How Many Dresses Does a Regency Lady Need?

We all aspire to be fashionable Regency ladies, do we not? But how does one accomplish such a task?

First, you must consider your wardrobe. Do you have enough gowns? Are they elegant or vulgar? Whatever shall you wear on your trip to Bath? All important questions, which I will attempt to help you answer.

Let's start from the basics.

Underwear
Unless you are a very fast lady, drawers are a no-no. Start with a shift, a long sack-like gown worn underneath all your other clothes. Linen is best - it is light and easy to wash. Gone are the days of the conical stays that your grandmother wore with such pride. Your stays are longer to flatten out the stomach and smooth out the silhouette.  Last comes your petticoat. Stocking are essential. Wool for winter and cotton for summer. And go glam with silk for a ball.

Stays, 1819, Source: Jane Austen Centre 

Morning Dress
Between the hours of rising and sitting down to dinner, you may wear a morning dress. It is a simple, practical gown made of muslin, calico or wool. Your arms, neck and bosom must be covered. But just because this is your at-home dress does not mean it should be shabby. Remember, lace can make any gown elegant. But all in moderation, you do not want to appear vulgar.  

Morning dress, France, 1818-1820. Source:  Les Arts Décoratifs

Day Dress / Afternoon Dress
For at-home visits and family time change into a day dress. But remember, modesty is everything. The French may suffer to wear deep decolletes, but as a proper English lady you better cover it up. Chemisette or fichu should do the trick.
   

Dress (open robe), 1795. Source: Met Museum  

Walking Dress / Promenade Dress
When out shopping or making formal calls, wear a walking dress. And out in a public place, go for a promenade dress. The two are often considered to be the same, but a promenade dress is usually a little more fine. Fabrics are light in the summer and heavier in the winter. Choose appropriate outwear for the season: shawl or warp for warmer weather, a spencer or pelisse for a colder day. You don't want to catch 'the muslin disease'.

Pelisse-coat, 1823. Source: Museum of London

Evening dress
Dinners at home or abroad are grand occasions. And you must show off all your finery. The neckline is lower and you may bare your arms. However, watch the fashion magazines. Sometimes long sleeves are in vogue, at others, short ones are popular. Fabrics can be rich: silk and satin. And if you are sick and tired of the dull 'classical' style, go for more recent history as Medieval, Renaissance and Gothic elements are very 'in' for both morning and evening wear.      

Evening Dress, 1823, Ackerman's Repository

Ball Dress
Some ladies are content with one fine evening gown for balls and dinners, but you should consider having a ball gown made especially. Fabrics are light, as you will be dancing, but rich. Popular choices are fine muslin, silk satin, duchesse silk and light taffeta. For a risqué look go with velvet. You may show your bosom, it is all right. A débutante ought to wear white and light pastels; married or older women may go with darker shades. To truly stand out in the candlelight adorn your dress with metallic trims, nets and beads. Gloves are a must for dancing and a fanciful turban will show your excellent taste.

Ball dress, 1812, Ackerman's Repository

Ridding Habit
A lady must ride; if only to accompany her husband. The dress for this activity is naturally darker, sturdier and heavier than your other gowns. Male fashions are de regulier with many masculine and military elements. The skirt is fuller than on a regular dress - you do not wish to show the world more than they ought to see.  

Ridding habit, 1817, Ackerman's Repository

Mourning Dress
When that disagreeable relation with a very large estate falls ill, start preparing a mourning dress. Black is for full mourning. For half mourning you may wear lilac, purple, grey or lavender. Avoid any shiny fabrics or jewellery. During half mourning a few black trinkets are acceptable.  

Mourning dress, 1823-1825. Source: Victoria & Albert Museum

Thus concludes our look at a wardrobe of a fashionable lady. Of course, one must not forget the dresses you will need for seaside resorts or evenings at the opera and numerous lovely accessories that a lady of quality simply must have at hand to be truly elegant. But that is a post for another day.    

Dresss of the Week: Iphigenia Fancy Dress

Today Dress of the Weeks takes a turn for the scandalous. Do you dare emulate the rakish Elizabeth Chudleigh, Duchess of Kingston, who dressed as Iphigenia ready for the sacrifice?

Elizabeth Chudleigh as Iphigenia, 1740

In 1740 Elizabeth Chudleigh appeared at a private Subscription Masquerade at the King’s Theatre wearing a costume of Iphigenia. Though no accurate description of a costume exists, and all subsequent artistic representations of it are nothing more that fanciful imaginings, it is said that she outraged the guests by being practically naked.

King George II, on the other hand, liked the costume very much. On seeing the lady he asked to touch her exposed breast, to which Lizzy replied, with a coy smile, I should imagine, that she can put his hand on a far softer place. And she placed the King's hand on his own head. What a gal!

So this year, forget about the old and tired sexy nurses, sexy kittens and sexy vampires, and, instead, go as Iphigenia ready for the sacrifice. 

Dress of the Week: Bat Fancy Dress

While masked balls were somewhat stigmatized during the Georgian era, by the time Victorians came about, fancy dress balls were all the rage. And fashion publications of the time had plenty of creative and sometimes bizarre costume ideas. And since I love Batman this Victorian Bat fancy dress is especially appealing to me.

Bat costume, La mode illustrée, Journal de la famille, 1887

Bat fancy dress based on 1887 fashion plate

This whimsical costume consists of a flounced skirt with crinoline, polonaise, corset bodice, opera gloves and a fichu with a cape shaped like bat wings attached. Two little bats perch on the shoes and a slightly larger bat is spread over the bosom. Add a cute bat-hat and the costume is complete. For me it's the hat that makes this costume absolutely worth the effort. And who can resist coming to a Halloween party dressed as a Victorian Batgirl?

The best part, you can actually buy a pattern for this outfit! Unfortunately  the bat-hat is not included. And Sewing to Distraction actually recreated this look last year. Check out her step-by-step journey into Victorian fancy dress.     

Dress of the Week: Blue Carriage Dress

As a young lady of the world, I enjoy travel. But a journey could be arduous if one doesn't have the the right gown. Fortunately for me, today's Dress of the Week is perfect for my purposes.

Carriage Dress, Ackermann's Repository, June 1823

While this lady chose to travel by carriage, I will be taking a train. Still, one cannot go wrong with a comfortable blue dress with caped shoulders and frogging down the front. A pretty little gauze cap will help protect one's hair. And to avoid looking too dowdy, the cap can be decorated with flowers. And, of course, a quizzing glass is not just an accessory, it's a necessity. How else am I to admire the beautiful countryside swishing by. 

Dress of the Week: Walking Dress

I seem to be running out of types of dresses.

The weather  is still anything but mild. It may be May, but it's positively Aprilish around here. The sun is shining, enticing a lady to go out, but how is she to do this with this horrid sharp wind blowing from the sea. Only one solution - I must don a pretty spring-y walking dress. Like this one.

Ackermann’s Repository, Walking Dress, April 1817

I love the lilac spencer. The color is so beautiful, and the high ruffled color is just what one needs to keep oneself from catching a chill. The matching bonnet has a really pretty trim and the flowers make it feel like a perfect accessory for the spring. But those little white satin slippers are too delicate for our dusty roads and I would be too scared to mar the lacy hem of this dress.  

Dress of the Week: Spencer Jacket

The weather has been getting a bit warmer. It's almost +10C! So this week I felt I could go for some lighter attire, and we all know that a lady will always look lovely in a spencer jacket.

Jacket (spencer) and petticoat, 1815, The Kyoto Costume Institute   

I do love this high-waisted spencer jacket with long, tight-fitting sleeves covering the hands, of red cut velvet with piping and buttons in hussar style. There is something very daring about a woman who wears a red jacket with military-style decorations.

These jackets became popular between 1790s and 1820s. Since Regency dresses were very flimsy and offered little protection from winds and rough weather of Europe, ladies took to wearing spencers which provided warmth and added a dash of color to otherwise simple early 19th century ensembles.

Walking dress, Ackermann's Repository, 1817 

As the story goes, a spencer was originally a men's outer coat popularized by George Spencer, 2nd Earl Spencer, who one night, standing too close to the fire, burnt off the tails of his coat. Clearly, one man's misfortune is another man's fashion choice. The ladies saw this cute and practical piece of clothing and started wearing it, too.  

A spencer is very similar to a modern cardigan or bolero jacket and was usually cut short along the waistline of the dress.  

Dress of the Week: Redingote

April is here, but it's still a bit nippy outside. Spring is reluctant to start and a young lady cannot do better than this lovely redingote.

Redingote, England, 1810s 

Description:
Red wool flannel "redingote" with braid and wrapped buttons in Brandenburg style; bag of beige velvet, hand-painted with floral and scenic motif, chain strap; muff and palatine of swans-down.

A military style, "redingote". The full-length, wool coat protected women wearing thin, muslin dresses from the intense cold of European winters. The Brandenburg style, expressed in the wrapped buttons and braid that decorate the front opening, gained inspiration from the "à la Hussarde" worn by Napoleon's armed forces, and was often used on the high-waisted redingote. The coat worn for horseback-riding by English aristocrats came to be used as a cold proof overcoat and a rain-proof hunting coat in France around 1725. Later, this kind of coat was used by the army as well. What was called a "riding coat" in English became in French a "redingote", and was an item worn widely around the end of the eighteenth century. At the time women's clothing was strongly influenced by the functional and practical style of men's and military wear.

Source: Image and description from The Kyoto Costume Institute 

The lovely red redingote reminds me of this fashion print from Wiener Modenzeitung, 1917.  

Trimmed to mimic the epaulets and the Hungarian passementerie from the uniforms of hussars. The wrists are trimmed with fur and eight levels of button, cord, and fringe trim. The lady carries a piece of sheet music in her right hand. Her bonnet is decorated with a large rose and assorted flowers. I would love to wear something like this! Though those pretty little shoes seem too flimsy for the dirt and snow of early April.  

Fancy Dress Ideas Victorian Style

Source: La Mode Illustree, France, 1890 

Music, Cleopatra and an eighteenth century Maid   

Victorian Fancy Dress: Electric Light

People during the Victorian era seemed to have had an uncanny ability to turn any abstract concept, any technological innovation or idea into a fancy dress costume. Case in point, 'Electric light' or 'Electricity'.

This is how Fancy Dress Described,1896 describes 'Electricity' fancy dress:

"Electric blue satin, covered with silver zigzag flashes; silver cords are wound about the neck,arms, and waist; to typify the electric coils. Bodice of blue satin draped with silver and crepe de chine; wings at the back; an electric light in the hair. A staff carried in the hand with coils encircling the globe which surmounts it."

Source: La Mode Illustree, France 1891

It is clear that this lovely dress has inspired the costume worn by Mrs. Alice Vanderbilt, at a fancy dress ball given by her sister-in-law, Alva Vanderbilt in 1883.

Mrs. Alice Gwynne Vanderbilt as Electric Light, March 26, 1883

With 1200 guests, $3 million dollars spent and expectations of a Communist attack, this was certainly the social event of the season. On the occasion, Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt wore this pale yellow and shell-pink satin dress embroidered with tinsel, gilt and silver thread. It came with a Prussian blue velvet train embroidered with gold. The lovely costume was a gift of Countess Laszlo Szechenyi. 

I couldn't find any contemporary pictures of this dress, but The Dreamstress has a whole post dedicated to it with the photos she took when visiting the Museum of the City of New York. 

Fancy Dress Ideas Victorian Style

Source: La Mode Illustree, France 1891

Spring, the Spirit of Halloween (?) and Electricity  

Victorian Fancy Dress: Photography

Halloween - that greatest time of the year - is over, but not completely. I have another costume party to go to this week and so I will keep posting about fancy dress for a bit longer, hopefully entertaining all those who are not over Halloween just yet.

Remember that post with a Victorian fancy dress fashion plate where one of the ladies was dresses as what I dubbed a photo camera? Well, it turns out that she was not dressed as 'a photo camera' but as 'photography'.

Source: Godey’s, 1866  

This is what the 1896 edition of Fancy Dress Described has to say about a very similar costume:

"A green gauze dress; round the skirt, nestling in the bouillonnes a row of photographs; a scarf of the silk draped across the skirt. with medallion photographs at intervals, all bordered with green galon; the bertha of the low bodice fastened at the front, back, and on the shoulders with them; a cap in the form of a camera; snap shot carried in the hand."   

In fact, one brave lady chose to wear this it to a fancy dress ball and, today, we know about this thanks to that very same technological advancement celebrated by her costume. 

Source: McCord Museum

Miss Stevenson attended a ball in Montreal in 1865 at the Theater Royal dressed as 'Photography'. Since this dress is almost an exact copy of the one in the fashion plate, we can assume that it is also bright green. The lady has photographs on her skirt, bracelet, fan and eve her shoes. The crowning glory of this costume is a camera-shaped hat on her head that comes with a veil to mimic the dark cloth of a plate camera.

Fancy Dress Ideas Victorian Style

Source: La Mode Illustree, France,1887 

A dragon fly, a little Japanese girl and different (board) games.  

Fancy Dress Ideas Victorian Style

Source: La Mode Illustree, France, 1888 

An Incroyable, a little gypsy girl and Empress Josephine (Regency lady).  

Fancy Dress Fashion Plate, 1900s

Fancy dress, 1900, source missing

Cowboy, 15th-16th century lady (possibly Margaret from Faust), ballerina, Egyptian queen, Polish peasant girl(?), dragonfly  

Apparently, dressing little boys as cowboys and little girls as ballerinas has been around since early 1900s. Shouldn't it have gotten old by now?

Victorian Fancy Dress Fashion Plate

Source:  La Mode Illustree, France, 1889

Flower girl, flower and star