I was looking for a picture of a dress for a girl in the 1850s (and I will be drawing it, which I will share!), but I came across this wonderful ambrotype from that decade (1856 to be exact) with lovely tinting. The dress is perfect and the girl looks so sweet as well. The original source isthis blog (currently defunct), which nevertheless features a lot of lovely period images.
Old photographs as references are great for many things; you get to see particular patterns and trimmings and you know it was a garment actually worn by a person as opposed to something put together by a fancy designer and maybe worn once by some socialite. I think I have stated here somewhere that I'm much more interested in the day-to-day clothes rather than the fancy pieces, so here's a pretty good example of a nice dress that was probably worn often by this child. And even though she was likely a child of privilege, it's not a display piece like you would see represented in the ladies' magazines of the period.
Click on the image to see the dress in more detail. It will be fun to reproduce the plaid trim (I've never done plaid before!). I'm not sure that i will make my own dress blue, however. I am thinking of changing it to lilac/purple or maybe even red.
Old photographs as references are great for many things; you get to see particular patterns and trimmings and you know it was a garment actually worn by a person as opposed to something put together by a fancy designer and maybe worn once by some socialite. I think I have stated here somewhere that I'm much more interested in the day-to-day clothes rather than the fancy pieces, so here's a pretty good example of a nice dress that was probably worn often by this child. And even though she was likely a child of privilege, it's not a display piece like you would see represented in the ladies' magazines of the period.
Click on the image to see the dress in more detail. It will be fun to reproduce the plaid trim (I've never done plaid before!). I'm not sure that i will make my own dress blue, however. I am thinking of changing it to lilac/purple or maybe even red.
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