Start of a New Era

Image result for original 1860's dresses

IN the age of the internet, information is only a click away. We use it to converse with friends, do our banking, teach our kids, and even connect the future to the past. One of my favorite sources for this  is the wonderful  All the Pretty Dresses blog found here http://www.extantgowns.com/. It is an online collection of antique dresses, for the purpose of education. It is invaluable and in my opinion one of the most important sources for viewing original garments. 

CDV's and written clothing sources can only give so much information, CDV's cannot give us color, it cannot show us multiple angles of the clothing, or the details of the inside of a dress. Written sources can give us a description in black and white, but words are limited by the ability of the readers mind to translate it to an image.
1860s Black Silk Brocade Evening Bodice
 That was what made the All The Pretty Dresses blog so great, it gave a place for these extant garments from around the web to be gathered together and put in a searchable format. However, in 2018 this great resource trickled down and ended. How many items sold at auction or on ebay are now deleted and their pictures and information loss in the two years since the blog stopped. Too much information is being loss, and replaced by mediocre sources and heresay. Anyone interested in history and clothing from the 19th and 20th should be able to understand how precious these original garments are. These items tell a story of who made them, how they were made, and how we can recreate them. 
It is with much thought and contemplation that the Industrious Lady will now start off where the Pretty Dresses blog ended. These images need to be stored and shared somewhere and it will hopefully be here. It will be difficult, it will be time consuming, and it will be a labor of love and education. Every week I will go through the sale sites, find these dresses before they are deleted, and bring the information here to be stores. This will be for research purposes. These extant items will be from 1850's to 1870's. Even that will be a large undertaking. 
Antique Dress 1860's Brown and Silver Plaid Silk Dress
Pinterest is scattered and does not always give accurate results. Museum websites like the Met's site only include items from their collection. Going to ebay or Etsy directly will not yield correct items 100% of the time as it is dependent on what a seller says, and the items posted are only temporary. Once a post is gone, it is gone forever. Facebook is the same, search results are sketchy and can be deleted quickly. The blog forum works out perfect for researching and searching through images. The hope is to leave a resource that many will use to learn more about history.

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