#dress historian

[crocordile]

Happy valentines daaaaay <3

[canisalbus]

you say machete has to be closeted then why's he always wearing them little heels

Maybe he thinks he's a tiny bit nicer looking in them.

[cynomain69]

✨Can I Offer You An Akademiya Romance In These Trying Times✨

[transmechanicus]

The recent explosion of Hazbin Hotel into popularity over the last 2 months is so surreal, did the court of public opinion not find viziepop guilty of just insane levels of bigotry as early on as 2013?? Like forgive me, i was in middle school, but i seem to recall a relatively widespread understanding that she was not a great person while the show was still in the earliest stages of pre-production, did i miss a memo???

[subzeroparade]

slutty waist? the clergy may be right for you.

[hildegardladyofbones]

Yes, aeoace people that don't fit the stereotype do exist. I'm just not one of them. Instead for thinking about romance or sex I think about academic research or sth. Analysis is sex for me.

[pianokantzart]

I dunno if this really counts as desert themed, but in Mario Kart Tour Daisy has an outfit called the Thai Dress!

I am a fan of the Thai dress! Thailand is mostly made up of forested mountains and fertile planes rather than desert, yes, but since I imagine Sarasaland as a Mario-verse reimagining of the Ottoman Empire (particularly when it was at it's height in the 16th century) there is a bit of crossover in terms of style elements, with a heavy focus on fine silks and linens decorated with large intricate patterns and shimmering metallic threads.

Left: Daisy in what I think is a chakri dress Right: An üçetek entari, or three-skirt robe (it's 19th century rather than 16th century, but you get my drift.) The worlds of Super Mario Land were all over place in terms of where they took inspiration from, but most modern interpretations of Sarasaland focus on desert regions like the Birabuto Kingdom (which is heavily Egyptian themed, with Egypt having been a province of the Ottoman Empire for over 200 years) and the closest thing we have to a modern visual for Sarasaland is the Daisy Circuit– an active harbor, like how the Ottoman Empire carried out most of it's trade through the Mediterranean Sea, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

Uuuh... I forgot where I was gong with this. TL;DR: Daisy's Thailand dress is probably the closest thing I'll get to seeing her in 16th Century Ottoman Empire inspired garb.

[boneskullravenriver]

So on continuation of "researching about a time period for a story no one but me will ever see" I got this book from the library that's about daily life in the Victorian era and it's really cool? Like... Interesting. I doubt I'll use half of this info (I doubt that the story needs a 5 page description of my character getting ready in the morning tbh) but still. And I usually don't read non fiction all that much.

[the-patchwork-girl-of-oz]

The rainbow and pink, white, and orange hearts symbolize their friendship.:3

[operafantomet]

Do you know how Maria Bjornson got involved with Phantom in the first place? Was she handpicked by one of the creatives involved, or was it under other circumstances?

Ya know, that is one of the things I tried to look closer at in an article I published on Maria Bjørnson in 2021. It can be read in parts here: https://mariabjornson.com/downloads/

Or in full here, in the original article also featuring the illustrations: https://dresshistorians.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Winter_2021_issue.pdf

Some quotes:

"Bjørnson had mainly designed for opera and plays when she was approached to design The Phantom of the Opera, a new musical about a deformed genius. The producer Cameron Mackintosh had seen Bjørnsons work several times, but it was her take on the sinking ship in the Royal Shakespeare Company's 1982 production of The Tempest that appeared to have piqued Mackintosh's interest. The ship sank into the floor by simple means - some sails, a bit of rope, wooden remains of a boat - and yet these simple means created the production's own universe.

Bjørnson said, "I later asked him whan made him approach me to do Phantom. He said it was the Tempest shipwreck - I had the boat sink into the floor of the stage, and the sail washed up into the sky. That became Prospero's island". Mackintosh was to produce The Phantom of the Opera, and this was the sort of cinematic flow needed for the musical.

Bjørnson was not, however, the only designer considered. When Hal Prince was hired as the director for The Phantom of the Opera, Mackintosh recommended five designers to him. Prince said of the designers, "One stood out. Considering the assignment - a flamboyant Victorian melodrama - it must seem strage that I was especially impressed with a single-set design - almost minimalist - of an Ibsen play. A rectangle, wooden louvers, beautiful furniture, architectually spare: an inviting space to tell a powerful story"

And in my opinion, much of what made them look at her in the first place - the cinematic flow and the sense of "black box" towards intricate single pieces in the set design - is also key to the success of the Phantom design. Which I go on to discuss in the afore-mentioned article :)

[mccncasters]

Simverses' Noble Tribelt and Aris Long Boot Royal Skirt in Historian

You will need the meshes (Noble Tribelt Long Boots Royal Skirt - Toddler - Child - Adult)

palette by @academiapalettes

mesh by @simverses

DOWNLOAD HERE > Patreon Google Drive

[radioves]

nimbus

[id : a drawing of lizzie ldshadowlady. lizzie is a lady with pale skin and long, curly pink hair, tied in to two buns with the rest hanging down to her lower back. she is facing towards the left, looking off into the top right corner with a small smile. she is wearing a blue dress with puffy sleeves, decorated with white ruffles, along with a dark blue pinstripe corset. there is a pink bow tied to her back, with a smaller bow tied around her collar. she has golden freckles dotted across her cheeks, with gold beads in her hair, buttons, and earrings to match. she holds a bouquet of flowers in her hands, with a matching flower crown placed atop her head. she is standing within a field of similar flowers that grow tall, with shorter pale grass at the bottom. the sky is a pale greenish-blue color, mottled with clouds. there is an overlay that makes the image appear as if it is underwater, supported by the pale, featureless fish that swim behind her. a pale yellow halo is behind her head, silhouetting her. end id]

[saltyfilmmajor]

All I had to do to get @demigoat to watch Mash was to tell them there was a goat in there

[marzipanandminutiae]

hi! i was reading an article on fashion history today, specifically the 1840s, and it seemed to focus heavily on the idea of clothes relating to female oppression. i was wondering your opinion, if you have the time?

the article is here, https://fashionhistory.fitnyc.edu/1840-1849/

in particular, the article says “Women’s clothes became so constricting that her passivity in society was clear (C.W. Cunnington 135)”. i suppose i’m not entirely sure how valid that is? i’m just looking for another opinion, especially since i’m a complete amateur at fashion history. i know that you’ve talked before about some misconceptions around victorian womenswear, especially with corsets, so i’d love to know if this is of a similar vein to that or if it’s something different with a different background.

if you take the time to respond, thank you so much! i hope you’re doing well :)

This is. A very strange article, providing citiations for opinions as if they were facts. Like...why are you giving a citation for an interpretation of 1840s feminine clothing? I guarantee you won't find anybody in contemporary literature saying "ah yes, women dress like this because they are passive! that is the conscious reason we do this and we have all agreed on it." So it's not really a fact, is it? And therefore, why is it being cited as if it were?

They also seem very determined to believe that these clothes restricted movement to an unmanageable degree. While it's true that you can't bend at the waist easily in 1840s stays, you can still bend at the hips or kneel down. Preventing you from moving in one very specific way doesn't necessarily prevent you from accomplishing the same action with a different movement. It's also bizarre because they talk about women of limited means having access to fashion via ladies' magazines, but don't carry that through to its logical conclusion: working-class women wore similar clothing styles to their upper-class counterparts. And therefore were also wearing stays (practical applications thereof aside). And could ill afford to have their physical action limited. And therefore...? Maybe these garments weren't whalebone cages that kept women from living their lives, perhaps?

Also, this Cunnington fellow they cite for their FactPinions died in 1961. He was active primarily during the period of greatest disdain for all things Victorian- the early to mid 20th century. Are we examining those biases and comparing the opinions expressed therein to modern scholarship, World-Renowned Institution F.I.T.? No! Of course not! Why would we, when Everybody Knows Victorian women's clothing was horrible and restrictive and kept them from doing anything ever? Their society was highly misogynistic, so it must follow that every single thing about their lives was designed to actively oppress them! That's how human beings work, after all! Ahahaha! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Don't get me wrong, he was one of the founders of my main field. He and his wife saved a vast number of garments from being lost forever, and I appreciate that. But he was, as we all are, a product of his time- and that time just happened to absolutely loathe everything about the era he was examining. So I'm not sure why we're taking his word as gospel here- especially when it's not even hard fact.

Like, for example, he says that the scoop bonnets of the era acted like blinders for women, a "moral check" keeping them focused on "the straight and narrow path ahead."

Except. Mr. Cunnington.

Women can turn their heads.

You can just. You can look in another direction. You're not a horse in a head-rein when you put on a coal-scuttle bonnet, so it hardly keeps you from seeing "immoral" things. It is, quite frankly, Not That Deep.

Aaaaand there's the old bugaboo of children's corsets, with a direful comment that girls began "corset training" as young as ten years old. I've gone over this before but, whatever salacious literature of the day may imply, it was not at all common to waist-train young children. Indeed, most so-called "children's corsets" that I've encountered are more like lightly stiffened vests designed for posture support, and can't even be tightened.

There was also at least one very weird technical observation about clothing in here, which surprised me for a fashion school where you'd think at least one person editing their articles would have sewing experience: the comment that the tightly-fitted armsceyes (arm holes) of 1840s bodices kept women from raising their arms above 90 degrees.

I could be wrong, but in my experience a more fitted armsceye allows for MORE freedom of movement, not less. One of the biggest issues I've encountered- and heard other sewists complain about -with modern mass-produced garments is armsceyes cut too large. This may seem counterintuitive, but the principle is something like: Armsceye Cut Close To Armpit = Less Pulling On Body of Garment = Can Raise Arm Higher Without Disturbing Rest Of Shirt/Dress/Whatever. And for an extremely close-fitted garment like a Victorian bodice, that effect could mean that you really CAN'T raise your arm above your head. Trust me; I know this from having made the mistake too many times in my own historical sewing. Now, if the armsceyes were cut very small in general- high in the armpit but very low on the shoulder, too -that maybe could restrict movement somewhat. And I haven't examined many 1840s bodices; it's possible that's how the sloped-shoulder silhouette of the day was achieved.

But I really doubt that all women went around being unable to raise their arms above their heads given that, again, many of them had to work. And it seems weird that a fashion school would simply say "tight armsceyes Bad" without explaining themselves more specifically. Potentially, depending on what they meant, it's even downright ignorant.

In conclusion: the article is correct in a lot of specifics, like the shapes and silhouettes concerned, the trend towards historical inspiration and very subdued ornamentation, etc. It's just when they start trying to interpret the imagined Deeper Meaning of the garments, or extrapolate about the lived experience of wearing them without ever trying it/examining what women actually said about it in the period (or didn't; absence of discussion can be telling in itself) that it starts to go off the rails.

I also feel like it's emblematic of a larger issue within the field, namely: You Can Just Say Whatever The Hell You Want About Dress History And People Will Believe You. One might think academia would be immune to this and more rigorous in its fact-checking, but. One would be wrong. Probably because there have been so many myths floating around for decades, getting repeated over and over, never being questioned because- as I said above -everyone is very very ready to believe that the past was a total hellhole. And most of these myths bolster that image, so...why would anyone doubt them?

Besides the small, unimportant fact that, you know. They're not true.

I don't know. It definitely puts my professional imposter syndrome to flight, I can tell you that much.

[clove-pinks]

The War of 1812 was a conflict of global proportion and international impact. And yet, in a study of this nature it is the human element which reveals itself most clearly. Here we perceive an emotional dimension standing in crisp relief that in studies of a larger scale tends to lose definition and focus. We feel the loneliness and sense the frustration of life in a frontier garrison. We share the terror of a lonely watch on a darkened night; we fear for the safety of comrades. We rejoice in victory and lament in defeat.

— Larry L. Nelson, Men of Patriotism, Courage & Enterprise: Fort Meigs in the War of 1812

Building of Ft. Meigs 1813 (detail), Glen M. Shaw, 1942 (New Deal Art Registry)

[asteralien]

video called "pirate shirt tutorial that actually makes sense" with a thumbnail clickbaitingly copying bernadette banner's style, which does the exact same thing as bernadette banner's video but more confusingly and without a diagram in the video itself, also failing to understand that bernadette banner's channel is primarily a history channel and not a sewing tutorial channel so telling people they don't have to hand-sew the pirate shirt or they don't have to thread-pull is unnecessary because bernadette banner literally said "do this however you want, i just do it this way because it's how i learn about historical dress practices" in her own video. couldn't ask for better youtube entertainment