This week’s Rate the Dress is brought to you by my latest research and sewing deep dive: the big sleeves of the mid 1890s.

You really liked last week’s dress, with its slightly unusual (or at least unexpected), and quite busy, 1780s fabric. This week I’ve picked a dress with an equally unusual-for-its-era fabric. Will you like it? Let’s find out! Last Week and-then-some: a 1780s dress in Indian chintz You really liked last week’s dress, and enjoyed all the additional information and commentary on the fabric. I won’t be able to be as detailed and informed with every Rate the Dress post because of how much time it takes to write them, but I’ll try to balance quicker ones with more in-depth ones. The main problem with last week’s dress was keeping track of all the 10 ratings, because there were so many in a row. It lost a few points here and there for the fabric reminding some of you of curtains – it was the OG for the look! The Total: 9.4 out of 10 Practically perfect. This week: late Victorian marquisette madness This 1890s dress is made from a striking fabric with a bold abstracted …

This week’s Rate the Dress stays in the same general time-period as last week’s tea gown, but goes from silliness and swoosh to severity, straight lines and tailoring. Last Week: an almost-certainly-a-tea-gown in warm yellow Sometimes the ratings for a Rate the Dress are all over the place. Sometimes there are a few clear blocks of opinions and ratings. And every once in a while there is an almost unanimous agreement – or at least a substantially cohesive verdict. A few of you did really like last week’s dress. And an even smaller few (well, single, not even few) of you didn’t. But more than 2/3rds of you fell into the 6-7.5 range and thought that the dress just had too much trim, but not enough of it in some places, and would have looked much better shorn of its fringe and beading and lace. The Total: 7 out of 10 The total for last week was so obvious I didn’t need a calculator! This week:  a tailored walking dress This week’s Rate the Dress …