With a heavy heart, it’s now time to leave the UK and return back to LA. It’s been a crazy week and we’ve had a great time but as with all things, they must come to end. We’re wrapping things up with a little last-minute shopping at the duty-free store at Heathrow. 🙂
One of the most noteworthy features of Mid-Bustle Era (roughly 1876-1881), fashion was the advent of the princess line dress. Attributed to Charles Worth who supposedly created the style for Princess Alexandra’s wedding dress, the princess line style was characterized by the lack of the defined waist created by the conventional bodice/skirt combination as seen in these original photographs:
Now, here’s one interesting take on the style:
It’s difficult to make out the specific fabrics from the pictures but we assume that it’s silk. The color combination of pale green, chartreuse, brown and cobalt blue is interesting; not our first choice but it’s a bit different from what is normally seen from extant examples.
Side Profile
Rear View
One of the most interesting features of this dress is the use of a capote; that’s not something we’ve seen utilized with a dress. With its upright mandarin collar and capote, it’s more suggestive of outerwear, along the lines of a redingote. Below are some more pictures:
Upper Front with capote.
As can be seen from this close-up of the capote, it’s been artfully cut in layers so that there is no interruption to the pattern of the fashion fabric.
Back view with capote.
Close-up of the front.
Dress unbuttoned to show interior detail.
The interior detail shown here is interesting in that it employs the same fashion fabric underneath that’s also the outside on the cuffs, train and back.
Close-Up of the front.
As can be seen here, what we think is “brown” fabric is actually close brown stripes.
View of the train.
The train is characteristic of Mid-Bustle Era style, lot and fanning out. Not as extreme as some examples with the “mermaid tail” but the pleating does create a pleasing profile.
Unfortunately, we know almost nothing about the dresse’s provenance or the construction details; all we can do is speculate from the available pictures. In terms of dating, it’s probably safe to say that it falls in the 1878 – 1881 period (although the picture that we obtained indicates 1878). We suspect that these pictures were part of some sort of auction listing although we were unable to find out anything specific. But, in spite of the lack of information, it’s still an interesting example of a style that had a fairly short lifespan. Hopefully, we’ll find out more in the future. 🙂
Although we have never visited the Kyoto Costume Institute in Kyoto, Japan, a friend of mine took the opportunity to do so while on a recent visit to Japan. From the website, it’s hard to tell just what’s there to visit but my friend was in an adventuresome mood and it’s located relatively close to his relations so he decided to take a chance- at worse, there would be no showroom or museum space and that would be that. However, as things worked out, it was an incredible experience sitting in an anonymous and non-descript setting….
First, if you’re expecting some sort of “curb appeal,” the answer was no…it could have been an office almost anywhere in Japan… 🙂
Upon entering, the receptionist and the security guard were a bit quizzical what a foreigner was doing there but after explaining that he wanted to view the collection, he was directed to the 5th Floor of the building where they have a small showroom:
From what they told my friend, apparently they stage a number of exhibits per year mostly in conjunction with another museum and that they even have a number of international travelling exhibits. The exhibition going on during my friend’s visit was 18th Century themed and he got got a few pictures for us:
Although it’s difficult to make out, my friend told me that the condition of all the garments and accessories were either in pristine condition or close to it. My friend also noted that he was given a personal tour by one of the assistant curators and he was impressed with their complete dedication to preserving and displaying the various fashion- “The level of dedication was samurai-like.” From my friend’s description and the pictures he sent me, we are definitely impressed and now we’re making plans to one day pay it visit in person. 🙂
It’s been a busy August between a buying trip to Oregon for all manner of vintage lace and fabrics and renovating No. 11 in Tombstone but we’ve gotten it all under control and turned our attention to our upcoming trip to London. With no costumes to bring with us this time, we’ll be travelling light (relatively speaking). We’ve created a bit of itinerary, focusing on some promising fabric stores along with some museums that we missed the last time. Of course, we’ll flying out on our favorite airline…
Some tentative stops on our fabric safari are:
I’m sure there’s a lot more out there and I realize that the pricing is on the high side but we’ve always had the philosophy that if we come across the right piece for our clients, we’re willing to pay a little more. So with that said, it’s really more about the search and if we walk away empty-handed, that’s OK too. 🙂
Things never seem to slow down here at the Atelier…time to get cutting! Soon I’ll be posting the results… 🙂
