As much as I love the cute and innocent look of lolita, lately I’ve felt myself drawn more to elegant full length dresses and flowing gowns. There is something about pretty, frill trimmed skirts that flow about your feet as you walk that is decidedly feminine and princess-like!
I’ve been lucky enough to purchase a few such gowns recently, including the one I wore to Prince Caspian on friday night (pictures in the entry prior) and I’m hoping to show you some of the others soon. Until then, I thought I would share some of my favourite reference sites for Period fashion. If you have any others to suggest, please let me know!
Fashion-Era
A huge resource with nearly 700 pages of information and illustrations on period clothing. It features everything from the Regency period to latest fashions with lots of nice images and fashion plates, aswell as interesting articles. It can be a little hard to navigate, but I could easily spend hours there delving in to each section.
Eras of Elegance
One of the best layed out and nicely designed fashion history references. They cover more than just fashion, also looking at lifestyle and culture and the pages are accompanied by pretty photos from period films. Not as indepth as Fashion-Era but a nice read all the same.
The Costumer’s Manifesto
Another huge site with detailed information, it goes further back than Fashion-era, as far back as prehistoric and Babylonian costume! I found this site very helpful when planning my Midsummer Night’s Dream themed party last year and provided a link to their toga/chiton section.
18th Century Blog
A gorgeous, image rich blog about 18th century fashion and culture. I love reading the book and movie reviews and hearing about all the exciting reenacting events in Europe! I wish I could attend some of these.
The Period Movie Review
Love period films? Love the gorgeous, decadant costumes? This site will delight you. A blog that posts indepth reviews of Period movies with screenshots from every angle of every dress within! If you’ve ever wanted to recreate a gown from one of these films, it would be invaluable. Also a great source of costuming inspiration in general.
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Wow, thanks for the useful post! ^^ I love looking at pages like these for inspiration for my original lolita designs.
Thank you! I shall be entertained for hours ^_^
Thank you for the great links. I found Eras of Elegance some while ago and love the site.
I wish I had a dress like that in the Marie Antoinette picture. In the next time I plan to sew a Regency dress.
This is great thank you. I never seem to be able to write straight historical fiction it always ends up being a historical mash up, hence I have since become very interested in steampunk. I always like to ground the story by drawing fairly accurate period costumes, and I’ve had trouble finding a good, reliable site. These seem like they will help greatly.
Originally I wanted a period style wedding dress (I hadn’t decided what period yet, more regency style though). After I saw Rose of Versailles, on your recommendation of course, I fell in love with the dress Oscar wore and said, “Now *that* is my wedding dress.” I want to thank you for recommending that show too! I *never* cry at movies or shows, much less anime, but that series had me sobbing! It’s probably the first anime series to touch my heart and make me hold my head a little higher.
Period Clothing always interested and fascinated me. It gives so much inspiration for writings and art as well. I agree with Amber, it would be very nice to have a certain style wedding dress. I’m actually dreaming of one day a Period style Wedding. Prefferably the 1770’s like Felicity from the American Girl Series. It has many styles of wardrobe that are perfect for Lolita inspiration.