All posts tagged: 1870s

Rate the Dress: Maria Fyodorovna in blue

Once again I’m being bad and haven’t tallied up the ratings from last week (sorry, my life is eating me alive). I’ll try to be good and get them up today though! This week I present to you Maria Feodorovna, aka Dagmar of Denmark, sister of the famously beautiful Queen Alexandra of England, and mother of the last Tsar of Russia, in something extremely feminine and lacy and ruffly and corsage-y. We were talking about New Zealand designer Trelise Cooper (well known for her frills and furbelows) in my class this evening, so I guess I had such embellishments on my mind (though if this were a Trelise dress it would be made of three different patterned fabrics in pink and orange and teal blue all at once) What do you think of Dagmar in her version of 1870s regal grandeur? I’m sure her lace would have cost a fortune, and I’m also sure it’s the reason the painting is reminding me of a toned-down Maria Christina. In fact, with only her very fashionable velvet …

Remember the Nana corset?

Published by The Dreamstress

I started it oh, more than a year and a half ago. Here is what it looks like today: (hint: it’s the blue one) Yeah. It’s still not quite done. The problem is that I got it perfectly finished to the point of wearability, didn’t have an event to wear it to, and thus haven’t been really motivated to finish it. It is (obviously) inspired by Manet’s Nana, which rather amuses me, because I’m pretty much as far as you could get from Zola’s Nana as a person! So what does it need to be finished? Sleeves straps. That’s it. I’m hoping the ‘Wood, Metal, Bone’ challenge will motivate me to finish it, though in retrospect I should really have finished it for Literature! Still, even not-quite-done, I think it looks rather spiffy on me. It’s so, so, so comfortable! 1870s corsets with gussets really are amazing. Compare it to the original: And my favourite of this series of boring-white-wall timer shots:

Rate the dress: tan and red in 1875

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week I showed you a flower-strewn frock by Jean-Phillipe Worth, one that might have been a little too frilly and feminine, but which most of you found fabulous. While I don’t think Worth, original or JP, quite as infallible as some of you did, I wasn’t surprised that this frock received high accolades. One of two of you flat-out hated the dress, and there were a few complaints about the symmetrical placement of motifs over the bust, the overall fussiness of the bust, and the colour of the creamy silk and blonde lace (I definitely don’t agree that the dress has faded over time – all the different layers of dark ivory matched too well, and were too true, for age to have changed them substantially), but the frock still managed an 8.7 out of 10. Can this week match that? This fortnight’s theme on the HSF is Literature, and I was rather at a loss as to how that could fit in with Rate the Dress. In looking for inspiration, I found this …