All posts tagged: sabot sleeves

Rate the Dress: Summer of 1778

Published by The Dreamstress

Despite the possible oddness and uncomfortableness of a boned skirt, and not everyone getting the Japanese influence (it was the best sort of influence – very subtle, most Japanese in that respect, among others!) most of you soundly approved of last week’s green party frock, and it rated a perfect 9 out of 10. You’ve already seen this fashion plate featuring a very summery yellow and lilac frock of 1778 in my post on sabot sleeves, but I thought it deserved a closer look. The fashion plate describes the dress as (roughly – my French is pretty bad) A Circassienne dress in the new style, of gauze in a sulphur colour, with trim in lilac gauze.  The flounce trim is in the same colour as the dress, as is the bottom of the sabot.  The whole thing trimmed in lilac and purple, even to the headdress What do you think?  Do you like yellow and purple, or is the whole thing a bit twee, with all its pastels and ruffles and bows and polonaised skirts? …

Rate the Dress: Marie Christine in lots of pink

Published by The Dreamstress

With most of the ‘Rate the Dresses’ I’m happy to sit back.  I like hearing what you have to say: the comparisons, the opinions, the different design perspectives.  Very, very occasionally though, I feel the need to leave my own comment.  Last week’s Rate the Dress was one of those. And because this is my blog, I get to post it up front and centre: If  Worth Jr’s contemporaneous afternoon dress  was “small furry animal tipped the inkwell over, amused itself in the subsequent puddle, then took a stroll across the sketches for the new season” with results included in the final garments, this dress was ‘small furry animal vomited hairball on sketch, then tipped the inkwell over and rolled in the puddle, shedding copious amounts of hair in the process, and finished up by leaving hair-enriched turds on top of it all’ with results included in the finished garment.  If I could give this a -10, I would, but the lowest the rating goes is 1 out of 10. But clearly you guys didn’t …

Rate the Dress: Princess Louise Marie in furry finery

Published by The Dreamstress

I suspected that last week’s Schiaparelli would be unpopular with some, but didn’t anticipate how many of you would consider it a ‘waste of time and material’.  The only love it got was as a potential costume for a Broadway  musical.  It rated a 4.9 out of 10. Perhaps the frock of a Princess (and a nun) can tempt you to higher praise?  Drouais paints  Louise Marie of France in a dress of luxurious tobacco-coloured silk trimmed with wavy bands of fur and lightened by lace sabot sleeves. The style of dress is somewhat old-fashioned for 1770 (Louise Marie’s sister in law, the charming Maria Josepha of Saxony, was painted in similar frocks in the early 1760s), and is rather sombre in tone.  Suitably un-worldy for a princess who was about to become a nun?  Or was Louise Marie, like her sisters, the other aunt-in-laws of Marie Antoinette, another “bitter old hag” who could not be bothered to dress properly?  Or is it technically suitable, but tasteless or ugly?  You decide. Rate the dress on …