Woman playing the piano, 1906

Woah. Now that is a dress for playing piano. So cool. From the New York Public Library's Photostream.

August Foulhause - Sunday Afternoon

Pretty ruffly dresses. I like the matching girls in blue and white. not my favorite time period, but I am so picnic obsessed lately.

American Hats, Spring 1902

Now, you are absolutely sure that "milliner" is no longer a viable career option, right?

Check out the really cool hat with the bow and trailing ruffles in the back. Neat. This is from the Claremont Colleges Digital Library where they have a fashion plate collection. Cool.

The Wings of the Dove

I recently saw this movie, but this post is not actually about the movie itself. The plot is very sad. You may or may not like it. That is all I have ot say on the matter.

This post is about the dreamy, drool-worthy costumes, about which I have much more to say. Specifically, the exquisite hats. I am suffering such extreme hat envy!

The movie opens with this costume. I couldn't get a picture that really does it justice. Incredible blue and black feathers, a delightfully swooshy brim... I am in love. She wears it with a lovely coat, too.But wait, there's more! Check out this beautiful green concoction (if Monet made hats...?), and the asymmetrical velvet with lovely curly feathers. I want them both!
This one has a similar shape to the first, but it does have more tilt. It swooshes up on the side, but also in the back... it is remarkably difficult to capture the complexity of these gorgerous hats with screencaps, but if you watch the movie you will see everything. This hat appears to be black on the bottom, but sort of silvery on the top, with cool trim and a bird wing for good measure. I love it!Not a hat, but I totally need black feathered headdresses with sparkly bits.
In fact, thre are a lot of beautiful things in this movie that are not hats. I was drooling over most of the coats, and there were tons of dresses I would wear in a heartbeat. Even the extras had incredible things to wear. I am particularly in love with this dress. I want it so much now! It is hard to see the details, but look for the adorable little buttons down the front, and the pretty lines of the dress, and the lovely shot coppery blue fabric, with the cool copper collar and delicious crumply sash. Oh, I love it so much!

Space Mountain... Steampunk?

Apparently Disneyland in Paris has made a variety of pretty and old-fashioned posters. I stumbled across them here. I am struck by this poster of Space Mountain. It may be a totally modern thing, but it is pretty and sort of Steampunk looking to me. Let me once again point out where this is... Paris. As in French. I keep saying that Steampunk is French... they don't even have to do it on purpose, it just happens!

Quidditch

On Sunday I went with a friend to wander about Boston. It was way too hot and humid for me (my friend is from Florida though, bleck!), but it was also very pretty out. It was surprisingly busy, since we didn't know the walk for hunger was that day. It was also a little chaotic, because there was a giant pipe break that compromised the water supply for Boston and several surrounding towns. It was a bit of a mess. Starbucks was not allowed to sell drinks with ice in them, because the water is not sanitary. McDonalds wouldn't even sell hot coffee, which is presumably boiled. Anyway, that was not my point.

The point is that we saw lots of lovely things (seriously, the tulips in the public gardens are incredible right now), including a Quidditch Match! Emerson college a
ppears to have a very serious quidditch team. The game seemed a bit complicated for me to really understand what was going on, but it was interesting to see. They all had brooms and everything. Here are a couple of pictures.

Charles River Museum of Industry Steampunk Event

After driving home from Dances of Vice, it was time to hit the Charles River Museum of Industry for an event that we had helped to conceive of (so we certainly had to attend it!). The museum is not very well known, but it is really lovely. It is all about industry and machinery, so they have really cool things like a watchmaker's bench set-up, a stunning early telephone booth (my favorite), a steam powered fire engine, and more! Unfortunately, with the recent flooding (and since the museum is right on the bank of the Charles River), it was pretty severely damaged. This event had to be postponed, and even so some of the damage was evident. It is really a shame. Hopefully the success of the event will help somewhat with the costs of the damage. Hopefully it will also have raised awareness and found new members, because the last time I asked, before the event was even over, well over 600 people had come in!

The event itself was lovely... there were a number of demonstrators and vendors with great things to look at. Mother taught some dancing, with the lovely Ad Hoc Quadrille band accompanying her. More than anything, I am glad so many people showed up. Here are some pretty pictures.People doing the Gothic Dance. I love that dance.One of the display tables was advertising for a steampunk larp. They had steampunked nerf guns, and let people shoot at a stacked soda cans for a prize (a fake mustache!). Here is my little sister trying her luck... she hit the cans on the first try, actually. Her outfit includes a short hoop I made and the red corset I made for her Queen of Hearts costume for Arisia, if you remember back that far.My outfit was pretty unremarkable. Another appearance for the super-cool upholstery vinyl Edwardian corset I made. I love that thing.
Goslings! There were a bunch of geese hanging out around the museum, including all these cute little goslings! There was a goose fight when we first arrived... two geese locked necks and violently batted their wings at each other. It was really quite dramatic! There was also a nesting goose just outside the museum. She was really concerned about so many people walking by. Poor thing.

Tales from the Dances of Vice Swan Lake Ball

Stories of this weekend's adventures are coming a little late, since I've been too busy to post about them for a couple of days. Friday we drove out to New York (my mother obligingly signed on for this crazy adventure). We found miraculously good parking and got dressed in the street. I didn't actually teach dancing until one in the morning, so I guess that was Saturday technically. Then we drove back, to be home in time for the next event! What a busy schedule.

It was well worth doing, however. The event was lovely, and everyone was very nice. The Galapagos art space was fantastically fun to see - imagine a stage, and the seating for the audience suspended on platforms with walkways over water. There were some excellent performances - an ugly duckling themed ballet, some wonderfully dramatic opera (with a little Lady Gaga thrown in for good measure), and a fashion show with stunning wigs. After that, I got to teach a few easy contra dances, which went really well. In fact, people were so excited to dance that when I invited them to come to the stage and learn, I got more volunteers than would even fit on the stage! It was really wonderful. As is always the case, it took a little while to get people set up, but after that the dancing went very smoothly. I am still thrilled that it went so well.

(Talking to some nice people after the dancing)

The organizer, Shien Lee was a very courteous and generous hostess. She really did a great job with this event. There were also lots of really incredible outfits to look at - I think it is really wonderful that there is so much enthusiasm for dressing up. There is a Dances of Vice flickr group with lots of pictures of people all dressed up for events, if you want to go look. The high standard for costuming inspired me to throw together an outfit for myself, aiming for dramatic and over-the-top. I hope I got close, even though some of the construction ended up being incredibly last minute (meaning that Friday before jumping in the car...). It isn't clear from the pictures quite how cool the skirt was. It is made from a crispy organza with a life of its own. If I moved the skirt, it would sort of hold whatever shape I had put it in. I was also very worried about the floating candles on the water, because I could practically see my large ungainly skirt of highly synthetic and probably flammable material bursting into flames as I walked down a walkway and brushed over a candle. Eek! But there were no unintended flames the entire night.
This is a picture of me, with my reflection in the water. Isn't that incredibly cool? It was a lovely and enjoyable event, and I really look forward to going to more events by Dances of Vice in the future.

Also, there was one last funny moment. As I was finishing getting dressed in the street, before actually going to the event, a couple of (mildly tipsy? I think) girls were wandering by, and started congratulating me. It turns out they though I had just gotten married. Personally, that is not what I would wear for a wedding, but I guess I can see where they are coming from. Maybe.(Getting out of the car. Or getting married?)

Thomas W. Holgate's Wife

The actual title of this painting is just "The Artist's Wife." But aside from having a beautiful dress, she has a really fun feathery fan. I am jealous. Also I really do like her dress... cool fabric.

Monsters in Love by Dionysos

A while ago I wrote about Dionysos, a french band with a couple of songs that embody exactly what I would look for in steampunk music. They also have a lot of songs that I would not characterize as steampunk. They also sometimes sing in English (with great accents, though). This is one such song... not steampunk, not in french, but particularly entertaining. Just read and enjoy the lyrics for "Monsters in Love":

We live like monsters
Like monsters in love
We live like monsters
Like monsters in love
I've stolen your perfume last night
On your bathroom floor
I've drunk all the bottle
And I feel like I was riding
My bike into the forest of your black hair
We live like monsters
Like monsters in love
Drunken trees got whisky in their veins
Lick them all
Drunken birds got whisky in their veins
Eat them all
The night is a friend of mine
I'm sure she'll hide us
Down by her arms
Nobody can see us
Nobody can tell us
Wake up my baby
Light up your body
Follow the dead trees
That make their shadow dancing like in musicals
Nobody can tell us that we live like monsters
'Cause love make monsters pretty
When they hug under a dead tree
Monsters in love, monsters in love

I love those last couple of lines. Isn't it darling? You should probably go hear the song for real, because the dramatic music and tempo changes (and the funny accent) all help make it even better. Cute song, very much stuck in my head...