All posts tagged: 1870s

Rate the Dress – Vignon’s garland dress of 1878 or 79

The ratings for last week’s 19teens party dress started out so well, and then the ratings plummeted.  The dress naysayers didn’t like the colour and the garland, and felt the dress was too youthful, and even those who liked the dress complained that it was too flat and hard to visualise on a person and had niggling doubts about the shape of the garland on the bodice.  Thanks to the first flush of approving comments, the dress came in at a 6.9 out of 10. OK!  Point taken!  This week’s garment is fully three dimensional.  But…. …it still has a garland.  I thought I’d challenge your lei prejudice with another placement and treatment of the idea. This dinner dress by Mon. Vignon from the Metropolitan Museum of Art combines restraint to the point of severity with a touch of delicate naturalism in the form of the embroidered garland that drapes down the bodice and wraps around the skirt. What do you think?  Are garlands just a no go?  Is the contrast between the rest of …

Nana’s Corset – beginnings

Remember how I posted that I wanted to finish a corset so I could make shorts so I could make panniers?  Well, you have seen the shorts, the panniers are done but yet to be posted about, but the corset isn’t quite finished. But it looks pretty amazing anyway, and here is a sneak-peek: This corset is my long planned, long awaited version of the Nana corset for me. I’m never going to achieve quite as many curves as Nana (and also, I’m not a teenage courtesan who destroys the lives of every man she encounters – but Manet didn’t know that) but I’m pretty pleased with how I look in it. The images of me in the corset are courtesy of Mrs C, who kindly took photos on her camera at a sewing night at her place when I stupidly forgot to bring a memory card for my camera.  D’oh! I’ve been working on it since the sewing night, and the corset is almost done.  I just need to finish the binding on the …

Rate the Dress: 1875 Very Scarlett O’Hara

Happy Boxing Day for those of you on the other side of the dateline!  I hope you had a lovely holiday. Last week you found the 1820s  plum pudding/sugar plum dress rather like plum pudding itself: some of you loved it (because those who love plum pudding love plum pudding), and some of you thought it inoffensive  but not exciting, and some of you found it rather disgusting.  Still, plum pudding is a classic for a reason, and the dress rated a 7.5 out of 10. This extremely red ca 1875 ballgown rather reminds me of a dress that Scarlette O’Hara would wear.  One that Rhett would disapprove of. This dress signals a transition from holiday-themed ‘rate the dresses’ to NZ summer themed raters.  The red velvet is all Christmas, but the fabric also reminds me of the classic sign of a NZ summer:  pohutakawa  in full bloom. Adding to the things this dress might remind you of, the details along the bodice and skirt evoke both Elizabethan blackwork and Polynesian applique.  And the garlanded …