ANOTHER FASHION SHOW FOR THIS YEAR

 

This last weekend we did our 2^nd “annual” fashion show at the Lantern Crest Retirement Community. I had hoped last year after we did the first one in November 2021, and had a few people mention they’d like us to do one for other locations, that we would be able to book a few more. But nothing came through. And the retirement communities had to lock down again due to more Covid outbreaks. So, I was happy this year that this one was eager for us to come back.

Thinking up themes for my fashion shows are always fun. Most of the time we just do a timeline with no real theme per se. But it does allow you to have more to talk about if there’s a theme involved. It didn’t take me long to come up with our recent one, Movies & Costume Magic. This was again for a group of non-costumers, so it helps to have them relate the time period of our outfits to a movie they were familiar with. This opened it up to stretching out the years we would normally encompass. We started back in the 1180s, and ended in the 1920s.

I asked the models to pick a movie to match the time period their dress would have been worn in, or if they couldn’t think of one, we dug around for an appropriate movie to match. And I wanted the movies to be familiar to this older crowd, so not too old, and not too recent or obscure. The introduction to each movie was just the basics of what it was about and the time period it was placed in. 

Our first movie was The Lion in Winter, with Jody wearing her 1180s queen’s gown she copied from the Glenn Close version of the movie. Then Terri picked 1810 for Pride & Prejudice. My purple dress was 1830s and from the PBS series, Victoria.   

Gina dressed in 1850/60s for Gone with the Wind. She was followed by Cindy in 1870s The Forsyte Saga. Windy also wore 1870s for The Age of Innocence.

Moving into the 1880s was Shelley from the early version of The Matchmaker. Then we had a mother / daughter team from 1880s Tombstone, Shannon and little 5-year-old, Maya, wearing the dress her Mama made her. Lisa also dressed in the 1880s, from the Sherlock Holmes movie, Murder by Decree.

Jumping ahead a few years was our narrator, Nancy, in her 1912 suit from Titanic, and her husband, Russell in his traveling suit, who also acts as our gentleman escort around the stage. June wore her 1918 dress for Somewhere in Time, and we finished off with Kathleen jazzing it up in The Great Gatsby.

These were a few candid photos some of us took as we were waiting for the show to start.

*Thank you to Jody and Shelley for the photos taken here*

After our show, we walked around among the audience so they could take a closer look at our dresses, and again were asked questions about them. We were contacted by one resident about possibly doing a show for her Women’s Club, and another who would like to donate her antique clothing to me for us to use. So, I’m waiting to hear from them.

Afterwards I invited all our ladies back to my house for a chance to change, relax, and have some snacks. We did manage to get a semi-group photo of most of the group but were missing a few.

I was contacted the next day by a friend of one of the models who asked about us also doing a show at her retirement village next Spring. So, I hope things will start picking up again.

And I won the “Dufus of the Day” award. While I was hanging up my purple dress yesterday and connecting the hooks & eyes, I suddenly remembered this was the dress I had converted to a front closure, but I had accidentally put it on backwards, forgetting I had done that. No wonder it was a bit bunchy in the front. I’m going to need to figure some way to indicate that next time in case I don’t wear it again for a year. 

MY FIRST OUTING OF THE YEAR; RIVERSIDE DICKENS FASHION SHOW

Last weekend felt like a breath of fresh air. We had our first costume outing of 2022, a fashion show at the Riverside (CA) Dickens Festival, which hadn’t been held in person for two years. As seen in my last post, I made an 1838 dark purple dress for this event. It was partially sewn so when I made the decision of what to wear, it was the easiest choice. The hard part was matching the theme for this year’s fashion show, “The Sun Never Sets on the British Empire”. We were supposed to come up with something that reflected different European influences on Victorian clothes and fabrics. When I looked at the designs on my purple fabric, my first thought was Persian. But the more I thought about it, the less that worked. It actually looked more like trellises in a garden. So, I had to be creative. I stretched it to more printed cottons coming from India, and named it the Indian Gardens. Heh, it worked. And I'd been wanting to make this dress for years. 

As I continued thinking about my accessories, I was also going to include a day cap made of some cotton voile that I had bought from India. But when I dug through my stash, I didn’t have any wide enough left to cut out my pattern pieces on the bias. Even my locally bought voiles were just mere scraps. But this cap is still on my project list. I recently bought a couple yards of a really fine voile from Renaissance Fabrics.  

What I ended up doing instead was to just wear my wig with my black ribbon hair loops pinned in them. I didn’t plan on walking outside in my dress, so I thought this would be fine. I already have one bonnet I can wear with it in the future but probably without the black ribbons.

My other planned accessory, which no one would have seen, was a pleated “bustle” to go under the back of my skirt to give it more roundness. However, I ended up with no time to make that, and just used my previous quilted cheater petticoat, topped with a multi-tiered petticoat to smooth out the top. It gave me a nice round fullness. I still plan to make one at some point, especially since it seemed so easy, and I have the twill denim fabric for it.

I had decided to make myself a pouch-shaped reticule out of the same dark purple silk taffeta that I’d made my belt from, and use a vintage crewel needle sample I’d bought years ago. I used the reticule pattern from La Mode Bagatelle’s Regency Wardrobe, and planned to stitch a dark purple braid around the edges of the needlework, but my local JoAnn’s store had absolutely nothing I could use. And I totally forgot to find some ribbon to do the drawstrings. Again, I had no time to find something online and have it shipped. So, for the time being, I had to settle for a plain black narrow braid, and basted it on so I can remove and replace it later when I find something better. I decided to wear it hanging from my belt, like this fashion plate.

Another accessory I was making awhile back was a cotton pelerine/collar but after finishing it, it seemed too large & heavy for my dress. Back to the drawing board. So at this point, I was considering using one of my other lace ones I had.

But what ended up making my outfit complete was a pelerine I bought from an etsy seller in England. It had the right shape for this time period that was perfect for my dress. I found photos of extant ones with a similar shape, and listed in my book of “White-embroidered costume accessories; the 1790s-1840s”, by Heather Toomer.  

These are from the Tasha Tudor Collection (sold by Augusta Auctions) and some others held in the V&A Museum.

From the moment I draped the pelerine over my dress, my mind just blew up with joy. It made my dress! With the help of a friend, she was able to identify the lace style as Belgian net lace with muslin appliques. This was perfect, because it gave me another tie-in to the European influence we wanted for our theme. This ended up as a Valentine’s gift from my hubby.

With everything ready to go, I was able to relax a bit, but two days before our show, I slipped off the side of a small ottoman stool, and landed on the side of my knee, which already has its issues from being injured. It caused my knee to swell up and I could barely walk. After a day of icing, heating, elevating it, and a good night’s sleep, the swelling went down enough so I could bend my knee and walk on it without too much pain. But it did limit my walking. Cindy & my plans for the day at Dickens was to show up, do the show, change out, and then stroll a couple antique shops in town, before heading home. We were both going through withdrawals of antique shopping after two years.

The fashion show was in a new location this year, in the Life Arts Building, two blocks away from the main festival. It was a large nicely lit room from lots of windows, and the stage was only one step up, thank goodness. But I even needed help stepping up and down from that.

All the models were seated in a chronological line-up off to the side, and I was first one up with my early dress. After I had done my twirl, and returned to my seat, I pulled out my camera and started taking photos of the other models. Of course I hadn’t been fast enough to think of handing it to someone to take one of me. But I found a couple that someone else had taken.

Afterwards when we all went on-stage for group photos and letting people come up for closer looks, I handed my camera to Laurel, our stage director, who took photos of us, and a couple by someone in the audience. Our Queen Victoria, Janet Clark, came up to stage first to thank us all for attending this year, and complimented each of us. I had one lady tell me she had been hesitant on making an 1830s dress herself, as she thought the sleeves would look strange, and had no idea how to keep them puffy. After seeing mine, and how I explained different methods to work with them, I think she’s now confident to give it a shot. I love it when you can help inspire others.

You know what this means now, don’t you? Time to pull out all those dresses I started and finish them up. We’re baaaaack!

Next up, the fashion show in Port Townsend, WA, for the Victorian Festival on April 30.