All posts filed under: Rate the dress

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

Rate the Dress: Late Victorian totally un-neutral

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 …

Ball gown, 1839-1840, maker unknown. Gift of Mrs Whitehead, 1966. CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Te Papa PC001362

Rate the Dress: Early Victorian neutrals

I’m very excited about this week’s Rate the Dress choice, because it’s a dress I’ve actually examined* in person.  It’s not often that I get to show one of those!  I may love it because I’ve seen it, but will you love it for what it looks like? Last week:  a late 1910s Lucile dress Well, Lady Luck doesn’t wear green as far as Lucile is concerned, because a lot of you DID NOT like the dress – though the vivid green colour was one of the few elements that was almost universally popular. There were a few people who did like the dress for the overall impression it created, but for most of you, it just wasn’t working. The Total: 5.8 out of 10 Ouch.  Anything below a 6 is pretty unusually bad! This week: Last week’s Lucile dress may have been a little too heavy on the quirkiest details of 1910s fashions (though you may be surprised to find how many examples of dangling-bust-trim were made in the 1910s), so this week’s pick …

Evening dress, Lucile Ltd, Paris, France, c.1918-1920, Silk, gold-embroidered net, satin binding, silk flowers, National Museums of Scotland

Rate the Dress: Hope personified by Lucile, c. 1918-20

Last week’s Rate the Dress looked towards autumn, so this week I’m balancing the globe and showing a dress that evokes springtime.  Last week’s dress also beat the rating of the dress of the week before.  Can this one do even better? Last week: a pleated polonaise gown in rust brown I hadn’t realised how much people loved this dress until I started tallying the ratings, where it quickly became evident that almost all of you thought it was wonderful.  It was just such a flattering, elegant, universal dress, that it received almost universal acclaim.  I’m sure I can’t be the only person who is now on the lookout for rust coloured silk… The Total: 9.6 out of 10 Even better than the 18th century not-a-polonaise!  AND it got 10 scores of 10/10 in a row! This week: a late 1910s Lucile dress This time of year is usually the darkest, grimmest bit of a New Zealand winter (although it’s been eerily non-dark and grim this year), and, from what I hear, it’s the hottest, …