it was also someone else’s least favourite! Except for all the ones that only had favourites, and the significantly smaller group that totally disliked it.  It was a bit of a marmite dress. The Total: 7.4 out of 10 A dress where the total really doesn’t reflect the majority of individual feelings: out of 37 ratings, only one was a 7.5! This week: Bright …