I just keep thinking about this dress I saw on the
Vintage Textile website. I already included an image of it in a previous post, but I wanted to fixate on it a bit longer. In detail. This is a perfect example of the sort of dress to be worn by a young woman just prior to World War I. An absolutely refined, almost innocent elegance; I can picture one of the last Tsar's daughters wearing a dress
exactly like this one. The fashions of those few years right before the war were often a strangely satisfying hybrid of delicate, layered fabrication and trimming, and an adaptation of classical Greek form. The asymmetric skirt panel on this dress and the semi-detached panels at the side of the bodice make me
swoon.
Here is something of the website's description:
Hand-embroidered tulle tea dress, c.1912 [or later]
This [dress] combines hand-embroidered cotton tulle with a mixture of delicate machine laces. The hand-assembled tape lace around the neckline and on the skirt front is exceptionally pretty. The two outer layers are hand embroidered with a floral pattern of raised padded satin stitch with eyelet accents. The underskirt has a plain tulle top with a wide machine-embroidered hem flounce. The two layers of the bodice and three layers of the skirt close separately with snaps. [The dress was photographed without an underdress so that the various patterns can be seen.]
