Last week most of you loved the 1870s dress with its fabulous pleating and embroidered garland. You loved it so much that I kept getting lost in counting the 10s and having to go back to the last number that wasn’t a 10 to see if that was 5 10s in a row, or 6! Despite all the love, the amount of voters means it is getting harder and harder to get a perfect 10 – Vignon’s frock came in at an excellent 9 out of 10. Close!
I’m feeling history deprived. I’ve been doing too much hands-on stuff and not enough research. So today’s Rate the Dress is all about me wanting to look stuff up.
Sigismund III Vasa, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and briefly King of Sweden, was one of Poland’s most controversial rulers. On the one hand, his reign coincided with an period of wealth, power, and cultural influence for Poland and Lithuania, and on the other he has been accused of setting in motion a downward spiral in the region as he focused on trying to regain the throne of Sweden to the detriment of his Eastern European thrones.
Sigismund’s wardrobe may prove to be equally divisive. He is wearing an outfit both outrageous and refined, mixing sever black, elaborate but subtle detailing, snow-leopard lining and a stiff lace ruff. His outfit also a mix of cultures: a tall fez-like hat, a European ruff, a scimitar, and a doublet patterned in designs that look intriguingly like Chinese calligraphy.
Sigismund III Vasa by Martin Kober, circa 1590 via Wikimedia Commons
Does Sigismund’s outfit manage to balance all of its elements successfully, or, like the king himself, is it unable to maintain an equilibrium between the east and the west, between the last elements of the Medieval and the first elements of modernity?
Rate the dress on a scale of 1 to 10 (and be sure to comment on the post itself, not on the image if you click through for a larger view, because I won’t remember to see and count your votes if they aren’t linked directly to the post)
