Retro Rack

One of the things the Victorian era saw, Fashionable Reader, was an exploration of that liminal space through casual around the house wear.

Wrapper 1855  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here we have the wrapper that was only meant to be seen by family.

Dressing Gown  early 1870s The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dressing Gown  1875  The Kyoto Costume Institute

 Dressing gowns, banyans and wrappers are often quilted all or in part.

Wrapper early 1860s  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the signs of a wrapper is that the waist is designed to be loose or tied tight. Often they split up the front, like a carriage dress or a robe so they can be pulled over a nightgown or underpinnings, like a dressing down but slightly more tailored. Still NOT designed to be worn over a corset.

Peignoir 1860-1865  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Peignoir  1880s  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 Peignoir seems to be a catch all term.

Morning Dress  1860  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Morning dresses were initially gowns for the breakfast table that did not require a corset.They're characterize by a looser top lots of details in the neck and sleeves.

Morning Dress  1872-1873  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

One of the things we see evolving (and limits being tested) after the 1950s through the 1900s is the idea of what was not meant to be seen (undergarments and nightgowns) to what was initially only meant to be seen by family or lovers (wrappers & peignoirs) to receiving casual around house guests at breakfast (morning dresses) to I'm comfortable at home and I want to show my wealth with yet another space & occasion specific outfit (the tea gown).

Tea Gown  late 1870s  The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Tea gowns were an evolution of the morning gown.

Tea Gown  1875  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tea Gown  1875-1880  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

1Harpers Bazar New York Sat June 13 1891 Dressing Gowns Nightshirts

This evolution is coupled with the rise of the middle class, the sexual revolution (including contraception and woman's suffrage) and various other factors.

Bed Jacket  1885  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dressing Jacket  1885-1890  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

 We see a culmination in this towards the turn of the century in the popularity of (and wide-scale use of the word) negligées and lingerie sets, which specifically implies an article of clothing that is sexual in its nature for it is meant to be seen by a lover.

Negligée  1880  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

This kind of clothing, prior to the first sexual revolution, would not have been acceptable for a fashion house to make, let alone a fashionable lady to purchase.

Negligée Callot Soeurs, 1898-1900s The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There was also head wear that was designed to be worn exclusively around the house, but that's a whole other story...

House Cap 1900  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Primrose!

Boudoir Cap 1895 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

nightgown 1894  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Dressing Gown  1897-1899  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

Made a long time ago some of the acting, set direction and such are a little awkward and slow but the costumes in The Pallisers stand the test of time. I kind of love them.

Like my other favorite Victorian series melodrama (The Forsythe Saga) the costumes in this mini series cover from early to late Victorian, but as ever my favorite is the late 1870s-1880s.

Here are some of my favorites from the series. 





Authentic from the time period...

1885 via The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Here's the wikipedia article on this series.

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

I have a vast glove collection, Fashionable Reader. My hands are just small enough to wear vintage gloves (well, some of them) and I adore gloves. I wear them for all my events.


I have perpetually cold hands, you see. Even if it's warm out, my hands tend to be cold. I come by my bad circulation naturally, thank you very much.


Anyhoo, I also believe that gloves keep me from getting sick from glad-handing at events. So you will almost always see me wearing them.


Recently, I decided it was time to sort through the collection. I find I wear leather way more frequently than other materials of glove. Also, I was just using some gloves more than others. So I decided it was time to get rid of a few. (I'm on a big purge kick at the moment.)


Here are some of the ones I've decided to get rid of. They will be part of goodie boxes via the Chirrup.

As you can see, both the green one I'm wearing in the first picture and the white ones in the second are on the chopping block.


I'll be giving them away inside various Chirrup goodie boxes over the next year or so. You have to join to enter.

"Never put on another person's gloves."
~ The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners or, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book
by Eliza Leslie (American 1864)

And now, a retrospective on gloves...

For Mrs Loontwill in her debut days...

1800-1810  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Monique in the Finishing School series...

Evening Gloves  1830-1835  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Ivy in the Parasol Protectorate series...

Evening Gloves  1880-1900  The Victoria & Albert Museum

For Primrose in the Custard Protocol series...

1895-1900  The Metropolitan Museum of Art.jpg2

For Gail...

1955  The Philadelphia Museum of Art

"It is not admissible to try on kid gloves in a store. After buying a pair, ask for the glove-stretcher, (which they keep in all good shops, for the convenience of customers,) and then stretch the gloves upon it, unless you have a glove-stretcher at home. This will render them easy to put on when you take them into wear."
~ The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners or, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book
by Eliza Leslie (American 1864)

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

Hats make me happy, Fashionable Reader. I hope this comes as no surprise.

Image taken by Gail Carriger, do not share without attribution

Apparently Degas was a big fan, too. This exhibit I went to included others who were fans of hats, as well as some hat making displays, and of course the hats themselves.







This last is a double whammy of Gail's loves: hats & parasols!

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

"And yet here he was, if one could credit one's senses, about to take part in a fancy-dress ball, a form of entertainment notoriously a testing experience for the toughest. And he was attending that fancy-dress ball, mark you—not, like every other well-bred Englishman, as a Pierrot, but as Mephistopheles—this involving, as I need scarcely stress, not only scarlet tights but a pretty frightful false beard."
~ Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse

via gravesandghouls tumblr, Victorian costumes c. 1880s (Source: vintagegal)

Fancy Dress, 1874

Fancy dress costumes were very popular in the Victorian era, Fashionable Reader. There were follies, masquerades, fancy dress balls, not to mention a variety of other events that might call for a costume of some kind or another. I feature a fancy dress ball in the Finishing School books and I'm contemplating what might happen if Lord Akeldama decided to throw one. However the Victorian approach to fancy dress was quirky to say the least. Here are a few examples...

folly  costume via realhistoricalpatterns tumblr

Classic jester costume, also the domino were both, extremely popular in the Victorian era.

antique-royals-TUMBLR 1860s

via Bizarre Victorian fact of the day…

A traditional Halloween custom which was practised across Britain (particularly in rural areas) in the Victorian period was for groups of people (of all ages) to don strange costumes and go door-to-door in the hopes of receiving food or gifts, or of causing a bit of mischief. This custom had a huge number of regional variations. On the Shetland Islands the ‘skeklers’ wore tall pointy hats and voluminous costumes made of straw. In Montgomeryshire in Wales men dressed themselves as ‘gwrachod’ (an ancient Welsh hag-like monster) by putting on ragged clothes, sheepskins and masks. They went through their neighbourhood frightening children and being rude to adults. Young people in Glamorgan cross-dressed and went from house to house singing riddles, while ‘guisers’ in Scotland with masked, blackened, or painted faces chanted rhymes like:

    Tramp, tramp, the boys are marching
    We are the guisers at the door,
    If you dinna let us in, we will bash yer windows in,
    And you’ll never see the guisers any more.

Source: victorianfanguide

gardener costume via realhistoricalpatterns tumblr

Aristocratic Victorians loved to play the poor, particularly the romanticized country poor. In addition to gardeners, milk maids, peasant girls, shepherds and shepherdesses were quite popular.

page costume via realhistoricalpatterns tumblr

There was also and interesting take on cross dressing that occasionally appeared. There's a certain romantic notion and of the beautiful page boy, almost gender neutral and certainly gender bending that made this archetypal character open season for men or women. Maxfield Parrish capitalized on this with some of his work using a female model for many of his pages and princes etc...

rose costume via realhistoricalpatterns tumblr

Objects were also open season. And an idea I kind of love. Above we see a young lady dressed as a rose garden, or rose bouquet. Bellow is one dressed as a... waste basket. I may have to put that into one of my stories.

waste basket costume via realhistoricalpatterns tumblr

via eccentric victorian on tumblr

“Scrap Book” 1890 National Gallery Victoria

“The Dirigible” via OMG That Dress tumblr

Other cultures were also popular, as were historical figures. Always keeping in mind the Victorian silhouette. You'll not that while masks were popular grotesque make up was not. Victorians might theme a masquerade to a particular place or time period or even a famous author, Shakespeare characters, for example, might be a theme.

Fancy Dress Costume Charles Fredrick Worth, 1870 The Metropolitan Museum of Art

via weirdvintage-tumblr Bird girls of Szegeden, Hungary, 1880s (via Vintage Photo)

via Old Photos & Bacon☣ @photosandbacon

I have a lot of fun imagining how a costume party in my steampunk Victorian era might look. Can you imagine people coming dressed as trains, or dirigibles? Or werewolves or vampires for that matter. I may have to write a short story about this at some point.

• Fancy Dress Costumes c. 1800s
• France in the Year 2000
• Fancy Dress 1897: the Duchess of Devonshire’s Diamond Jubilee Ball

White Witch Costume 1885 Kerry Taylor Auctions

“Folly” fancy dress costume 1890 The Los Angeles County Museum of Art

And something a little more to my personal taste...

Halloween Bombshell Veronica Lake

Halloween Bombshell, Myrna Loy Myrna was best known for her role as Nora Charles in the 1930's The Thin Man movies

Bollywood Steampunk

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

I recently did a Business of Writing presentation. I don't do this often, but I feel like I'm getting to the point in my career where I should pay it forward. A kind of, "Let me tell you what I have learned from my mistakes so you don't have to."

Anyway, this is what I chose to wear for my presentation:

I always think of red and black as power colors. 

I'm not sure there is any scientific reality to my assumption, or if, instead it's just that I feel more powerful when I'm wearing them. I blame Star Trek. Red makes me feel in command.

Also this is a pretty comfortable and cool outfit, it's light weight and simple, and doesn't wrinkle easily. It's one of my go to outfits in general, and for autumn in particular, I think, because of the color profile.

Wearing this dress at a convention before I promptly ripped the jacket. 

I love this dress because it feels faintly Spanish influenced and it reminds me of this one on Joan in Madmen:

I keep waiting for eShakti to do a run on this style of dress but I suspect the fabric is hard to come by as is, and no one wants to do that kind of applique anymore!

I'm wild about this swim suit:

For the characters!

For Mrs Barnaclegoose in the Finishing School series...

Countess Nadasdy in the Parasol Protectorate series...

And the countess later in Romancing the Inventor...

Vintage velvet hat with applique leaves (gift), vintage glasses (gift from a reader) with my prescription, necklace vintage heirloom, dress & jacket 1950s, modern CK wedge sandals from several seasons ago (similar $15-30).

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can shop my recommendations via the following lists:
Steampunk, Retro Jewelry, Makeup, Retro Clothes, Lifestyle

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I get a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

My dear fashionable reader, just some fun today on the evolution of the lowly stocking...



“Stockings, originally designed for practical purposes, soon transformed into a fashionable accessory with the invention of the knitting frame in 1589 and then the circular-knitting machine in 1816. This technology allowed for a tighter weave and a better fit. Also, it was much easier to produce stockings, making them more affordable and readily available to a larger public. Plain white stockings were in mode for quite some time, until the mid to late-1800s when hemlines rose, and the ankle was revealed. This change in fashion called for colorful and fanciful motifs to decorate the lower leg, a visually appealing effect.


~ From A Brief History of Stockings

Stockings  1788-1793  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"The flirtatious and vibrant colors of this pair of stockings increases their value, making them an accessory of interest. The two colors used, enhanced by the two-color embroidery pattern creates an elaborate sensibility. The period from 1890-1899 was known as the “Naughty Nineties” and this pair of stockings is a testament to the frivolous fun women had with their dress.”


~ From A Brief History of Stockings

For Preshea in Poison or Protect...

1860 Stockings  1860s  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"In buying stockings, whether silk or cotton, you will find it cheapest in the end, to get those of the best English manufacture, particularly those of fine quality. For winter, and to wear with boots, English stockings of unbleached cotton are very comfortable, feeling warmer than those that are perfectly white. It is to be lamented that all black stockings (even of silk) are painful and injurious to the feet, the copperas dye being poisonous."

~ The Ladies' Guide to True Politeness and Perfect Manners or, Miss Leslie's Behaviour Book by Eliza Leslie (1864)

For Ivy in the Parasol Protectorate Series...

Stockings  1870  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Alexia in the Parasol Protectorate Series...

Stockings  1873  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Imogene in Romancing the Inventor...

Stockings  1880-1899  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Primrose in the Custard Protocol Series...

Stockings  1890s  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Garters 1899 The Chicago History Museum

For Gail...

Stockings  1910-1917  The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Garter  Lucile, 1914  The Victoria & Albert Museum

From the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

LOUSE LADDER. A stitch fallen in a stocking. (AKA a run)

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can visit the following shopping lists: Travel Dork, My Steampunk, My Wardrobe.

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I gets a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

My book, Prudence, is currently on sale for only $4.99 (ebook USA). In honor of that, Fashionable reader, I'm posting a fun thing I used to do a lot - outfits that match the cover!


I had to put this image first, because it is such a perfect match to the colors of the cover. It's an 1870s  dress from Kerry Taylor Auctions. I'm not sure which of my characters might wear something so exotic, this period would place it during the Parasol Protectorate series. So perhaps Ivy?

And now, looking at the cover here's some more picks...

For Alexia in the Parasol Protectorate series...

Suite  1830s  Christie’s

Afternoon Dress  Charles Fredrick Worth, 1872  The Metropolitan Museum of Art

For Countess Nadasdy...

1883  Musée Galleira de la Mode de la Ville de Paris

For Primrose in the Custard Protocol series...

Pingat afternoon dress ca. 1896  From the De Young Museum

1895 Cufflinks  Tiffany & Co., Sotheby’s

1890s  Augusta Auctions

For Gail...

Madame Grès, 1945  Kerry Taylor Auctions

1950s  Whitaker Auctions

2000 Gianni Versace  The Frock

2015 Katrin Langer floral brocade clutch at modaoperandi.com

2015 Nicholas Kirkwood purple suede Mary Jane

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can visit the following shopping lists: Travel Dork, My Steampunk, My Wardrobe.

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I gets a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.

A few more Retro Rack things I encountered in Singapore:

At the National Gallery Artists and Empire exhibit:



Reading an article on the plane, this adorable thing:

Found a wall of fans for Spohronia in Singapore's Chinatown:


And a beautiful collection of parasols:


I also learned a lot about historical dress in Singapore, but I'm saving that in case I decide to put it in an upcoming book.




Wear it well, Fashionable Reader.

Miss G

Retro Rack is also on facebook where I post additional images and fashion thoughts.

You can visit the following shopping lists: Travel Dork, My Steampunk, My Wardrobe.

Product links on this blog are usually to Amazon using my associate code. At no additional cost to you this means I gets a slight kick back if you make a purchase. Thank you! This allows me to continue to produce this blog without sponsors.