I wore my new round gown with its green racing stripes to a regency picnic hosted by The Dreamers Post. The picnic was regency themed, rather than strictly historical, so I could play around with the styling a bit, and after everything that gown had put me through, I reckoned I’d earned it! The gown will henceforth be known as the 1798 Kate Geenaway gown,
1798 was a padded year. Normally I’d have worn the gown with petticoats, a bustle pad in the small of my back, and a kerchief or two. My hair would have been shorter and my bonnet strings would have been tied loosely down along my neck, but this was a party and I was in a mood. A Kate Greenaway sort of a mood.
It was the blue and the green, I think, and something about the very long skirt made me feel like a little girl wearing her mother’s dress. So the dress was left un-bolstered, and I wore big bouncing curls and an even bigger, bouncier bow, tied hugely right underneath my chin.
Blue Suede gloves by The Bohemian Belle completed the look, and to set it all off, I had my new antique folding parasol from Farthingale Hats! I love it so very, very much. It has all of the cool, sleek, subtle chic that I naturally lack, and when I carry it I feel can borrow a just a bit of what it has so effortlessly got!
My parasol nearly got left in the car. The sky was quite iffy. I didn’t trust it, but I did trust Mr Tabubil, and he reckoned the rain would hold off long enough to bring it out to play. Though the sky grew greyer and flatter through the afternoon, the rain did hold off as he promised, with my new parasol and my 1798 Kate Greenaway Gown, I had a very good time!
Post-Script:
A non-sequitur shout-out to my favorite bookshop, Companion Books in Burnaby. They have the nicest, most absurdly knowledgeable staff, and aisles of new-and- second-hand science fiction paperbacks – everything from golden age pulp to brand new cyberpunk, with a good helping of fantasy as well! (and whole shelves of Discworld on top of it!) We stopped there on the way home to pick up a book (Testament of Youth by Vera Britten) and bask in the book-print air of our happy place!
