Victorian Day Spa

I have already posted up my photos in facebook land but I love sharing into the world of blogging. Last weekend one of my friends held a Victorian Spa Day. Thankfully the heat has not yet set in so it is still nice to be wearing all the layers of a bustle gown, but the day was lovely. We started out by dressing up in our Victorian undergarments. We are talking chemise, stockings, drawers and corsets. Five of us sat down to brunch and tea before the rest of the accompaniment arrived. We dressed them up in some undergarments and started our pampering. We tried an assortment of Victorian reproduction cleansers, masks and moisturises before moving onto dressing our hair. Ten of us in total and only two doing hair, it took quite some time to be done, but they all turned out rather well. Since my hair has all been hacked off, I took along one of the hairpieces that I picked up while I was in Japan, ironically it is the perfect match for my hair (I had bright fake red hair when I bought it and have only recently gone back to brown), but it was a matter of just attaching it, popping in a few pins and attaching the hat.

We then made it into the dressing room. I was amazed. Only four of us have Victorian costumes, and yet we have enough between us to dress up ten people with one left over to spare. All done up, we sat down to lunch. We had hoped for some croquet and strolling in the park and gardens but the rain had set in so we were strictly stuck to the house. But all in all we got some beautiful photos.


But I was so overly happy to wear my very new and just completed gold and orange day gown ensemble. It is the skirts that I made for my ballgown earlier this year in July but I thought that it would be prudent to make a day bodice and get even more wear out of the ensemble - especially considering how much work I put into the skirts. Early on in the cutting out process I ran into a few problems. Because I had decided to do the ruching on the skirt, I shorted myself out of some of the gold fabric which meant that while I had quite a bit leftover, the pieces had the slub running the wrong way to match. This is wear I had to be creative. I decided that since I had so much of the golden orange silk leftover, I would make it more of a feature. I had originally just planned it for the collar and maybe a cuff, but instead added the centre back panels and the undersleeve. I was a little worried that it would look strange, but it turns out that I love it. The bodice itself is very simply trimmed. I had tried to do some ruches on the sleeve but it just looked too fussy, so I instead went for the white velvet ribbon, and the only other ornamentation is the pin-on jabot. The pattern for it is based off one of my Innocent World lolita items, but I have seen these in some of my fashion books. At any rate I like how it dresses up the bodice at the neckline. As for my second attempt at the hat, you can see that it turned out so much better.

It was such a lovely afternoon and a pleasure to wear a bustle gown again. I just don't get to do that too often anymore, with all the regency that I do. I must make an effort to wear my Victorian. Note to self!