gathering materials

Well dye remover. I decided rather than trek across Auckland for dye remover I’d just order some. So I did, and ordered a new cutting blade for my cutting machine at the same time because well I’m going to finally just start cutting the darn Elsa sequins! Well huge confetti circles that are 1″ across 🙂 They are translucent so once dye up will be very icy when finished 🙂

The dye remover is for my silk satin and also for something else I have forgotten.. whoops!

But I have also just spent the day detangling my very expensive lace front wig I bought for my Chistine Daae costumes.

It’s a bit frizzy for that now but ideal for doing all kinds of historic hairstyles which is fab. I just need to run a blade over the ends (designed for human hair these thin ends out and as the frizz sticks out is fairly easily cut out 🙂 )

I have read most of the first bio of Worth I got from the library. The library has two last holds for me: the Opulent Era and The House of Worth : portrait of an archive.

That second one I have not read through yet, obviously I know TOE very well 🙂 This is just saving me hunting out a copy for myself as the costume reference shelf is a little out of hand. Okay, no I do want this. I just want to find a very good quality copy!

I have the large scale edition of Costume by KCI and sadly most of the photos I am interested in were not adjusted for the larger format so are a little blurry. Luckily the section on Japanese influenced western costume is all good!

Also.

I’m buying the freaking Rocailles. I may as well do this properly if I’m going to the effort of removing all the dye then adding more. And if I have 10m of silk chiffon already decoloured just for the selvages and.. well this is the gown that started the obsession. And yes, the museum catalogue includes “metallic thread” so I was right in assuming the outlines were originally si;ver.

OMG!

So obviously the owner being rich and in New York had other worth frocks but WHAT THE HEY!@!!!!

 

I wish it was possible to know if all these gowns were worn my The Mrs Astor, or if they were collected. But I love her taste. I really do. And I am almost up to this section in the Worth biography so I’ll keep reading and see what the book has to say about the New York social scene. Most of the info is fantastic. Not a lot about the day to day proceedings, but a lot of info I assumed but more as well (1200 seamstresses in the 1860s????)

My OMG moment was false though, a picture of the Electric Light (Worth) gown for the Vanderbilt party  came up and I thought how could I possibly have not made the connection. And now it turns out I have lost my book with the very good copy of it.. Anyway. False Excite.

So next step is to see where the book is and possibly rescue it from the pile of books to donate….

And finally.. did I forget or has The Met released a few books as PDFs?

Haute Couture

Right so yes it is pale green not yellow as it appears in the more well known version of the image. Pale blue would make more sense but what the hey. Probably a case of what worked for the client in terms of colour 🙂

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