Last week I showed you Elizabeth Craven, Lady Powis, in her all-over embroidered early-Stuart jacket and skirt. Â It’s an outfit that I love SO MUCH. Â Everything about it makes me happy. Â It’s got blossoms and berries and birds and bees and bugs and other ‘various sundrie spottes’. Â It’s like Spindle’s End got turned into an outfit. Â I want it, oh, I want it! Â The only reason it isn’t top of my sewing list is that I would be 70 before it was done if I started today.
So, umm, slightly biased.
And many of you agreed, giving it a satisfying 13 of 27 10/10. Â But some of you who didn’t agree really didn’t like it much, pulling the score down to 8.8 out of 10. Â That’s OK, I still adore it!
Now, on to this week!
A confession: I just wasn’t feeling Rate the Dress this week. Â We spent the weekend painting the house, and cleaning the house, and my Mon & Tue work schedule was incredibly hectic, and I just didn’t want to blog. Â The post on privacy and perfection got published only because it was already written.
But it’s Wednesday morning, and I feel a trifle guilty about the lack of RtD, and (more to the point), Felicity has occupied my lap, at a moment when I don’t have much else to do on the computer. Â So, courtesy of Felicity, you get a RtD!
And you know what? Â I’m quite excited about it now that I’ve committed to it. Â I did what I usually do when I’m out of inspiration:Â pick a museum at random, and a costume term at random, and see what turns up.
In this case LACMA and ‘polonaise’ yielded this very feminine and spring-y pink and green ensemble:
At first my reaction was ‘eh, standard 3rd quarter of the 18th century pretty frock, not that inspiring, but I guess it will do’
And then I looked at it more closely and thought ‘well, actually that chenille trim is rather fascinatingly wacky’
And then I looked even more closely and realised ‘there are three dimensional lace bells on that thing!’ Â Not quite bell-bells, but more like flower bells: bluebells or harebells or something. Â But still…three dimensional lace bells, just hanging off of it…
And the sleeves also have rather interesting petal shaped detailing:
And the stomacher they have paired it with have some rather fetching ribbon work going on:
Not to mention the shoes in a different green and white striped silk:
So, all in all, not the standard, boring dress I saw at first glance at all!
I imagine the lace bells would sway and bounce with the movement of the wearer, further adding to the layered, ornamented, embellished, all-encompassing Rococo sensibilities.
So what do you think of it?  Are the bells just mad enough to be fabulous?  Does the whole think work as an ode to perky, bouncy, über-feminine, pink-and-green, rococo-ness?  Or is it terrible and overworked and over-saccharine?
Rate the Dress on a Scale of 1 to 10
The post Rate the Dress: a 1770s belle in lacy bells? appeared first on The Dreamstress.
