All posts tagged: masquerade

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

Published by The Dreamstress

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 …

Rate the Dress: Lanvin does fancy fancy dress – maybe

Published by The Dreamstress

Reaction to last week’s be-bowed pink and black confection was quite divided: you either loved pink and black and ruffles, or found it revoltingly saccharine. There were also two camps of thought on what it represented. Most of you thought commedia dell’arte. Like Isabella though, my first thought was definitely 17th century, and I do think that even if she was meant to be a commedia dell’arte figure, all the details of her dress were taken from 17th century costume – the match is just too spot-on. Personally, in many ways I liked the outfit, but like Hana, the overall look left me a teeny bit cold. It was just too perfectly matched and meticulous. I think it would look amazing in real life though, on someone who wasn’t exactly the same colours as her dress and whose hair got a teeny but frizzy and windblown as she danced! I’d probably rate it 7 10ths of a point lower the 7.7 out of 10 that it actually rated. This week let’s look at an actual …