All posts tagged: Chanel

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 …

The 10 most iconic wedding dresses ever

Published by The Dreamstress

#10 is one of three iconic 50’s wedding dresses to feature on the list.  Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy wasn’t yet an international style icon when she married on September 12, 1953, but her stunning frock by dressmaker Anne Lowe is still a statement of class, taste, and timeless embellishment that references design details seen on wedding gowns of the 1860s-1880s, while still being iconically 1950s. #9 is a wedding dress with a difference. Mia Farrow’s suit for her  July 19, 1966 marriage to Frank Sinatra  was clean, modern and fun, the epitome of 60s mod and the total antithesis of the 1950s ballgown wedding dresses. At #8 is the daughter-in-law to #10’s style icon.  All eyes were on Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy when she married on September 21 1996, and her strikingly simple and sexy bias cut  Narcisco Rodriguez gown was a breath of fresh air after the poofy romance of 1980s wedding dresses. #7 is the only dress on the list that wasn’t actually worn for a wedding, but it is the dress that started the trend …

Rate the Dress: Chanel does trousers

Published by The Dreamstress

Julia of the Perfect Victorian Figure says that I do too many frilly uber-historical dresses for ‘Rate the Dress’, and challenged me to post a 1930s Chanel trouser suit for your perusal. There aren’t actually that many 1930s Chanel trouser suits out there, so hopefully this one will meet with your approval as a suitable interesting ‘Rate the Dress’, although it might not meet with your approval as a suitable elegant and sartorially fabulous ensemble. Between the 1930s photograph and the detail of the extent blouse and jacket, what do you think of the ensemble?  Imagine Diana Vreeland in it, with a black ribbon around her neck, and a red rose tucked into it, as V&A’s blurb describes. Fabulous?  Or Frumpy? Rate the Dress on a scale of 1 to 10