When life gives you dinosaur bone printed sheets and orange Ikea duvet covers, you make a witchy, wench-y Halloween take on 18th Century Pastoral Fashion!
Earlier this year I managed to walk into a thrift store and come out with a Pottery Barn sheet with dinosaur skeletons and a bright orange Ikea duvet cover. Two things were immediately obvious:
a) the combination was very Halloween and
b) these sheets would make a pair of fantastic 18th Century Petticoats.
If you consider that I had a pair of orange and black striped stockings in my sock drawer, there was only one possible conclusion: this Halloween I would make a Gothick-y 18th Century pastoral costume and go wenching! (If you’re not following the chain of logic, find a group of historical costumers and hang out with us for about 15 minutes. You’ll catch on quick.)
To my Petticoats and striped stockings I added my mid-18th Century shift with the stroke-gathered cuffs. I still needed a fitted bodice, and a cheap black “ye-olde-time-y” corset from Aliexpress fit the bill. Sure, the corset was rather more circa Hot Topic 2022 than it was circa 18th Century, but they didn’t know about triceratopses or stegosaurs back then either, so I figured I was all right.
At this point, all I was missing was a Very Big Wig!
Playing fast and loose with history is fun. I took a ginger party wig, tied off the bottom section into a ponytail, ratted the rest of it like crazy and pinned the rats into place for a vaguely Georgian effect. It was blowsy and tousled and rumpled and lived-in. Less 1780s hedgehog, more untrimmed hedge. I loved it!
It is a truth universally acknowledged that Big Hair wants Big Makeup. I painted on dark 18th century eyebrows, pink cheeks and red lips. I smeared it all with my the side of my hand as if I’d had a very good night, then packed on eyelinef liner and mascara as sloppily as I knew how and squeezed my eyes shut to smear all that as well before it set. I had a destination – the Roedde House, and I was ready to wench!
When I rumple, you can be sure I do my best with the bedsheets I’ve got. The difficulty, though, with dressing tousled and rumpled and wenching as hard as possible, is that you will run into people who are the most elegantly turned out people you’ve ever met in your life, and the comparison can be damned funny.
Like @suitwhisperer, for instance. One look at that man and I was deeply jealous of the cut and drape of his shoulders, for heaven’s sake, let alone the impeccable fall of his coat.
And then there was @jeannedelamottevalois
I happen to be very jealous of the Contessa as a point of longstanding personal principle. For good reason. Example:
“This Edwardian Wedding gown? Silk curtains. They were hanging on a rack in Value Village when I walked in and – “
I mean, I’m proud as hell of my Halloween petticoats, but when I go thrifting I find bedsheets. La Contessa? She finds lustrous silk curtains that she can turn into this :
In all seriousness – look at those Edwardian proportions! Look at that marvelous fit! It’s like a bridal glove! Sometimes your friends are just so talented that you have to your principles go and admit that when the sewing gods decide whom to bless, they know exactly what they’re doing. They’re not playing favorites – they’re just steering things so that the silk goes to exactly the right person!
I’ve never been a naturally sleek sort of person myself. I snag. I rumple. I frizz. In a general way, when I’m introduced to someone like this, I immediately feel terribly hot and my hair coils itself up into a snarl and my garters pop of their own volition and send my stockings slithering down around my ankles. It’s some sort of cosmically-balancing force.
La Contessa, though? Even in a coffin she’s chic.
Such is life. Unruly is my wheelhouse and I own it. This wench will applaud. This wench will admire. This wench will preen in her perfectly pleated 18th century petticoats, and elegant people will be bound to endure my witchy, wench-y Halloween-ing with grace!
More or less.
