An archive of vintage bridal and eveningwear
The longer pieces, collected. These began as working notes — the questions that came up often enough to be worth writing down properly — and they are kept here in the same form.
A period size label tells you nothing usable, and the sizing conventions did not hold still within the period either. What to measure, how to find the natural waist with a length of string, the four measurements people skip, and how much ease to allow before a garment stops being wearable.
On the belief that there is a correct way to do it, and why there is not. Mixing eras, starting with a single piece, and the manufacturing reason that pre-1980s garments are built better than their modern equivalents.
Which condition problems are labour and which are loss, why shattering silk cannot be saved, and the hard limits on altering a garment cut with half an inch of seam allowance.
Fibres, weaves and lace. How to tell silk from rayon from polyester by hand and by burn test, what each fibre dates a garment to, and the difference between a handmade and a machine-made lace ground.
Most damage happens in storage. Flat versus hanging, why plastic and cedar are both wrong, what acid-free actually means, and the twice-yearly inspection that prevents the only pest problem that matters.
The bridal line from the Victorian period to the 1990s, and how to date a gown from its closures, seam finishes, interior structure and waist position when the label is long gone.
The parallel history of formal and cocktail dress — better made, less written about. Why evening dress is the best teacher of period construction, and the three failure modes that make it the most fragile category in the archive.
Each era has its own page covering silhouette, fabric, construction and the details that date a garment to that decade rather than the one either side: Victorian, Edwardian, 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
This is a reference archive. Nothing described here is for sale, in stock, or available to order.