All posts filed under: Rate the dress

Robe a la Francaise, 18th century (probably 1770s), silk, Lot 550, sold by Whittakers Auctions, Fall 2016

Rate the Dress: a Francaise as blue as the Hawai’ian ocean

This week’s Rate the Dress pick is thematic: it’s a francaise (be prepared for all the francaise posts…), it’s as blue as the ocean around Hawaii, and it’s covered in a lush array of flowers worthy of any tropical garden. Will it make you feel like you’re on vacation at Versailles and Waikiki at the same time, or will it leave you cold? Last week: a late Regency era evening dress The star-shaped-sequins covered evening dress didn’t inspire an outpouring of commentary and interest, but most of you who rated it agreed that it was an extremely attractive and charming example of its type…well, at least all of you who commented by Saturday evening did. Perhaps there was an outpouring of dislike before the ratings closed, because… The Total: 9.4 out of 10 I haven’t had internet since I wrote this post, so don’t know what the final rating is. It will be a mystery until I make it out of the valley and back to town. Picture perfect! This week: There isn’t a huge …

Evening Dress, French, c. 1817, silk and wool gauze with silk satin, iron floral pailettes, silk embroidery, silk-wrapped paper, cording of silk around metal core, and glass beads, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1958-74-1

Rate the Dress: Puffed sleeves & pailettes

Published by The Dreamstress

Post an ‘interesting’ dress, get an ‘interesting’ set of responses! This week’s puffed sleeves & pailette embellished Rate the Dress pick is a little more subtly interesting: possibly somewhere between last week and the week before. Let’s see what you make of it! Last week: late bustle-era velvet, beading, and patterns Not surprisingly, there was a wide range of reactions to last weeks late 1880s bustle dress. Ratings ranged from 3 to 10. It was not a dress that was compromising, or trying to please. It was a dress with a definite viewpoint, and a definite opinion. The Total: 8 I strongly suspect that the wearer of the dress wouldn’t have cared a fig what we rated it, and whether we liked it or not. She liked it, and that was the only opinion that mattered! And that fact rather makes me like it even more. This week: a late Regency era evening dress This week I’ve gone simple and classic, but with hopefully enough interesting details to keep it from being boring, with a …

http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/159169

Rate the Dress: Late Victorian totally un-neutral

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week’s dress was deemed quietly elegant and almost offensively in-offensive. Beautiful (excepting, perhaps the sleeve bows), but too retiring and neutral to inspire much passion on either end (excepting, perhaps, once again, when it came to the bows). So this week I’ve chosen a dress, that while in (technically) neutral shades of browns & blacks, and sleek in silhouette, is determinedly un-neutral in every other respect. You might, in the end, decide it is also elegant, but not for reasons of quietude! Last week: early Victorian neutrals Things I took away from your responses: You thought the dress was pretty but ultimately a little boring. You don’t like brown. You really, really didn’t like those sleeve bows. But even if you don’t like brown and bows you recognise and reward good construction. The Total: 8.4 Exactly the rating that a dress that would be supremely appropriate at any event without ever drawing attention to itself would be expected to get. And I learned a lot about early Victorian trims that kind of look like …