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Feeling Grand and Frivilous

Published by The Dreamstress

Here are the images from Grandeur and Frivolity: Music and Fashion in the courts of Louis XIV and Louis XV.

All of us, all looking amazing

Ralph dances a period dance. I didn't make his outfit!

Bianca, the soprano, thrills us all

Clarissa talks about music while the Blonde Venus & Daniil look on

Bianca illustrates 18th century undergarments, & masquerade costumes

With Madame Ornata and the Blonde Venus, both amazing frocks by Madame O

Discussing the invisible embroidery on Daniil's coat

The Blonde Venus & Ralph dance the minuet

The event went beautifully.  It was a privilege to work with The Historic Arts Trust, and especially the amazing Clarissa, who arranged all the music and coordinated all the musicians.

I’m also deeply indebted to all of the people who made this possible: Mrs C, Madame Ornata (two of the dresses were hers!), all the models, my sister and mother in law, Shell and Joie de Vivre, and of course Mr Dreamy.

And you!  For suggestions and support and encouragement and research!  Seriously – some days when I’m just soooo tired, reading your comments is just the perk-up I need to keep going.

 

Greek key shoes – swoon

Published by The Dreamstress

As we all know, I’m really into Greek keys.

My current Greek key  obsession is these evening boots:

Evening boots, 1885-90, Metropolitan Museum of Art

*Swoon*

Evening boots, 1885-90, Metropolitan Museum of Art

I lurve them.  Everything about them.  The red heels.  The invisible side lacing.  The curlicues between the Greek key borders.  The way the Greek keys turn on the toes.  The stripe up the front.  Happiness.

There is a stripe up the back too.  Happiness.

Evening boots, 1885-90, Metropolitan Museum of Art

It’s more of a platonic lurve from afar though.  Like the way you drool over a hot celebrity, but actually don’t want to meet them in person and would just blush and freak out and disappear yourself if they showed up in person and approached you.

I like the idea of the shoes, but really, I couldn’t handle them in person.  It’s just too much shoe for me.

 

A 1760s/70s man’s ensemble – again

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve been planning on making an 18th century man’s ensemble to go with the Lady Anne Darcy dress for ages.

I started one almost two years ago, but it got set aside in favour of other projects.

The Grandeur & Frivolity talk was the perfect excuse to pull it out again and finish it, but things didn’t go that easily.

First of all, the jacket didn’t look that grand when I fished it out of the bag that it was crumpled in and ironed it:

Not that grand. OK, showing it on Isabelle doesn't help.

Clearly some taking it apart and re-shaping and interfacing is in order.

That was do-able.

Making sleeves out of thin air wasn’t though.  And I mean ‘thin air’ literally.  I can’t find the extra fabric from this jacket anywhere.

And then the waistcoat didn’t fit Daniil, the model for the talk.  And I hated the squidgy synthetic fabric it was made out of.

So basically, all of the stuff that I started with got stuffed back in the bag it came from, and I restarted.

I’m using this suit from Tiden’s Toj as my main inspiration piece:

Man's suit, Tidens Toj

My reasons for this are simple:

  1. I have enough sky blue duchesse silk satin to make a jacket, but not enough to make matching breeches and waistcoat, so the coloured jacket/white waistcoat and breeches works well.
  2. Minimal embroidery means that if I do a good enough job on the jacket, I can contemplate embroidering it myself without being completely overwhelmed by the task.

I’ll be making a few changes to the outfit.  I’m going to do a double-button front to the breeches, and tweak a few other things to make the date a little earlier than the Tidens Toj outfit.  The jacket I already started is definitely 1780s, and having an earlier example will make my mens wardrobe more flexible.  It will be subtle, and only myself and other historical freaks will notice, but it will make me happy.

So look out for more blog posts about this in the coming days!