Dress, cotton embroidered with silk trimmed with linen lace, tapes of linen, c. 1810 - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/pin/328199891573543713/

"White was the color of choice at the beginning of the Regency period, although pastels grew to become acceptable. Women resembled...

This post is mostly working pictures in the hope that it's interesting to see and because it helps in understanding what types of paper and processes I used to construct the dress.

Really I began just with this:

I started by folding and pinning the basic bodice shape aro...

… like chalk-figures drawn on ballroom floors
to be danced out before morning!

William Hazlitt
The Conversation of Authors
1826

I had a printed plan of the frontand back  drawing rooms of The Regency Town House plus a red squashed oval shape representing the ballgown (wi...

 image from: http://historicalhussies.blogspot.com/2013/08/regency-ballrooms.html (link below)

One of the first things I remember The Regency Town House curator Nick Tyson telling me when we met up at the beginning of planning my residency, concerned the Regency practis...

The Saloon Dress

The embroidery effect decoration on this dress is inspired by the wallpaper of their recently renovated Saloon, with special photographic permission from The Royal Pavilion, Brighton
 

Please see: https://brightonmuseums.org.uk/royalpavilion/whattosee/s...

This Wikipedia list of the wars that have involved Great Britain from the 1700's to the present day is harshly illuminating: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_the_United_Kingdom

Arguably the Regency era was an especially busy period and the social imp...

Ok, so these garments aren't currently hidden from public view which is why I'm posting the images here rather than on The Hidden Wardrobe but The National Army Museum, Chelsea, London is a museum I hadn't heard of before I began this research and I wonder if that is m...

The Annunciation with Saint Emidius by Carlo Crivelli 1485 (National Gallery)

If there's a bird that's been more frequently reflected in the visual and decorative arts I don't know what it is. Taking on the Peacock and attempting to interpret it in a new way is therefor...

Inspired by a very beautifully decorated shoe from the 1890's (see: http://stephaniesmart.wixsite.com/stephaniesmart/single-post/2018/10/25/Shoes-across-300-years) and this drawing of Doves, which I came across as part of my research into illustrations of birds by earl...

Early nineteenth century botanical illustrations and engravings are wonderful for their detail, intricacy, accuracy and (just occasionally) for their apparently rather random diversions fact. The images of this bird with it's tail feathers raised and lowered (see below...