The Fashionable Past: My Gold 1920s Dress

For this year's Costume College Gala, I decided to copy a dress from a 1929 portrait. See the end of this post for the picture (a link to my Pinterest). Though the original dress is silver, my copy is gold--mainly because I found good gold brocade!

The fabrics for this dress come from Pure Silks. The bodice is gold brocade (fun fabric--if the iron is hot enough to iron the silk, the gold melts, if it's cool enough not to melt the gold, the silk doesn't iron) lined with cotton batiste and the skirt is gold silk organza with a gold China silk lining.

Most of the ribbon--the bits on the skirt and about half of the shoulder ribbon--is gold China silk ribbon from Silky Way on eBay and the satin on my shoulder is vintage ribbon from eBay.

I'm wearing it over my 1929 bra and tap pants from Women's Wear of the 1920s and a petticoat made of two layers of net and one layer of silk organza, based off the underskirt of a 1929 dress in the same book. The skirt is just rectangles of fabric. The bodice is massive trial and error based on one of my 1920s basic shift dress patterns.

I decided against the black hat and shoes in the painting in favor of a tiara. It's really a headband made of bendable metal that I bent to stay in place on my head. I must take advantage of my high forehead when I have the chance!

For my hair, I set it in hot rollers in the morning and then wore it under my 18c cap (I wore my brown francaise that day), and then for night I dampened it and put it in sponge rollers, following the side part. That little spit curl? Total accident and I couldn't do it if I tried. In fact, I didn't even know I had it until my friend Megan pointed it out, at which time I attacked it with so much hairspray it had no chance of moving.