hold on, one more time with feeling

ornamentedbeing:

Do I love you because you’re beautiful,
Or are you beautiful because I love you?
~Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cinderella

ornamentedbeing:V&A 1870. “Child’s short dress and basque waistband of pale sea green velvet trimmed with lace and blue ribbon. The dress has a rounded neck piped with ivory ribbon and edged with Genoese lace; each of the short sleeves is cut in three deep triangular points piped with ivory ribbon and fastened (two of the points beneath a button bound in blue satin) to a puffed undersleeve of white spotted net which is edged with lace and blue satin. The bodice, lined with brown cotton twill, is trimmed with a curved line of lace-edged blue satin across the chest to give the effect of a yoke, and at the back with two sloping lines of lace-edged blue satin converging toward the waist. The skirt is lined with white book muslin and attached to the bodice in box pleats. The dress fastens at the back of the bodice with metal hooks and stitched loops, and there was originally a drawstring at the neck. [child’s dress] The basque waistband has three tabs, one at the front and two at the back, each lined with white book muslin and edged with Genoese lace, and hanging from a blue satin belt which is lined with brown cotton twill and trimmed with a blue ribbon bow at the centre front and back. The basque waistband is piped with ivory ribbon throughout, and fastens at the back with a metal hook and a stitched loop. [child’s basque waistband]”

ornamentedbeing:I  believe in manicures. I believe in overdressing. I believe in primping at leisure and wearing lipstick. I believe in pink. I believe happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day, and… I believe in miracles. Audrey Hepburn 

ornamentedbeing:Courtesy of the Met of course. Court dress, ca. 1750. British. Blue silk taffeta brocaded with silver thread. “In the eighteenth century, formal dress was so closely associated with Versailles and the French court that it was universally described as the robeà la française. As illustrated here, the robeà la françaisehas a fitted overdress. It is open at the front, with a decorative bodice insert called a stomacher covering the corset and an underskirt, the petticoat, showing under the splayed drapery of the overskirt. In its most formal configuration, the robeà la françaisepresented a particularly wide and flattened profile accomplished by enlarged panniers. Constructed of supple bent wands of willow or whalebone and covered in linen, panniers took on broader or narrower silhouettes. The most remarkable held out the skirts like sandwich boards, barely wider than the body in side view, but as expansive as possible in front or rear view. As shown in the etching Les Adieux (33.22.1), a woman so garbed had to pass through a door sideways.” Sometimes I wish this world still existed.