1910s Inspired Evening Gown
I wore this dress to the 2018 Peer’s Dance Vampire ball. I only found out about the event a few weeks before it happened, so this is probably the costume with the least time put into it out of all of the ones in this portfolio. However, it turned out really nicely, and I would absolutely wear both pieces of it again.
This dress is very loosely inspired by evening gowns from the early 1910s. My main references were this 1911 dress and this one from 1908, and these dresses were the main inspiration for the shape of the bodice and over skirt. However, this dress is most definitely not historically accurate, and that was never the goal, since I was really going more for the general look.
The Robe
For this costume, the main point of attention is the robe, which acts as a sort of over skirt to the base dress. It’s made out of black lace that I bought at a local fabric store, which has sequined and embroidered flowers, seen below. This fabric actually was what I built the project around; I fell in love with it when I first saw it, and knew I could do something interesting. While the embroidery doesn’t have any red in it, I wanted to compliment the green sequins, so I chose a red underdress, which I’ll write more about later.
The robe dips down into a v-shape in both the front and the back of the dress, going lower than the neckline of the red dress, and is pleated across the shoulders to give it a little shape. It also has a black waistband that creates an Empire waistline. This clasps in the front, and is decorated with two smaller sections of the original lace (bottom left).
The Dress
While the robe really catches the eye, the red dress under it is also something I’m pretty proud of. It dips down in a v-shape in the back, and is gathered at the front, which is reminiscent of some 1910s evening gowns I found during my period of research for this costume. The shoulder straps thin out towards the front, making them almost invisible when the robe is put on. It’s fully lined, including the skirt, and while the fabric is admittedly pretty cheap, it was perfectly comfortable to dance in for a few hours.
Acknowledgments
Thank you so much to my mom, who was a great sounding board for tricky problems!