The Dreamstress

Latest Posts

Robe Ã l’anglaise ca. 1780 From the Galleria del Costume di Palazzo Pitti via Europeana Fashion

Rate the Dress: Georgian embroidery

Last week I drove from Wellington to Gisborne, 9 hours drive up the eastern coast of North Island, and back, and was reminded again how stunningly gorgeous New Zealand is. The country is currently bedecked in autumnal splendour: end of season flax flowers standing in stark black against the sky, pampas grasses blushing pink and champagne and silvery lavender, the occasional stands of deciduous trees in a blaze of colour, meadows returning to lush green with the resumption of rain, and sudden storms bringing exhilarating downpours and rainbows at the end.

So my Rate the Dress pick for this week comes in all these colours: though it’s not a style of dress that was ever worn in New Zealand!

Plus, the totals are (finally) in for the feather bedecked confection of the week before!

Last week: an 1870s dress in pale pink and ivory, with historical touches

The general reaction to last week’s dress was that it just didn’t quite get the balance right. Something was missing, or was there that shouldn’t be, for almost everyone who commented. But as it was, not that many people commented – it got just over half the comments of the dress of the week before.

The Total: 7.8

Technically much more popular than the feathered dress of the week before – but certainly of much less interest to you!

This week: an 1780s gown with an embroidered hem.

This 1780s gown features fabric with a small scattered floral motif, and an elaborate border of larger flowers and geometric patterning worked along the bottom of the petticoat and the edges of the overskirt.

According to the Palazzo Pitti this dress is an Anglaise (bodice back and skirt back cut in one piece at the centre panel), but I think it’s actually an Italian gown (bodice back and back skirt cut as two totally separate pieces). However, the image resolution isn’t high enough for me to be certain, so I’ve stuck with the given description.

The elaborate borders make this dress quite formal, and at the cutting edge of fashion for the 1780s, showing the move away from the three dimensional trimmings & all-over patterning of rococo fashions, towards the flat embellishment and emphasis on lines and borders in neoclassical fashion. While the heavier fabrics, shape of this dress and the natural waist are still very much in the 18th century tradition, you can see how the design is moving towards the aesthetic seen in dresses like the embroidered 1790s number I posted a few months ago.

This gown was definitely meant to impress in its day. Is it impressing today?

Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10

A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.

(as usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment, so I can find it! And 0 is not on a scale of 1 to 10. Thanks in advance!)

Sewing & Sustainability & some shorts

Published by The Dreamstress

Remember my Pants on Fire shorts? (I hope you do, because I love the photos, and the story of how they got their name is pretty hilarious).

I made them to take with me to a visit to my parents on their farm in Hawai’i back in 2016. They were great, but the farm is hard on clothes, and they got thrashed.

Something got on the fabric, or there was something about the fabric, that got this weird bleaching everywhere. Plus there were farm stains.

The Pants on Fire Shorts - Sewing & Sustainability

I would have just left them on the farm, to wear the next time I went home to Hawai’i, but I brought them back to Wellington, because I’d made them so quickly I just drew the pattern straight on the fabric, and forgot to keep a copy.

So I took them apart back in Wellington, took patterns off of them, and then I sewed them back up.

I even took the time to add a zip facing, which I hadn’t originally included, and that meant I had to lengthen the waistband, so now the shorts are a weird patchwork of fabrics on the inside!

Why bother re-sewing worn, stained shorts?

My mother didn’t teach me to sew, but she did teach me one important thing about sewing: always use good quality fabric. Good quality isn’t the same as expensive, but don’t waste your time on stuff that won’t last.

And she & my dad also taught me another thing, even more important: reducing and re-using are the best way to care for the environment. Things should be cherished, not treated carelessly, and that function is more important than looks. The more uses you can get out of an item, the more you honour its existence and purpose.

(as kids we found Dad’s insistence on taking care of things and repairing things incredibly aggravating – as an adult, I desperately wish everyone of my parent’s generation had had the same convictions – the planet would be in a much better state if their attitude was more common).

So, these shorts may be stained, but the fabric is still robust, and I can still use them for painting and farm wear and other uses – and the more wears you can get out of a garment, the better.

So my shorts are back in circulation. They went back to Hawai’i with me last year, and got worn, and worn, and worn. This time they stayed there, to be used every time I’m home.

And to celebrate, here is the world’s most unflattering photo of the shorts in action, pockets stuffed full of macadamia nuts and an avocado:

Rate the Dress: Pale Pink Restrained Historicism

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week’s rate the dress was almost universally unpopular, and also quite confusing: what colour was it? Gold? Green? Grey-faune as the auction listing gave it? To simplify the confusion, this week I’ve picked a dress in a very simple colour. It’s pale pink. I don’t think anyone is going to argue with that! (We could get quite detailed about the exact hue though…cherry blossom? Blush? )

Last week: an 1876 reception or day dress said to have been worn by Empress Eugenie

I’m actually away for the next week, rusticating in the glorious rural swathes of New Zealand, away from reliable internet. So I haven’t tallied the votes yet. But I can tell you what the overall verdict is going to be: not good.

Update: Now with the Total! : 4.9 out of 10

With ratings ranging from 1 to 9.5, I find it very satisfying that the aggregate total is exactly at the mid point!

This week: an 1870s gown with historically inspired details.

This week I’m sticking with the same timeperiod as last week, but going for a very different look: a prim gown in palest pink with ivory damask trim

A pink faille and ivory damask historicist evening gown (dinner or reception?), 1875-80, sold by Kerry Taylor Auctions

Kerry Taylor Auctions describes this as an evening gown, so I’ve included that in my description, but I’m not convinced. The high collar of this dress is anything but evening-wear. The rest of the dress, with its restrained shape and historical touches, suggests early Aesthetic dress – and the Aesthetic movement wasn’t so far removed from standard dress that it flouted the normal conventions of what you covered and what you exposed in Victorian fashion.

I suspect this is more of a reception dress: worn to formal events earlier in the day.

Despite the historicism so beloved of the Arts and Crafts and aesthetic movements, and the removal of many of the extraneous details you normally associate with late 1870s dress, this garment sticks to the standard fashionable silhouette, with emphasis on the small waist. There is space in the hips and back for hip padding, and a small bustle. Slide back up and look at the front view, and notice how curved the dress is over the stomach. Flat abdomens certainly weren’t the Victorian ideal!

So, if last week’s dress was strangely coloured, strangely trimmed, and overall strange, is this pink ensemble, with so much less trim more pretty and picturesque and presentable?