All posts tagged: Victorian

Rate the Dress: 1885 Ice Goddess

Wooooooh dearie!  You guys may like Judy Garland, but you DID NOT like her dress last week.  You gave it a hearty “Clang, clang” and dubbed it “pooposterous”.  Judy only ranked 3 out of 10.  Poo. This week’s Rate the Dress is in honour of my Mum.  She saw this dress and immediately said I should do it as a “Rate the Dress”. A smart woman always listens to her mother. The stereotypical Victorian society mother would certainly approve of this frock.  It covers everything from the chin to the toes, wrapping wrists in froths of lace, and disguising bosoms beneath swaths of marabou feathers. The colours of the gown add to the effect of imperious purity; the wearer would have been an ice goddess in aqua and palest gold. The only suggestion of a more passionate nature beneath the frosty exterior of the gown is the detailing of lacing holding the fronts of the faux jacket taut, hinting at the corsets beneath the gown.* Ooh la la.  Mother would not approve. But do you? …

Notes on a Perfect Victorian Figure

I describe Julia as having a perfect Victorian figure. And I also describe Lillie Langtry II as having a perfect Victorian figure. Clearly Julia and Lillie don’t have the same figure. Julia has the perfect Victorian figure in the minds of fashion designers of the era: tall, slim, softly curved, small of waist and round of bosom without being voluptuous.  Her figure could be the model for every woman ever drawn in a fashion plate between 1870 and 1890. Lillie II, on the other hand, has the figure of Lillie Langtry and La Belle Otero, the figure that every (well, most) Victorian men ermmm…idealised (well, you know what I mean!).  Tiny waists, full hips and bosom, and petite enough to still be pickupable. I guess some things don’t change.  What fashion dictates and what men desire from a woman’s body is rarely the same thing.  I guess we should just love what we have and ignore the rest!