The Ornamented Being
Ornamented: -verb: Adorn; beautify. Be·ing: -noun: Fulfillment of possibilities; essential completeness.
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Tomorrow’s theme: Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?
Luise Ulrike von Preußen, Königin von Schweden
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Alix’s first ball, 1889. Mrs. Orchard, Alix seated and Elizabeth.
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History Crush of the Day: Lord Byron in Albanian dress painted byThomas Phillips in 1813.
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Here is the reason I have been neglecting you all!
I finished my Regency stays in about 16 hours but I have to leave everything unfinished until my first fitting
which is rather annoying. I finished the chemise last night and just need to turn the hem.On a depressing note I really dislike the bodiced petticoat. It’s been a total disaster! I’ve made two and neither are what I want/need them to be. I’m struggling on getting the shape of the 1818 dress and I’m afraid that cording the bottom is going to be my only option.
If anyone has any extant bodiced petticoats (besides the one from MFA and MAG) please help me out.
*sighs* I’m going back to my research now.
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Photo reblogged from BLACK-NATA
*melts*
I’ve watched the trailer up-teen thousand times. Don’t know if it’s just a God thing but Loki and Thor have amazing hair.
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I feel like I should apologize for neglecting you all. Second year just started and our project is pretty hectic (*read insane. As in oh-my-god-the-entire-thing-is-due-in-HOW-MANY-WEEKS????? Insane.)
Also my mom has been here for the past two weeks and I saw her off this morning. I’m not going to lie. Basically my life has consisted of sitting on the couch since six this morning, hugging my stuffed dog, watching the Mentalist, decimating the box of tissues, eating chocolate, and crying. Lots of crying.
I’m trying to find the will to go on.
I’ll have something for you tomorrow but today I’m going to live on the couch and bond with Patrick Jane and chinese food.
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SILK FAILLE BUSTLE DRESS, 1868-1872
November 2, 2011 NYC
- New York City
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Long Live Galliano.
Excerpt taken from Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution by Caroline Weber
“ Designed for his 2000 Christian Dior “Masquerade and Bondage” collection, John Galliano’s “Marie Antoinette” dress tells an unexpected story. True to the architecture of eighteenth-century court costume, the gown features tantalizing décolletage, a rigidly corseted waist, a ladder or échelle of flirty bows on the bodice, and a froth of flounced skirts inflated by petticoats and hoops. Its splendid excess evokes France’s most colorful queen … even before one notices the embroidered portraits of the lady herself that adorn each of its hoop-skirted hip panels. (Plate 1.)
But the two portraits deserve a closer look, for it is they that tell the story. On the gown’s left hip panel the designer has placed an image of Marie Antoinette in her notorious faux shepherdess’s garb—a frilly little apron tied over a pastel frock, a decorative staff wound with streaming pink ribbons, and a mile-high hairdo obviously ill suited to the tending of livestock. In keeping with the Queen’s frivolous reputation, the embroidered ensemble is more suggestive of Little Bo Peep than of lofty monarchical grandeur. On the right hip panel, Galliano offers a depiction of the same woman, also devoid of royal attributes, but this time in a mode more gruesome than whimsical. Here, she wears a markedly plain, utilitarian dress, with a simple white kerchief knotted around her throat and a drooping red “liberty bonnet”—the emblem of her revolutionary persecutors—clamped onto her brutally shorn head. This image portrays the consort trudging toward the guillotine, to lay her neck beneath its waiting blade.”
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Photoset reblogged from Throne of Roses
Masquerade! Paper faces on parade, Masquerade! Hide your face so the world will never find you. Masquerade!
-Cake Opera
Great now I’m hungry.
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I’ll end here with one of my favorite Worth gowns.
circa 1898–1900
“A superb example of dressmaking from the House of Worth, this dress exhibits the aesthetic of the last years of the nineteenth century. The fashionable reverse S-curve silhouette of the dress and the dramatic scroll pattern of the textile reflect the influence of the Art Nouveau movement. The striking graphic juxtaposition of the black velvet on an ivory satin ground creates the illusion of ironwork, with curving tendrils emphasizing the fashionable shape of the garment. In order to achieve this effect, the textile was woven à la disposition, with the intent that each piece would become a specific part of the dress. With this technique, the design of the fabric is intrinsic to the design of the dress.”
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Court Presentation Gown
c. 1885
“This grand dress was worn for a presentation to Princess Alexandra of Denmark (1844-1925) at the court of Queen Victoria (1819-1901). Being presented to royalty was an aspiration for many Americans at the time and justifies the purchase of such an elaborate gown for such a situation… . “
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circa 1888
I love the evening bodice!
“ The bustle silhouette, although primarily associated with the second half of the 19th century, originated in earlier fashions as a simple bump at the back of the dress, such as with late 17th-early 18th century mantuas and late 18th- early 19th century Empire dresses. . .”
