I know that boring colour to bold colour isn’t the most novel or inventive reason to choose a Rate the Dress, but Rate the Dress doesn’t always have to break the mould: sometimes it’s just about picking an interesting dress. Hopefully my choice this week at least fits that category! As to beauty, that’s up to you.
Last week’s Rate the Dress really was the opposite of the dress of the week before: muted hues, simple trimmings, a very different silhouette – and where the bustle dress of all-the-stuff elicited a lengthy and detailed conversation, the restrained Regency frock garnered half the amount of comments. And the rating spread was inverted: most ratings were right in the middle, with only a few on the extremities.
The Total: 6.7 out of 10
Last fortnight’s dress was one to love or loathe, last week’s frock did not inspire, but did not offend – and came out with the better rating. But some of us will still adore (or hate) one or the other, no matter the rating!
This week: an 1860s day dress in raspberry pink
After a extremely decorated and extremely restrained dress, I thought I’d go for something that’s both simple, but undeniably bold:
This late 1860s day dress makes full use of the bold colours which became fashionable in the wake of the discovery of aniline dyes, pairing a bright raspberry pink with wine red, and setting it off with crisp white.
From a distance the appliqued lines are bold and simple. Each line placement is meticulously thought out. They hide the seams on the front of the skirt, echo the folds in the back and highlight the new elliptical skirt shape.
What do you think? Does this dress provide equal visual rewards from a distance, and in intimate proximity?
Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10
A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.
(as usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment
I went home to Hawai’i to spend the December holidays with my parents. It’s the first time in 14 years I’ve gone back to Hawai’i in December, because I usually try to escape NZ in the Southern Hemisphere winter (June-Sept), not our lovely early summer.
But I had an absolutely wonderful trip, and am so glad I went home. Here’s some of the things I got up to:
1. Eating lots of fruit
My parents have a tropical fruit farm, and grow pretty much every tropical fruit you’ve ever heard of (except durian), and lots you haven’t. And I gorged on as much of them as you can possibly have every day without bad things happening…
2. Throwing a 9 course Christmas Eve dinner for 11 based on historical recipes
I wanted to do something a bit fun and different for my parent’s big holiday celebration (which ended up being Christmas Eve dinner), and a formal, coursed dinner is definitely a novelty in Hawai’i – even more so if it’s historical!
I melded historical recipes with local ingredients, and we had:
Apertifs:Spiced rosajamaica tea and bread with sauces.
Soupe: Poree Blanche (Medieval white soup with aliums and almond milk), with green onions instead of leeks, and macadamia nut milk instead of almonds
Entree: Torte Salviate (Herbed Egg Tart) (15th Century), with duck eggs and herbs from my parents farm
Salad: Salmagundi (17th century) using ingredients entirely from the farm
Plat Principal: SavoryFrumetee (Medieval) made with venison stock, and Venison with Sauce Verte. All the historical mentions of frumentee I could find describe it being served with venison, and the feral deer on Moloka’i are out of control at the moment, so everyone has a freezer full of it. Sauce verde is parsley and verjuice with spices – the perfect tart accompaniment to the heavy, sweet, spiced flavours so popular in Medieval mains.
Amuse Boche:Midshipman’s Butter (18th Century). What’s Midshipman’s Butter? Avocado! An Englishman in the Caribbean in the 18th century described avocado served as a salad, and avocado on toast.
Sweets: Ices (Regency): Mangolassi and guanabana (soursop) ices with pecan cookies. The ices were vegan: coconut and frozen fruit, and the best ice cream I’ve ever made. Perfect texture, divine flavour.
Dessert: Baklava (14th century), and dried fruit in rosewater syrup (Medieval) over macadamia pulp. One of the family friends was Turkish, and baklava and fruits in syrup are documented back to at least the 14th century, so she made them. Traditionally the fruit would be served over rice pudding, but we used the leftover macadamia nut from the soup. She also gave her baklava a tropical twist with lime and coconut. So delicious!
Digestifs: Fruitcake and turkish coffee or tea. My parents-in-law taught me how to make the family fruitcake recipe (sans alcohol, because I’m a Baha’i), and I hauled all 4 kilos of it to Hawai’i in my suitcase. Customs had no problem with it, but it sure put a strain on my luggage allowance. And it was delicious – especially with properly made Turkish coffee. Or so I’m told: I’m not a coffee drinker.
It took some help from a couple of family friends, but I pulled it off, and I’m so proud of myself!
And I forgot to take a single photo…
So here’s some of the fruitcake prep, and leftover ice cream.
3. Finally having a palm tree for a Christmas tree
Hawai’i isn’t exactly standard spruce and pine Christmas tree territory. The usual local tree is the Norfolk Pine.
I’ve always secretly hankered for a palm tree for a Christmas tree: if you’re in Hawai’i you might as well lean in to it!
But palm trees aren’t actually suitable trees – they are either too big and heavy, or too weak when they are small enough. However, in the last few years a new type of palm has begun sprouting up everywhere in the woods around my parents house. It was probably planted by someone as an ornamental, and is now being spread by birds.
As we came up to Christmas we were at a loss for a tree. The one Norfolk pine on the farm was looking very scraggly indeed, and we weren’t able to source another. I finally suggested just making a really big flower arrangement and hanging a few ornaments on it. As I was collecting ferns for my flower arrangement I saw one of these palm trees. A pair of loppers, some PVC pip in a bucket, and a bit of jiggling later, and I’d managed a palm tree Christmas tree!
You couldn’t hang anything heavy on it, but it was perfect for my Mum’s antique glass ornaments and her Victorian ‘diaper Santa’.
4. Enjoying some family history
My Dad went back to the US mainland to visit his family this year, and collected a bunch of family photographs, many of which I’d never seen before. I loved getting a glimpse into the childhood of his parents and grandparents.
I learned that his mother was a clotheshorse (which I’d always suspected – I inherited most of her fabric stash and some of her wardrobe), and was also a huge fan of trousers all the way back in the 30s!
5. Visiting the Hawai’i National Baha’i Center
The Hawai’i-NZ flight leaves early in the morning, which means you have to fly over from an outer island and spend the night in Honolulu to catch your flight. This is usually annoying and expensive, but this time it was wonderful, because I got to stay with friends and visit the National Baha’i Center of Hawai’i.
I haven’t been to it since I was a teenager, and it’s a beautiful space, and was full of a gorgeous art exhibition. It was a very special end to a wonderful visit.
As neither patterned fabric nor bold contrast were exactly popular last week, this week I’ve picked something completely different: a monochrome Empire era dress that would be boring, except for subtle details that set it apart.
Whatever you saw in last week’s Rorschart test of a dress, it certainly gave you something to talk about. It’s the first Rate the Dress in quite a while to break 50+ comments! Some of you thought it was way, way too much (Lynne said her eyes felt they needed a lie down after looking at it). Others loved how bold it was, how unafraid to really embrace the trends of the time. And some of you were weirded out by the ground fabric, particularly in combination with the strong red velvet.
However you felt about it, you felt about it strongly. I don’t think we’ve ever had quite so many 2s and 10s all on the same Rate the Dress!
The Total: 6 out of 10
If you goal in this dress was to be admired by all, you wouldn’t succeed. But if your goal was to be memorable and talked about, well, sartorial mission accomplished!
This week: an Empire era dress with subtle hues and subtle ruffles.
After last week’s dress, I thought I’d better show something restful and muted. And you can’t really get any more muted than this pale mouse grey silk frock, or any simpler than a Regency sheath. But this dress isn’t quite as simple as it looks: it has a number of secrets.
First, the colour. It’s possible that the grey-brown hue is very close to the dresses original colour: just a tiny bit faded with time. But the shade of the dress is also one that a number of the more unstable dye colours fade to.
Dress, ca. 1805, American, silk, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of Charles Blaney, 1926, 2009.300.2314
Certain black dyes (like the ones used to quickly dye Queen Victoria’s ‘Privy Council’ mourning dress when she inherited the throne three decades later) can fade to this colour, as will some purples, some richer browns, and some blues. So this dress may not have been quite as subtle in its original incarnation.
Nor is it quite a boring, bog-standard high-waisted, classically inspired Empire Era dress: it has a few details that set it apart, like the squared off train.
And the tiny ruffled details that tie together the oversleeves (the dress can almost certainly be worn with short short sleeves as well as with the long undersleeves), the bodice detailing, and the slits of the apron front.
Do you like the pairing of the single darker colour (whatever it was) with the fashionable Empire silhouette, and the small details?
Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10
A reminder about rating — feel free to be critical if you don’t like a thing, but make sure that your comments aren’t actually insulting to those who do like a garment. Phrase criticism as your opinion, rather than a flat fact. Our different tastes are what make Rate the Dress so interesting. It’s no fun when a comment implies that anyone who doesn’t agree with it, or who would wear a garment, is totally lacking in taste.
(as usual, nothing more complicated than a .5. I also hugely appreciate it if you only do one rating, and set it on a line at the very end of your comment
