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The Designer, August 1916 thedreamstress.com

Building Your Own 1910s & WWI Wardrobe: Dresses, Coats & Jackets

Continuing on my series on making your own 1910s & WWI era wardrobe (with a focus on 1914-19), here are patterns for making dresses, coats & jackets!

The patterns I’ve included here are from pattern companies I’ve made items from, or have helped students or friends make items from, and can recommend on that basis.

I have not included pattern companies that I do not recommend or cannot support on an ethical basis, or pattern companies I haven’t seen or tested in any way.  I also do not include patterns that are essentially modern blocks updated with a period aesthetic: I find that they rarely give the correct look.

Other posts in the series include:

Hope you find it helpful!

Dresses:

Coats & Jackets:  

For more on achieving an accurate mid-late-1910s look, check out my series on Body Ideals & Corsetry 1913-1921

Fashions for May 1918, The Deliniator

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

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 ca. 1817 evening dress.

This week’s dress keeps to the most popular evening dress colour scheme of the first half of the 19th century: whites and very pale, muted shades.  These pale hues stood out in dimly lit rooms, reflecting the glow of candles.

This dress also features star-shaped pailettes, glass beads, and other and touches of metallics in the elaborate hem embellishment, which would have added further gleams, glitters, and sparkles to the frock.   The wearer would have twinkled her way across the dance floor, or caught the eye across the table every time she turned to her dinner partner.

What do you think?  Are the embellishments enough to suitably enliven this simple white frock?

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.  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!  Thanks in advance!)

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir in photos

My charity talk for LifeLinc went off beautifully last weekend, thanks to fantastic organisation on their part, and an absolutely wonderful set of models.

Here are my favourite photos of the day:

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

I couldn’t bring a full contingent of shoes down to Nelson, and the ones I did bring didn’t fit Miss Francaise that well, so we had fun with her shoe collection.

Sometimes it’s nice to be historically accurate, and sometimes it’s nice to rock My Little Pony high tops.

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

The Frou Frou Francaise was wearable-done, but needed more trimming.  Having seen it on a model, I’ve decided I’m not totally happy with the back pleats or sleeves, and am going to re-do those.

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Miss Ninon was the youngest model I’ve ever worked with, and looked absolutely perfect.

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

And what luck to get a model who looks exactly like Jane Bennet!

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Ramsay to Renoir thedreamstress.com

Thank you thank you to all the models, and to everyone who came.