All posts tagged: 1930s

Holiday delights

Christmas this year has not gone according to plan. It’s been full of family, and love, and goodies, and delicious food, and bits of fun, but far too much sadness, and I’m not ready to talk about it properly on the blog. Instead I just thought I’d keep things cheerful and show you the lovely things that I was given for Christmas or bought at my favourite antiques store with holiday money. It was a very vintage Christmas for me. From Mr D, a fabulous vintage handbag from Japan. The Japanese import shop I love so imported a few in, all in different colours, and I told Mr D about them, and he went in and picked his favourite. I love the way this combines a Western aesthetic with a very typically Japanese fabric – a silk with little tiny dots arranged in scales. From my darling Mother-in-law, this gorgeous necklace: Did you guess what is so exciting about it? It’s made from Roman glass dated to between 60-200 AD. (I do have my doubts …

Rate the Dress: Worth IV does Zig-zags

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week Fidelo summed up your reaction to the purple, orange and green 1870s frock perfectly: “This should not work. It really should not work at all. The fact that it does is genius.” And because it was genius, you gave it a rating of 9.3 out of 10, which is pretty much as close as we’re ever going to get to perfect! This week, I’m presenting a very different dress from a very different era, but I feel it has some of the same elements that made last week’s dress so successful: unusual choice of colour or pattern, clever construction, a balance of structure and femininity, and just a wee bit of cheek. This dress is also a fun one to present, because it’s by Roger Worth, the great-grandson of CF Worth, and one of the last designers of the House of Worth (the last was his brother Maurice). You haven’t much cared for the second and third generations of Worths, but what about the fourth? Did Roger manage to return to his great-grandfather’s …

Rate the Dress: Fireworks by Chanel

Published by The Dreamstress

High marks for the Va-va-voom stripey ’50s number last week! That is, unless you didn’t like chartreuse, or had misgivings about the bag-pouf on the hip. Those little niggles dragged the dress down to a still impressive 8.2 out of 10 (though the jury is still out on who would look good in it: Grace Kelly, Cyd Charisse, Marilyn Monroe or Christina Hendricks? My money’s on Cyd. Grace is too prim, Marilyn too cliche and Christina too curvy – it would just be too OTT, not to mention obscene, on her figure!) Last week I missed out on posting a Halloween Rate the Dress – no real reason, I simply forgot. To make up for it, I thought I’d post a Guy Fawke’s Rate the Dress this week. The problem with that is that I’ve already posted James I, his wife Anne of Denmark not once but twice, his son and heir Charles I as a teenager, and his daughter Elizabeth of Bohemia (who the Gunpowder plot had aimed to replace James with) as a …