With an impressive score of 9.3, last week’s Russian evening/court gown on Nadezhda Polovtseva continued our run of well-received Rate the Dresses.
It came up in the comments, so I thought I’d reassure you that I’m really not trying to pick garments that I’m sure you’ll like! My goal is always to choose something that I think it interesting and provides grounds for discussion, and (with a few exceptions) I can rarely predict how a garment will taken. So let’s find out how this one does…
I’ve been looking at lots of 1910s evening gowns for the construction of my Costume College Gala gown, so this week’s Rate the Dress is on-theme, with a confection by the queen of 1910s romantic froth: Lucile, Lady Duff Gordon.
This dress is the ultimate mid-1910s iteration of a lingerie gown: a delicate lace frock which uses techniques borrowed from lingerie construction, like lace insertion, hemstitching, faggoting, layers of texture showing through sheer veiling, and dainty ribbon trimming.
The overall effect is etherial, fragile, and utterly feminine, with a sweetness that turns the potential risque overtones of peek-a-book lace and details taken from ‘underwear’ into a demure whole.
Even Lucile’s label is all sweetness and froth:
Dress, Lucile (British, 1863—1935), 1916—17, British, silk, cotton, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978.288.1a, b
Sadly, the presentation of this dress never affords us a view of the hem, so you’ll have to imagine how it finishes, and how much of a view of clocked stockings and delicate satin shoes would have been provided.
What do you think? Is the overall effect of all this texture and and daintiness charming and appealing, or a little too cloying and confusing?
Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10.
