All posts tagged: 1880s

Rate the dress: a little girl’s frock, ca 1885

Last week Princess Louise Marie’s dress was not a hit – between the fur, the colour, and the addition of the lace it rated only a 5.6 out of 10. I’ve had this weeks post all ready for months, and then, just when I was about to launch it, the website where I had the photo stored experienced technical difficulties, so I can’t show you the dress until it restores. Grrrr… So…my backup plan is to show you an intriguing child’s dress from 1885. It’s got it all: velvet, lace, smocking, ruffles, pleats, and the earliest example of child themed cartoon fabric used for children’s clothes that I am aware of. All of this may not necessarily add up to a good thing though. What do you think? Check out the fabric: There are more views if you click through to V&A’s site. What do you think? Is it a charming mix of 1880’s frills and childhood innocence or a clumsy mash-up of completely different themes? Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to …

Shell in Japonisme

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m dreadfully overdue in posting images of Shell in my Japonisme dress (the talk was weeks ago), but in a way I’m glad. Because I waited to post these, I had the opportunity to get to know Shell both for her grace and poise as a model, and for her warm nature and wicked sense of humour. Of course, only her grace and poise are on show in this post. OK, maybe just a bit of the wicked sense of humour: In other news, I have recovered my photos from the road trip (yay!) so tomorrow I’ll be posting some of those.

Rate the dress: Cabanel’s young lady

Published by The Dreamstress

I don’t know what you thought of last week’s Rate the Dress, because I’ve been focusing on camping, not blogging (yay!), so I hope I capture your attention by continuing the theme of patterned fabric, but moving from a red dress to a redhead. Alexandre Cabanel is most noted for his rather melodramatic fantasy and mythological paintings, but for a brief period in the 1880s he did a lovely series of portraits. This one depicts an unknown young woman in a very fitted dress of flowered peach brocade and ice blue duchesse satin trimmed with lace. We don’t know who she is. We don’t know exactly when or why the portrait was done. We can, however, still discuss the dress. What do you think? Too mature? Too fussy? Odd colour combination? Or sublime? Rate the dress on a scale of 1 to 10.