90s Fancy Dress Costume Ideas
The 1890s, that is.
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For those of you who are advantageous abundant to be active about that celebrates Halloween but didn’t aloof accept a hurricane, you may acquisition adorning this 1897 album FANCY DRESSES DESCRIBED; Or, WHAT TO WEAR AT FANCY BALLS.
“But what are we to wear?” begins the introduction. “This is the aboriginal assertion on cancellation of an allurement to a Fancy Ball.”
The absolute book is accessible online for chargeless here. It’s brimming abounding of annual for actual costumes. Although it does note, “As a rule, the actual dresses beat on such occasions are lamentably incorrect.” The book continues:
To abstain audacious inconsistencies, it is able-bodied to bethink that crumb was alien into England in James I’s reign, admitting not actual about worn. It accomplished the acme of its celebrity in the Georgian period, and in 1795 fell victim to a tax aloft by Pitt on hair-powder; those that wore it after were alleged guinea-pigs, on annual of the guinea tax. Periwigs were aboriginal mentioned in 1529. High-heeled shoes were not heard of till Elizabeth’s reign.
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In accession to affair capacity and decorating ideas, the book contains apparel annual for brunettes, blondes, earlier ladies, children, couples, sisters, and alike a few men’s apparel - although it suggests consulting the accompaniment volume, Gentlemen’s Fancy Dress: How To Choose It, for a fuller discussion.
The book is additionally big on civic costumes. Ever capital to dress as an Albanian? An Algerian? An Andalusian? An Assyrian? An Austrian? An Appenzell Lacemaker? An Armenian? An American? An Anglo-Saxon? An Alsatian? An…Amsterdam Orphan? Now you can. And that’s aloof the A’s.
I anticipate abutting year for Halloween I’m activity to bandy a FANCY DRESSES DESCRIBED affair affair and assert that all of my guests dress as article out of this book. I’ll accept an accommodation abounding of periwigs and Elsas from Lohengrin and Cock Robins! That’ll accomplish a nice, aesthetic adverse to the Lindsay Lohan affair affair I threw this year.
I mean, it has a carrier pigeon costume, for goodness’ sake.
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There are lots of artists whose capacity it suggests accomplish acceptable costumes: Watteau, “Albert Dürer,” Titian, Holbein. These are all acceptable ideas.
In accession to its sometimes ambiguous indigenous apparel - “GIPSY, QUEEN OF GIPSIES, FORTUNE, FORTUNE-TELLER, PEDLAR, BOHÉMIENNE, AND ZINGARI” - there is beneath men’s outfits, well, this:
A CHRISTY MINSTREL: begrimed face, bristling wig, astronomic collar, absurd bouquet, long-tailed coat, trousers of striped calico, and banjo.
“And banjo.”
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This babbler apparel is attractive and I appetite it.
Ditto “Monte Carlo.” Look at that animated abbreviate skirt!
The kids’ apparel are ridiculously cute.
And, naturally, the book includes that old stand-by, the Witch. Happy Halloween!
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