18th century blog

Skönhetens mask by Carolina Brown is a book about the history of beauty ideals, with the main focus on the 18th century. It talks about both general ideals and specific details about such things as make-up and hair. There are not a lot of specific things about clothing though.

It’s not a big book, but what’s in it is very interesting. It has lots of pictures, although most of them are in black and white. I’m afraid I can’t find this book for sale anywhere but I found it at the library. It only exists in Swedish as far as I know.

A few years ago I attended a course by the same name at the Gotland University that used this book (and others) as literature.

A new swedish 18th century blog, My 18th century!

This is a photo Kathryn Parker took of me last summer in the Echo temple in the Haga park.

I’ve been working on this outfit for a couple of weeks and now it’s finally finished enough to use. I still have to line the jacket and add more gold fringe around the “skirt” part of the jacket (peplum?), but otherwise it’s all done. It’s a late 1780s pierrot jacket from The Cut of Women’s Clothes: 1600-1930 by Norah Waugh and a simple sheer jupe made from no pattern at all. I’ll hopefully be wearing this to Skansen next weekend.

Does anyone have any tips on where to find really sheer fabric to use for a fichu, or know what type of fabric to look for? All the really sheer fabrics I find tend to look very obviously synthetic. I don’t mind if it’s a not a period correct fabric as long as it looks like one.

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