All posts tagged: Fancy dress

Fancy Dress, 1850s, NYPL catalog ID (B-number): b17567042

Rate the Dress: a fancy dress in search of accessories

Apologies for the rather delayed Rate the Dress. We just had a three day weekend for Labour Day, and my internal calendar is completely confused. On top of that, it’s the busiest time of year at work: the major show of the year + prepping for graduation + interviewing candidates for next year, all in a three week period! And if that wasn’t enough excitment, it’s a very important year in the Baha’i Faith: 200 years since the birth of the Bab. There have been nonstop commemorations and celebrations, and I’ve been dashing from work to receptions at Parliament one day, and then dashing home to do flower arranging for another event the next… I really wanted to have a fancy dress for this week’s Rate the Dress, and this was the most striking example I could find that hasn’t been featured before. It is missing something though… Last Week: a 1920s child’s frock   You found last week’s hand painted frock utterly charming. If there was any tiny fly in the ointment it was …

wild man co

Rate the Dress: 18th century Wild Man costume

Last week’s Rate the Dress was a natural-form day dress in palest blue and silvery ecru.  To no-ones surprise ever, the rosette bows festooning the lower front bodice of the dress were not popular.   You deemed the rest of the dress both boring and fussy. It didn’t score a single 10/10 rating.  The ratings, like the dress trim, mainly slid to the bottom of the rating heap.  Overall ‘Whirlpool: The Dress’, as Rachel dubbed it, managed a paltry 6.6 out of 10. Moving on: it’s time to look at a historical fancy dress for our annual Halloween Rate the Dress! Before there was Tarzan, there was Hercules, Bacchus, and Wild Men: all costumes involving animal skins, and greenery.  Variations on the theme date back to the ancient Greeks & Romans, (and possibly earlier).  Wild Man costumes were popular throughout the Middle Ages.  In the 18th century the wild man idea became linked to a romanticisation of nature and untouched society.  Thanks to the Swedish monarchy’s fantastic habit of keeping their clothing, we have an …

Five last-minute historical Halloween costumes

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! Halloween, of course! If you are still in search of inspiration, here are five fabulous and ridiculous historical costumes that really wouldn’t be that hard to make. #5 Candy Girl: To make: 1) Take any outfit.  2) Staple candy all over it.  3) Be most popular person at the party! #4 Wild Men There is a long tradition of wild men costumes, and they are really easy to make: just glue grass and leaves all over a onsie.  Historical, awesome, and scary. Just try not to light yourself on fire, OK? A more modern (and less flammable) would be to go as a head of cabbage: just stick cabbage leaves to yourself: #3 The Scrap Album: Scrap Albums were fashionable throughout the later 19th century, and were just albums filled with cutouts of pretty images – they were so popular they could could buy specifically made pre-cut out images in thousands of themes.  I LOVE that this fancy dress actually is a scrap album, with real scrap …