All posts tagged: 1820s

Rate the Dress: Regency daisy chain

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you a full-steam-ahead 1870s dress, crammed with all the tassels, pleats, lacing and trimming it could possibly hold: right up to the parasol pocket.  I guessed correctly that a lot of you would go totally gaga over it, and there was an impressive swathe of 10s.  But a surprising amount of you held back and couldn’t quite commit to a full score, and so there were an equal number of 8 & 9s, and just a few who weren’t quite convinced, bringing the dress in at a still-impressive 9.2 out of 10. Personally, I’m in the minority in  feeling that there is something not quite resolved about that dress: a bit of imbalance in the colour arrangement that kept my  eye stuck on one spot, and when I  really pulled back and tried to look at the whole  there were all these little tiny things that just niggled at me (and, like Cathy, I couldn’t dismiss the sneaking suspicion I would hate the front).  It’s like a movie where the actors …

Rate the Dress: Trendy 1820s

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you a late 1880s Worth gown in blond  lace and creamy pink feather patterned brocade.  A few of you loved it, but most of you felt it was pretty ‘meh’ for the 1880s.  As for me, there were some things about the dress that I love SO MUCH (the brocade!  the sleeves! that bustle) that I both struggled to see beyond the things that weren’t well done (ugh.  that lace swag.  And the weird awkward level of the brocade line on the bodice) and hated them all the more for ruining the potential.  Not surprisingly, the frock only came in at a 6.8 out of 10.  Try harder Jean-Phillipe! This week’s dress is like a sample of all the things that were ‘on trend’ (humble apologies) in the later 1810s & 1820s. It’s the classic all-white frock, with a bit of military-inspired (maybe with a hint of Renaissance historicism)  lacing up the front.  There is more Renaissance inspired historicism in the puffed sleeves with ‘slashed’ inspired lace.  The neckline is classically …

Rate the Dress: Sparkly Ballgowns ca. 1820

Published by The Dreamstress

Rate the Dress for last week was a ’20s frock in avante garde red and lilac.  The colours were a little too out-there for some of you, and there was a bit of discussion about whether you liked the totally different backs to fronts (though it did win points for thinking through the ‘glass beads imprinting into your thighs all evening if you have to sit down really aren’t that fun’ thing and leaving them off). Thanks to the unmatched front to back, and the not-to-everyones taste colour scheme, the dress managed a respectable but not stellar 8.4 out of 10. I seem to be stuck on red and sparkles, though this week’s dress features metal embroidery rather than beading, and is mainly white with a soft, muted, coral red accent – much more restrained than last week. Like last week’s frock, this dress looks both forward and backward. The lowered waistline, stiff, ornamented hem, and cone shaped skirt are  typical of the 1820s, but the light cotton dress fabric with its metallic embroidery (almost …