next on the agenda

I don't think I've mentioned this publicly yet, but I'm going to Costume College this summer! Woohoo! Mostly, I'll be wearing costumes that are already in my closet, but I do want to make a few new retro outfits to wear to the classes, and I want something new and fun and over-the-top for the gala. I'll probably be working on all of these things simultaneously over the summer so I don't get burned out on one thing, so forgive me if I jump around a lot over the next 2 months.

The project that I am the most excited about at the moment is my gala dress. After changing my mind a million times, I finally decided to go for something totally random and different. I'm going to make a Victorian fancy dress costume inspired by the telegraph! Is it genius? Madness? Only time will tell! LOL!

Anyway, my plan is to make a pretty close copy of this 1884 illustration from the de Gracieuse archive (it was also found in Harper's Bazar). The only thing that I'm going to change is to omit the silly glass insulator headdress and make a tiara out of tiny telegraph poles instead. I think it'll be a ton of fun to make, and I'm hoping that I can wear it again at future steampunk events as well. It will probably be a few weeks before I get started on this dress in ernest, but I'm having a ball doing all the research and getting the materials right now.

And just for the heck of it, I saved all the fancy dress pictures that I found from de Gracieuse and put them in a flickr set. I hope to continue adding more examples to this set as I find them.