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 …

I went looking for a Rate the Dress option this week, and everything that sparked my interest was either too similar to something I’d done recently, or came in a weird print, or muted half shades, both of which I was hoping to avoid, because that’s what we did last week! I finally had to concede that this week was simply going to have to be shades of last week, although in a different hue. Last Week: an 1840 dress in harlequin pattern I’ll admit that I wondered what the reception to last week’s dress would be, but it turns out that most of you are harlequin fans – or at least appreciate a bit of wacky pattern now and again! Not everyone was convinced that the pleating was as successful as it could be, and there were a few people who really didn’t like the print. The Total: 8.4 out of 10 We’re creeping up… This week:  a late Victorian dress in muted pink This week’s Rate the Dress is an excellent example of …

This week Rate the Dress goes from very literal trompe l’oeil ruffles, to a dress with an abstract pattern that becomes a textile Rorschach test: what do you see in the ripples and blobs? Last Week: a first-bustle-era morning dress in border-print cotton How you rated last week’s dress really hinged on how you felt about the border print and the trompe l’oeil ruffle. Some of you really enjoyed the print, and thought it was inventive and witty. Others found it fussy, saccharine, and mismatched. And then there was a third segment who liked elements of the dress, but didn’t feel it pulled off the overall look. The Total: 7 out of 10 An unresolved rating for an unresolved dress. This week: an 1890s day dress with all the trimmings This week’s Rate the Dress is an 1890s day dress that might have been worn by the daughter of last week’s dresses owner: it’s equally decadent, impractical, and inventive in its design and use of fabric. Pingat was a top tier Parisian couturier in the …