Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.


( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

In 1785, Adolf Wertmüller painted this portrait of Marie-Antoinette and her two children:


( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

I hear a lot (and I mean a lot) from my friends and acquaintances who do 18th century costuming about how they would totally wear a chemise gown if it weren’t all white. Which is interesting, because judging by the historical accounts of the earliest chemise ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

One of the issues with dating the Platt Hall chemise is that there are little to no documents regarding its provenance. While I was there in 2012, I discovered that the chemise was part of the collection bequeathed to Platt Hall by C. Willet & Phillis ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

Rest assured, the chemise à la reine is never far from my mind. I’m finishing up the second draft of my thesis, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I’m going back to Manchester in May to have a second study date with the Platt Hall chemise gown, in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

Rest assured, the chemise á la reine is never far from my mind. I’m finishing up the second draft of my thesis, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I’m going back to Manchester in May to have a second study date with the Platt Hall chemise gown, in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

Rest assured, the chemise á la reine is never far from my mind. I’m finishing up the second draft of my thesis, so there’s that. But there’s also the fact that I’m going back to Manchester in May to have a second study date with the Platt Hall chemise gown, in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

I hereby declare the next 30 days to be Chemise  à la reine month! I’m going to post every day about the chemise gown… Little things, big things, snippets of my research, never-before seen teasers from my 2012 research trip, all about the chemise!

And to kick ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

Natalie asks:

Okay, you asked for any question, and here it is: what was the most interesting seam or hem finishing method you observed during your London research, and might you describe it to us? Specially if there’s a photo of it involved?

Most of what I ( Read more... )

Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.

While the Europeans were doing this with the kimonos imported from Japan:


( Read more... )