Day dress, 1865-1868; CHM 1990.56.1 (pattern available at link) It's been a little while since I've shown a patterned garment from the Chapman, so I thought I would give you another. This one also goes very well with my previous post From Hoop to Bustle, as it comes from the years when women wore the … Continue reading Day Dress (1865-1868)
Category: 19th century
From Hoop to Bustle: 1856-1875 (HSM #1)
(For a while I intended to join in on the Historical Sew Monthly 2015, using it to put together an outfit for a Halloween wedding, but I realized that the themes were not lining up exactly with what I needed to sew. Before I thought I might participate properly in '15, I came up with … Continue reading From Hoop to Bustle: 1856-1875 (HSM #1)
Waistcoats: 19th and 20th Century
Apart from certain stylistic keys, I've always had a harder time dating men's clothing. It's just not as interesting to me, so I haven't taken the time to really study dated extant pieces and images and improve my skills. But lately I've come across more undated waistcoats while cataloguing - it's become something that I … Continue reading Waistcoats: 19th and 20th Century
Fashion History Mythbusters: The Cage Crinoline or Hoop Skirt
As Julia Thomas points out in Pictorial Victorians, the satirical cartoons and anecdotes in Punch heavily colored contemporary (and modern) impressions of the fashions of the 1850s and 1860s. As a result, the wide skirts seem like fantastical costumes that played havoc with ordinary life and were impossible to move around in. And so the myths … Continue reading Fashion History Mythbusters: The Cage Crinoline or Hoop Skirt
On Ball Dress …
Journal des Dames et des Modes, 1813 ... The fashion is for coiffures à la chinoise so high that, even with the longest hair, it is difficult to create them. M. Palette has created false coques* of hair; and, with this accessory, or a part of it, for the coques come apart, one can create the highest … Continue reading On Ball Dress …
Mimic of Modes 