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Rate the Dress: Sophia of Hanover

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week you decreed that Whistler’s Symphony in White was slightly out of tune, giving it a respectable but not brilliant 7 out of 10.

Will this weeks post sing a different tune? Last time you looked at a portrait of the mother of a British monarch (OK, so only Prince Phillip, so not quite a monarch!), you heartily approved.

Will Sophia of Hanover (14 October 1630 — 8 June 1714), mother of George the First of England, have the same luck, or will you find her exotic outfit too outlandish?

Sophia of Hanover as an Indienne, 1644. Painted by her sister, Elisabeth of Bohemia, Princess Palatine

 Sophia of Hanover is shown in 17th century fancy dress as an Indienne princess in a portrait painted by her rather talented sister, Elisabeth of Bohemia.

How do you feel about the pairing of a classic white slipper satin gown with a fanciful feather headdress and the tasseled and feathered polychromatic cloak? Picture perfect? Or positively provincial?

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Rate the Dress: Whistler’s Symphony in White

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week you really got into the spirit of Rate the Dress, considering and critiquing Sophia Dorothea’s outfit and giving her a fairly good rating of 7 out of 10.

This week we move forward a century and a quarter to Whistler’s 1862 Symphony in White.

Symphony in White, James McNeill Whistler, 1861—62, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.

How do you feel about her simple white dress, with sheer striped sleeves, and a full skirt worn without a crinoline and long loose hair?

Will you find it a refreshingly relaxed take on the high crinoline period, or does it feel a little ruffled and unkept?

You can see a very large version of the image on Wikimedia Commons

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Sew & Eat Historical Retreat thedreamstress.com

A Consumption of Costumes

Published by The Dreamstress

Madame Ornata and I were discussing my corset collection the other day, and we came to the conclusion that costuming ought to have its own set of collective nouns.

French or English dress, c. 1760, silk damask with silk supplementary weft. Emma Harter Sweester Fund. 81.290ab, Indianapolis Museum of Art
French or English dress, c. 1760, silk damask with silk supplementary weft. Emma Harter Sweester Fund. 81.290ab, Indianapolis Museum of Art

If the animal world has a ‘charm of hummingbirds’, an ‘ostentation of peacocks’ a ‘crash of rhinoceroses’ and a ‘murder of crows’, the costuming world ought to have its own useful and descriptive set of names for those items which we costumers end up having so many of.

What do you think of the ones we have come up with so far?

  • A consumption of costumes (because that is what they do to our money, spare time, and closet space!)
  • A cinch of corsets
  • A rustle of petticoats
  • A prick of pins (and a stab of needles)
  • A gather of ruching
  • A bump of bustles (or, more elegantly, an architecture of tornures)
  • A flaunt of ruffles
  • A saccharinity of pink
  • A cloy of bows
  • A volume of puffs
  • A flutter of fans
  • An envy of vintage
Ball dress in two parts, about 1858, American or French, MFA Boston

This has it all…a gather of ruching, a bump of bustle, a cinch of corsets, a flaunt of ruffles, a saccharinity of pink and a cloy of bows!

Madame Ornata and I thought of the perfect collective noun for stays, but (of course!) it has completely escaped my mind at the moment.

What other collective nouns should be used for costuming?