Two Things
Dresses from very different worlds
Welcome to my occasional, when-I-feel-like-it bonus content about secondhand shopping and selling, minor fascinations, passing fancies, and old stuff! This is the same subscription as Just Some Lady and you are (obviously!) free to skip it.
I was going to coast into the long weekend without sending this but it occured to me I did have something to talk about: dresses.
I love a dress, for going out and staying in. A dress can feel like a nightgown if you want it to! A caftan is a type of dress, and lord knows I love a good caftan. My favorite is this style from Emerson Fry (I have a different print), which I’ve had for years and years in the short version. I love it so much that I stalked the long version on eBay and finally found it two years ago. Universal Standard makes quite a good linen caftan (it’s on sale at the moment; the best deal is the açai color).
Last week, I wrote about a horse dress that I did not buy. This, somehow, led me down a garden path to a great many vintage dresses, including embroidered house dresses, which eventually led me to buy this:
Not to sound all Downton Abbey about it, but I like to change out of my pajamas into what I call lounging apparel when I get up in the morning. After I have my coffee, I put on real clothes and go about my day, and then sometime after dinner, I get back into my lounging apparel until bedtime. This dress will fit the bill for lounging apparel very nicely.
I found a lot of similar dresses on Poshmark, most in the $40-$60 range, like this cutie:
And this one:
This one on eBay is beautiful and a real bargain for the price, IMO:
Here’s one that could be very fancy if you dressed it up:
I also bookmarked a number of t-shirt dresses, including a bunch of Kule’s very popular striped version. They are sold out on Kule despite being quite pricey! But you can find them on Poshmark for about 1/3 of the retail price, in the basic navy-and-cream stripes, as well as some (presumably) discontinued colorways.
Sorry to be such a Poshmark stan! There are worse hobbies.
Elsewhere in the world of dresses!
A few years ago, I saw a history documentary, the name of which now naturally escapes me, about the French Revolution or maybe about Marie-Antoinette specifically. There isn’t much left of Marie-Antoinette’s personal possessions because of her fate and that of the French aristocracy in general, though you can see a few things that belonged to her (or allegedly belonged to her) during her imprisonment at the Conciergerie and at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris. One thing we do have is a record of her wardrobe, or gazette des atours, from the year 1782.
In the documentary, the historian paged through this now very delicate book, where Marie-Antoinette’s wardrobe mistress kept a record of all the queen’s gowns, along with scraps of the fabric they were made from and when they were worn or the occasion they were made for.
I’ve thought about this book off and on ever since I saw that documentary, so imagine my surprise when we wandered through the Hôtel de Soubise at the Musée des Archives Nationales in April and just…happened upon it. The real deal, in a glass case, just sitting in a very un-busy gallery. Nobody was even looking at it. A reprint of the book is of course available in the museum gift shop, but nobody was tending it while we were there, and I made a mental note to find the book online when we got home.
Now, there are two versions of this book: a paperback and a hardbound, which is a) in French and b) maybe out of print? The hardbound version was too expensive so I opted for the paperback for about $40, and in a nice piece of universe magic, what actually showed up at my house was the hardbound, French edition.
I find this book so incredibly sad1, especially the pages where you can see the wax used to affix the fabric to the pages, but the fabric is long gone:
The reproduction quality is really nice; in some cases, it looks like you’ll be able to touch the loose threads on the swatches:
There is a complete transcription of the book, all in French, which is very difficult to get through (well…probably not for French people), but I am treating it as a supplement to my weekly lessons.
The wardrobe mistress, Madame d’Ossun, ended up going to the guillotine for “conspiring” with Marie-Antoinette to spend too much money on dresses
I have a similar flow of Sleep Clothes - Lounge - Work Wear - but then I deviate only because COOKING. I don't want to wear anything nice whenI cook because of the risk of staining, oil splatters, and the fact that the clothes smell of whatever I cooked for days after. So, I am curious - what do you wear to cook in? I change into crappy sweats/yoga pants/leggings and an old T shirt and hoodie for cooking (even though I wear an apron). I used to just keep that stuff on until bedtime but about a year ago I decided I needed 'evening lounge wear' that was elevated beyond "my old yoga pants' so I invested in some Soma Cool Nights PJs with a matching kimono robe. In winter I opt for sweater knit wide leg pants and a matching turtleneck from Old Navy. And then last week I decided to buy myself and the Wife a set of matching satin PJs with a kimono robe and yes hers are a Womens Medium and mine are Girls Age 9-10. How sad is that. But I do say I feel so fucking elegant in my satin pajamas and kimono. I kind of traipse around with a glass of wine or a cocktail and feel very Norma Desmond-like.