Black 1860's wedding dress

antique sleeveless 1860's black top fragile


From the Seller

antique sleeveless top-found in a box with writing "black waist top from wedding dress-1868" (box not included)
no tags or labels
excessive distress from age, use, storing etc.-has several holes and is very fragile (most likely NOT wearable)
measures approx. 17.5" across underarms, 15.5" back length
please use zoom to view enlarged distress and damage detailing
sold as shown as described 
in a fragile condition

From the Industrious Lady
What nice about this item is that it is labeled. So few original items come with a story of its use and age. A black wedding dress might astound us now but during the era any nice dress would be commandeered for duty for its lady's special day. White dresses were first made fashionable by Queen Victoria and fashion magazines from the era also pushed for the use of white dresses for weddings, but this item just goes to show that just because fashion dictated one thing, women made do and did what they could with what they had, The truest sense of being an industrious lady. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sissi Wedding dress

Image
 2021 was rough for the industrious Lady Blog and my dear followers you deserve an apology. In the spirit of being a poor adult who also has a certain addiction to silk, I spent the last year without active internet service or a working computer. Any posts that were made were done using the computer at the local library. As one can imagine, that made blogging and writing about projects pretty rough. And boy is there a lot to write about. The only thing that got me through was petting the pretty silks and chocolate, lots and lots of chocolate.  2021 might have been rough for writing but a huge new event happened that my dear readers don't know about yet, I got married. And of course in the spirit of industry and fun, I made my wedding dress. As I sat as a now engaged human, a choice had to be made, the choice of what kind of fun dress to make. And it had to be the perfect dress... the ultimate dress... and then it hit me. What dress in all of 19th century history is most close ...
Read more
Image
Halloween Sew-Along Part 2 For this project, I chose the night and day dress. I had seen it years ago while researching what fancy dress ball gowns looked like. Unfortunately, the origin of this lovely dress is a mystery. It is all over pinterest, yet  following link after link only leads to a twitter account that is no longer active or a picture on tumblr.  http://www.rmgandco.com/cms/?option=com_k2&view=item&id= 204:nightday-dress-by-cf-worth-1858&Itemid=244  was another link attributed to this dress, but the link must be broken or non-functioning. The url says it was a night/day dress by CF Worth in 1858. If the date is correct, this dress would have been during the first year of House of Worth being started. Wherever this dress came from, it absolutely stunning, and would turn any lady into the belle of the ball. To recreate this dress, I had to break down the many different part of it. From the top layer to  the bottom.   The dre...
Read more

Octagon Bodice with Bretelles: Introduction and history

Image
 Octagon Dress with Bretelles Guys, I'm in  love... in love with a new pattern company!  Truly Victorian is Great, past patterns is definitely a step into the past, but they seem to do a very certain look of the era and a very similar look. In the years encompassing the civil war era so many new looks and styles were coming out, so many that the big historical pattern companies didn't have. Which to be fair they can't carry every single style for the entire era, they only have so many people to draft so many patterns. But after pp and tv for so long, this girl needed a change, a Change the Octagon Ladies Repository brought. A good basquine bodice... she got it Need outerwear for winter... they have 9, yes 9 outerwear patterns. A wateau wrapper, Godey's 1863 shows a wateau back dress and been obsessed ever since  and so much more! And a link to the website h ere So many pretties to make, good thing I have that weird obsession with hoarding silk. For the first project ...
Read more