All posts tagged: Regency

Rate the dress: Regency to Romantic era plum pudding

Last week’s 1750s lollie dress wasn’t quite as much to your taste as the week’s before, mostly because of the lace capelet, but you still thought it a quite yummy 8 out of 10. This week I’m sticking with the food theme. In celebration of the Northern Hemisphere winter, and of the holidays, how about a warm wool evening gown in colours that remind me of a plum pudding? This late Regency-early Romance era plum pink wool with gold satin trimmings evening frock is from the MFA Boston. What do you think? Good enough to eat? Does it take the cake? Does the plum pink and gold palette please your palate? Is the blend of simplicity with a few elaborate trimmings divinely delicious or an odd mix of flavours? (OK, I’ll stop now!) Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10.

Regency sandals

Published by The Dreamstress

A while ago someone asked me about Regency sandals. Why do we see so many in fashion plates, but so few extent pairs? Well, I suspect the ratio is quite similar to most items seen in fashion plates vs. extent items. Fashion plates (and fashion magazines today) always show the most avant -garde and extreme fashion, and few ladies ever reached that level of modish dress. In addition, contemporary sources seem to indicate that wearing sandals was rather noteworthy, and maybe just a little bit scandalous, so there probably was a lot more talking about them than actually owning and wearing them. We can see the scandalousness conotations of sandals illustrated in the famous Boilly image of a rakish Incroyable meeting his female counterpart, the Merveilleuse. In her transparent dress even the radical Incroyable mistakes her for a prostitute and offers her money, while she shows a modesty not apparent in her attire and makes the sign of a cross with her fingers to indicate her shock and virtue. While they are hard to find, …

Rate the Dress: Regency furbelows

Published by The Dreamstress

Last week most of you loved the Victoroco (or should that be Rococtorian?) fantasy dress. There were some slight quibbles about the colour, and the bow on the front bodice, or the skirt draping (btw, as the grand queen of this blog I’ve decided that those of you who suggested it needed to be pulled up on both sides were wrong. If you did that it would make her look too much like a porcelain shepherdess, and the fantasy would become cliche and would be utterly ruined), but the dress managed a very impressive 9.5 out of 10. For all its popularity, Andreotti’s painting left me with a bit of a dilemma. Where do you go from a rate the dress that included both the 18th and 19th centuries, and that had so many colours and details in it? How about a compromise? Regency – halfway between the dates. Something with lots of colours and details, but with all the details agains a simple backdrop. So I present this unknown woman. She’s got a lot …