Author: kendra

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Quick Update – Bling & CoCo

Just a quick update to say thanks for your feedback on my bling issue and Costume College teaching ideas!  You all sold me on the white Indian choker set… but then some BASTARD stole the auction away from me!  I then spent the past week stalking ebay, where I found various sellers selling the same set but in different colors, until this morning when another white set popped up and I grabbed it.  Now I just have to wait for it to ship from India.

And, in CoCo news, I proposed the following three classes:  social history of hair (1770s-1820s), 18th c. dress variations, and 17th-18th c. patches.  Yet again, 18th c. court dress gets no love — I’ve thrown that out before online and only get crickets back — someday I’m going to foist it on you guys anyway, and I can teach it to the two people who show up!

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V&A Fashion Department Online Resources

Possibly old news to you, but the Victoria & Albert Museum’s Fashion department has recently-ish revamped their website and added a lot of interesting content — mostly articles, some videos.  You can get to the main hub here, but here are some specific items of interest:

Finally, I noticed that they’ve started the V&A Online Journal — so far, there’s three issues.  The most recent one has a very interesting article for those of us who like to geek out scholarly-style:  “An Adorned Print: Print Culture, Female Leisure and the Dissemination of Fashion in France and England, around 1660-1779.”
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Cool Image Resource

Gallica is the digital library of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, and in addition to having an AMAZING collection of interesting historical resources, I recently found that they have digitized some really interesting images… most particularly, a number of press photos of fashions worn at horse races from the 1900s onwards.  The 1910’s images are particularly stunning, and there appears to be more from the 1920s-30s, but I haven’t delved too deeply in the later stuff.

This stripey dress on the right is particularly calling to me — I’m wondering if I could repurpose my supplies from my long-planned-never-made 1909 suit project?  Or is the stripe not strong enough?

Fashions worn at the Auteuil races, June 1911

This outfit is also pretty kick ass:

Fashions worn at the Auteuil races, 1911

Here’s a link to all their images with the subject of fashion (“mode”) — 552 total, seems to cover late 19th century and into the 20th century.  If you’re interested in a more limited date range, try using their advanced search page and enter Subject: mode, By document type: Images, and then put some dates into By publishing year.

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Help Bling Me!

As previously noted, the GBACG is having what should be an amazing Titanic event.  While I’d love to make something new, money is tight enough that I really shouldn’t be spending money on yards of silk.  And, shockingly, I tried on my 1910 Lady Maud evening dress and it still fits, and since I’ve only worn this ONCE, I really should wear it again!

But now I’m trying to figure out the bling issue!  I’ve been vacillating between a few concepts:

Concept 1:  Super bling in a period style, like that worn here by Queen Sophia of Greece in 1915:

The problem is I’m having a hard time finding a good, wide choker that’s NOT pearls.  Pearls are nice, and they’re period, but they’re not exciting me right now.

Concept 2: Indian jewelry.  Did you know that of all modern cultures, Indian women have the best clothes?  Seriously!  And their jewelry is pretty kick ass too.  Given that my dress is made from a sari, and the Delhi Durbar of 1911 inspired lots of Indian influences in the fashions of 1911-12, and given that modern Indian is faaabulous and quite affordable on ebay, I thought of going full on Indian — hey, I could be returning to America from India and the Durbar!

Combination #1: white Indian jewelry. Then I came across this white Indian jewelry set, and I thought it might be a great merger of the two ideas — choker, bling, Indian:

But what about headgear? I was initially thinking of trying to make some kind of bandeau, like this one from Vogue:

However, the Indian sets come with a piece of hair jewelry that’s really gorgeous, but a different look — the maang tika, which hangs over the part and onto the forehead (ok this lady doesn’t have a center part, but you get the idea):

But then I found this tiara on ebay and it’s really calling to me — but it’s silvertone, not gold, and the Indian jewelry sets are almost all goldtone!

First world problems, solve them for me.  Go full Indian?  Combine goldtone Indian with silvertone tiara?  Ditch the Indian idea and keep trying to find some kind of non-cheesy rhinestone choker (which could be impossible)?  What’s working for you?