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Mark your calendars!

Published by The Dreamstress

Mark your calendars for Saturday Sept 10th because I’ll be featuring at Wellington’s very popular Dr Sketchy, talking about historical undergarments while my ‘Timeless Beauties’ pose in corsets and bustles.

If you aren’t busy ‘Squee’-ing in excitement, you may be wondering “What’s Dr Sketchy?”

Dr Sketchy is life drawing for cool people.  There are branches all over the world, so in Paris or Tokyo or Topeka (OK, not sure if there is a branch in the last one yet) you can get together with a bunch of other awesome people from all walks of life, in an awesome, totally not boring art school location,  and draw even awesome-er models.

Wellington’s Dr Sketchy has featured Roller Derby girls, Burlesque dancers, and Mexican wrestlers.  And now they are featuring me!

And my Timeless Beauties

(is that not the best phrase ever!?!)

So come along to try your art skills, admire the models, learn a bit about historical undergarments & how they inspired artists from Boucher to Toulouse-Lautrec, listen to some great music, and maybe win a prize!

Polls and favourites

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week’s poll was really interesting and enlightening for me.

The poll question was “What is your favourite Dreamstress dress?”

It’s not a question I would ever have dared ask on my own, but Elise suggested it when I asked for poll ideas (thanks Elise!) and I thought it was a great suggestion.

The most interesting thing that I learned from the poll is that there isn’t a clear favourite: the votes were widely distributed across all the garments.

The most popular was the Juno Victorian Goddess dress, with 16% of you choosing it as your favourite.  I’m not surprised: it’s a gorgeous dress, it looks amazing on the models who have worn it, and there are photos that show it off well.

It’s not actually among my favourite dresses, mostly because I didn’t make it for me, and it doesn’t fit me, so I’m a little detached from it.

The runner up was Ninon’s dress, with 12.5% of the votes.  That is one of my favourites!

It was closely followed by the 1880s Japonisme ensemble, with 10.7% of the vote.  I was reminded that I haven’t worn that in ages, and I do love it: it’s definitely time to pull it out for a photoshoot!

The 1878 Jeanne Samary dress and the 1910 Luna Moth frock both got 8.9% of the vote – time to do a photoshoot of the first, and a finish the second!

The thing that really surprised me is that the 1780s Lady Anne Darcy robe a la francaise only got one vote: in person it is the dress that people rave over.  It makes the audience spontaneously applaud when it appears.  If only photography could capture movement!

I did notice in all of this that the coloured dresses get more votes than the white ones.  Sigh  Apparently not everyone shares my obsession with neutrals!

I guess it is good that my next half dozen or so frocks that I have planned are all vivid colours.  Mostly vivid green now that I think about it.  I hope you like greens!

Corsets and cakes and cameras

Published by The Dreamstress

My lovely friends and I had a corset/undergarment themed photoshoot last weekend.

It was the perfect day: after a week of freezing cold, snow, rain, and general misery, the air warmed up, and the sun came out.

I picked up a bunch of delicious Chinese baked goods (mmmm…coconut buns and red bean sesame rolls!) for afternoon tea, and we drove out to Emily’s adorable retro house in a little hidden valley a bit out of Wellington.

Emily is the wonder behind a number of fabulous blogs, both as a designer/programmer (she did mine!) and as a blogger in her own right.  Check out Ever So Scrumptious  for her wonderful vintage take on life.

Emily’s house is really the cutest thing ever: I have major decor envy.  She has old vintage pieces, and a black and red and white kitchen, and dinosaur prints, and taxidermy!

Really, taxidermy: a little stuffed ‘evil bambi’ fawn, and a branch with a bunch of Australian birds on it.  Both very vintage, so no new fawns and birdies are dying to support her decor.

It was the perfect place to put on corsets and stays and bustles and be photographed.  Here is a selection of what I got:

Elisabeth and the dowager kitty share a moment

I make Shell laugh

Sarah was amazing behind and in-front of the camera

Does my bum look big in this?

Look at the ceiling!

 

I call this corset contrapposto

I’ll show more of Shell in the nougat corset later.

If you want to see more pictures from the shoot (e.g. the really good ones) check out Sarah’s photo blog.  You can see Emily in one of the three adorable vintage outfits  she wore that day,   Shell lounging in the nougat corset, me in stays making saucy faces, more Elisabeth finally taking up as much space as the rest of us in a bustle, and Madame O and the taxidermy.

After the official photos we put on normal people clothes (well, most of us did) and had tea and cakes and watched the native wildlife in Emily’s backyard.

Madame O demonstrates dinosaur eating habits while the rest of us just eat

Madame O, Emily, & Joie de Vivre share secrets. Elisabeth wants someone else to eat the last alien baby

Coconut buns = happiness

It was the perfect day.  And yes, there was a particular reason for the photoshoot.  Emily needed pretty corset pictures for the poster for an upcoming Dr Sketchy featuring me talking about historical undergarments.

Squee!  More about that soon!