All posts tagged: 1900s

Rate the Dress: a ca 1900 day dress gets the blues

Last week’s 1750s Robe a la Francaise was far better received than I had anticipated. I thought the muddy colours and square shape would put people off. If they weren’t enough, there was the lacklustre presentation and dreadful wig. Despite all those, you found the back pleating sufficiently swooshy, and the fabric sufficiently luxurious, to keep all your ratings at 6 and above. The ratings averaged out at 8.3 out of 10. 8 (or 8.5) was the most commonly rated # for the dress, so for once the ratings reflect the general reaction. This week: A ca. 1900 day dress This week I’ve chosen something in a nice bright, bold colour: a ca 1900 day dress in deep blue printed silk: The silhouette of this dress, with its drooping bell sleeves, not-yet-excessive pigeon breast, and gored skirt with ruffled hem, is absolutely typical of fashionable 1900s dress. The S-curve has yet to reach its most outrageous proportions, but is definitely in evidence. The only throw-back is the sleeve heads, which retain a slight fullness. The …

Rate the Dress – Rich darkness in 1906 (ish)

Published by The Dreamstress

I’m having some problems with my hand due to an injury, so I can’t do much computer-y (or exciting sew-y, sigh…) stuff at the moment, so things may be a bit quiet here on the blog front here for the next few weeks. Not too quiet though – the amazing and wonderful Mr D* is helping me to write this post, and to finish off all the draft posts I’ve had sitting around waiting to publish, so there should still be some interesting stuff. Last week’s 18th century frothy pink masquerade Rate the Dress was quite popular, although some of you didn’t care for the darker bead (?) trim, while others thought it worked, but needed more black. You did notice the asymmetry of the skirt, but no one seemed to mind it much. So Arabella managed a very rosy 8.8 out of 10, with only a few tiny flies marring the ice-cream sundae perfection of her confection (the spots, not the poor ratings). This weeks Rate the Dress is the first thing I randomly …

Girls Attire for May 1906 from the Girl’s Own Paper

Published by The Dreamstress

I’ve finally managed to find the time to scan all the fashion pages from my Girl’s Own Papers from 1905-07, and I’ll be posting them over the coming months (themed to the correct month, of course!). I found the pages at a car boot sale in Napier during Art Deco weekend. Sadly, they were loose papers, and the magazines are incomplete. I’ve done my best to sort them based on the months given, and the page numbers, and to date them, but I’m not always 100% sure I’ve got the year correct. I’m reasonably sure today’s pages are from 1906, thanks to some help from the incomparable Daniel in definitively dating a page I shared a few years back to March 1906. The page numbers suggest these two pages are from the same year (though those also repeated on an annual basis, so these may be from 1905!). These images are as large as my blog format will support, so hopefully you can read them. Some delightful excerpts: The white cloths and velvets and other …