I have long adored the purple dress on the BBC movie 'Daniel Deronda'. In fact, there are very few costumes in that movie that I don't absolutely adore and wish that I owned. My mother is making an 1870s dress to wear at the Christmas Candlelight Tours at Wheatland, so I thought that I'd post some of the inspiration photos for that dress. Since I'm short on time, I did most of the research for inspiration while watching movies with period costumes. My favorite costumes were from 'Daniel Deronda' and 'The Way We Live Now'. I had 20 yards of olive green silk and lots of black velvet trim in my fabric stash, so we decided to use that for the dress and trim. My first choice would have been a jewel tone color, but since we already had that silk I thought it would be better to use that than purchase more. I'm going to post a few notes about the pictures so that my mother can work from these images to alter the pattern and make the dress.
Above, you can see that the bodice is open in the front below the waist.
A lovely 'V' neckline trimmed with black trim that continues down the center front of the bodice. The same trim is also around the edge of the sleeves.
