Peacock Dress: fitting the bodice mockup

Peacock Dress: fitting the bodice mockup

If you’ve been watching this project finally come together on my YouTube channel, you’ve watched me take numerous bizarre Edwardian era measurements, and you’ve seen me use a lot of pencil lead and brain power drafting a precise 1902 era pattern, and...
These things just take time

These things just take time

Some projects spring forth fully formed in the mind. The fabrics are there in your stash, and you drop everything and go to work immediately because you’re SO inspired. Two days later, behold the fruits of creativity unleashed! Most projects, however, don’t go like this. Most are slower. Some stall and get re-started, and some projects take a decade or more to come together. Sometimes your ideas are way ahead of your resources… but patience might bring the resources you need.

What happened to all those once-worn Worth gowns?

What happened to all those once-worn Worth gowns?

It’s hard for us nowadays to imagine just how grand the House of Worth really was.

So extravagantly rich were some of its patrons that they only wore their impossibly lavish Worth gowns once or twice…

So what happened to these clothes after they were cast off by the hoi polloi? Sure, a few ended up in museums, but you gotta wonder – what happened to the rest?

By chance, I tracked some of the Vanderbilts’ clothes down this week… and in the most appropriate, yet unlikely place. It seems that some of Worth’s work made it all the way back to the county of his birth – Lincolnshire, in the UK – under the most delightfully ridiculous circumstances!

A 1977 book on a dusty shelf in a Cotswolds hotel gives us the full story….