Time for another inspiration post! In the past, I made a visual guide to regency sleeves which are more/different than the ‘short puffed’ style most commonly recreated. For necklines, the most commonly recreated are probably the plain square and round neckline, followed by an overlapping v shape. This seems right, as most originals also follow this paradigm, but there’s a lot of room in terms of decoration and details to make a dress more unique! Living in an age where clothes have decidedly less detailing than in previous era’s, we tend to gravitate towards putting on too little trim. If you’ve ever seen existent dresses from this era, you’ll notice that even though the silhouette and design are simpler than say Victorian, there’s still a great attention to detail. Of course, while the general shape is often determined by the pattern used, most pattern companies leave out options for trimming because there’s just too many. So you need to come up with your own details, which can be difficult. For me, looking at images ‘from that time’ always helps a lot, so I hope people can get a little inspired by this to create something ‘different’. All images are from the ‘Journal des Dames et des Modes’, between 1805 and 1810. I might do another one of these for 1810-1815 if people are interested. Source for the images is the online archive of the Bunka Gakuen Library.
Loads of variety, from trims, to collars, to ribbons, flowers, pleating, scarfs and even fur!
Atelier Nostalgia 