Last week’s Rate the Dress was inspired by the first Historical Sew Fortnightly challenge:  a 1710s portrait of Frances Howard as the goddess Flora.  Many of you loved the colours of the outfit, but in general you weren’t convinced by the classical inspiration, and you really weren’t convinced by her crazy over-the-top shoe bows, bringing the rating down to a 6.9 out of 10. The next challenge in the Historical Sew Fortnightly is UFO (un-finished-object) – the perfect excuse to finish one of those things sitting on your to-do pile. Showing you an unfinished dress for Rate the Dress probably wouldn’t be very exciting for you, but I did find this ca. 1842  evening gown from the Met  which has been re-made from an 18th century gown.  The fabric dates to the 1740s. It’s quite amazing and wonderful that fabric could be so well made that it could be sewn and worn as a garment, and then re-sewn and worn again as another garment 100 years later.  And now, almost 175 years later, it’s in …

So, last week I made a silly mistake and published two Rate the Dresses.  I noticed it a few hours later and withdrew the one I hadn’t meant to publish. So most of you only saw the 1780s pastel polonaised froof that I left up (and most of didn’t particularly care for it and rated it a not-very inspiring 5.2 out of 10).  But some of you did get a sneak-peek at this week’s Rate the Dress, so have had all week to think about whether you like it or not.. 1840s dresses can be a bit, well, plain and boring. This dress comes in a typically boring 1840s colour: rust brown, but does include some quite distinctive features: beautifully worked tone-on-tone embroidery (click on the image to go through to a large version), triple puffed sleeves, two rows of hem ruffles, and a cunningly cut and draped bodice. Are all these things enough to raise the dress above the usual 1840s bland curse?  Or would this dress be just another wallflower? Rate the Dress …