This is a Late Victorian/Early Edwardian velvet day dress. Designed in the late 1890s to early 1900s. It is made of a dark blue velvet, has beautiful beaded tassels on the skirt and on the top. It has some beautiful tatting on the sleeves and on neckline collar. You can tell it’s a day dress because of the high collared neck. Day dresses always had this high collared look, versus evening gowns which did not in order to allow for jewelry to be worn around the neck. It is a very fragile piece at this point, and I only got to wear it two times, but it is still in amazing condition for how old it is. An upper class woman would have worn it. One way to know is from the intense bright colors. Dyes were expensive in that time period so only women who were of a higher status could afford the rich colored fabrics and detailed bead work. Here are some pictures with me wearing the dress, taken by my family. It was such an honor to wear this piece. Now just a piece for study, but this was my first Victorian dress that I got to wear, and it felt so surreal. Below the pictures of me are pictures of the dress on a dress form which were taken by Leslie Aitken, the dressmaker I commissioned to help fix make it wearable.
Edwardian Lady Gwendolyn Lilliette Garland 