All posts tagged: Regency

Terminology: What is blonde lace?

One of the most striking features of Queen Adelaide’s frock in this week’s Rate the Dress is her glorious blonde lace sleeves. Perhaps you’ve read a Georgette Hayer novel and come across a description of the heroine heading out to a dinner party in a dress trimmed with blonde lace and wondered what that meant? Maybe you already knew! If not, wonder no more. ‘Blonde’ is the term used to describe the natural colour of undyed silk, and blonde lace was originally the name for a specific style of continuous bobbin lace made in France (primarily Chantilly, Caen & Bayeux) from natural, undyed silk thread imported from China. While blonde lace was originally made from undyed and unbleached silk the name later came to refer to lace in a particular style made from silk thread, even if it was bleached white, or dyed black (and occasionally other colours). In 1902 an ad offers it in white or ‘butter’, and a fashionable 1895 tea jacket is made up in ‘black blonde lace’. Sometimes different shades …

Rate the Dress: Green tartan in 1801

Published by The Dreamstress

UPDATE: Last week’s Worth of 1875 rated a (drumroll here because it is 5 months late and better be worth it!) 8.5 out of 10. Many of you were madly in love with it, but a few of you thought the colours and trim a bit disjointed, and it lost points for that. This is my last week of ‘away’ Rate the Dresses where I haven’t had time to look at all your comments from last week. Hopefully I’ve picked a good one! I’ve been very good and have resisted the urge to show you this as a St Patricks themed post in March, with some dreadful comment about mixing Scotland and Ireland. Instead I’m showing you this now because…ummm…green is good….plaid is good…Hawai’i is very green…also, it’s interesting (the Rate the Dress, not Hawai’i, though Hawai’i is interesting too). While tartan is one of the ‘universal’ patterns (like the Meander, or Greek Key) that turns up in almost every culture, rather than the exclusively Scottish design it is sometimes thought of as, this dress, …

Rate the dress: Embroidered mull

Published by The Dreamstress

So. Sigismund III. Badass or just bad? Well, between the fez, the collar, the hose, and the scimitar, almost everyone said his outfit made them giggle. And yet, for all that, it made a 7.3 out of 10. Pretty good for so many giggles! This week lets go from dark and badass to light and sweet. I find Regency frocks so appealing. They are so simple and pure and youthful in their barely-adorned whiteness. Of course the problem with Regency frocks is that they are often so similar, and simple and pure and unadorned, that they don’t make for a very interesting Rate the Dress. I’ve tried to get around this by posting really unusual examples, or portraits with accessories, but sometimes you just want to show a simple dress. So here is a Regency frock from the MFA Boston that hopefully is still a classic example of Regency fashion, without being too uninteresting. This white mull cotton evening dress from the early 19th century features a gathered bodice, short puffed sleeves, a narrow …