Last week I showed you a very brief (from a historical perspective) 1920s Jean Patou dress with heavy beading and a bit of an Egyptian twist.  You generally agreed that the mannequin wasn’t doing the dress many favours, but after that your opinions diverged: some of you thought it would have been so much better in bolder colours, some of you though that the restrained colour scheme was all that kept it from being garish; some of you though the dark beads were off, some thought it was exactly what the dress needed.  Most of you thought that it was complete perfection, and the dress came in at 8.9 out of 10, just a hairs breath away from making a perfect 9. UPDATE: a historical costumer involved in the exhibition of this dress at the Palais Galleria informs me that it has NO provenance Madame Elisabeth. I’m leaving the blog post mostly as it was, so as not to sweep the mistake under the rug and cause confusion.  I’ll remove any reference to Madame Elisabeth in …

I do apologise!  Yesterday was Wellington Anniversary Day, which made it a public holiday in the Wellington region.  I was so busy painting and photoshooting and going on walks with Mr D and having such a typical weekend day that I entirely forgot that it was Monday, and didn’t finish my Rate the Dress post. Last week I showed you a WWI era dress in muted stripes, with quirky tassels & buttons.   Alas, Kathryn was the only one to my private opinion  that the buttons are just the bit of unexpected not-matchiness that the dress needed: most of the rest of you took points off for the buttons not matching, or simply for the buttons overall.  While there were a few scores in the middle, in general it was quite a divisive dress: you either really loved it, or really didn’t (and one of the middle scores was from Hana, who loved the front and hated the back – those buttons! 😉 ) So the dress came in at a perfectly round 8.0 out …