All posts tagged: military inspired

Rate the dress: Extremely red in 1865

Last week I tried very hard to pick an interesting dress, but some of you still complained that Jessie Franklin Turner’s harlequin inspired evening frock was boring.  I think it’s just a difference of perception: for me, cut is what makes a garment most intriguing, but others may be more colour or fabric focused.  While a few of you loved the dress, most of you, even if you thought it was interesting, found it uninspiring, and it received an very middle of the road, uninspired 5 out of 10. Since muted colours and fascinating cut weren’t your thing, how about very basic cut, and totally over the top colour? This military influenced dress from ca 1865 celebrates the new vogue for extremely bright colours sparked by the invention of the first aniline dyes at the end of the 1850s.  Whether the brilliant red silk of the dress is the product of the new coal based dyes I am not sure, but even in a room full of violent mauvine purples and vivid acid greens, this …