dress, polyvore, victorian maiden

I bought a dress!

Victorian Maiden has a new series of dress released today – the British Check series.  There’s a one piece, a jumperskirt, and a skirt.  I really like all the pieces!  They all come in red, grey, or yellow tartan. I bought the jumperskirt in grey!
The OP is very demure with a nice long skirt.  I’m not that fond of this colourway because it looks so much like Christmas.
I adored this dress as soon as I saw it months ago.  It seems like I’m fond of underbust jumperskirts!  This will be my second.
I really like the skirt, but it seems to me like the hemlines are creeping upwards ever so slowly!  It’s still beautiful.
I bought the grey jumperskirt through Gosurori Order today.  They’ve been aware of my intentions to buy the dress for weeks now, because it was sold out in reserve when I first contacted them.  We’ve been working together checking the site for updates and finally the dress was released!  And we POUNCED.
I’ve ordered through Gosurori Order before – that’s how I got my VM Adele Bustier dress.  It’s a good fast service, and apparently they’re good at avoiding customs fees (in Australia that’s not a problem).
Because I’ve been so excited about this dress for so long, I’ve even started thinking up ways to wear it.  I went on Polyvore and had a play around with coordinates, using pictures of clothes I already have.  These are two I came up with:
VM Dress Co-Ord 2

(I don’t actually have that jacket, but I’m sure I could find something similar)
and
VM dress Co-ord 1
(I have a similar jacket that would work well, but not quite the same.  Mine has little red spots!)
I’m sure I’ll think of lots of other interesting ways to wear this dress.  It’s being sent to my house in Australia, so it’ll be there when I get home in 2 weeks exactly!  That’s another thing to welcome me home.  I really don’t want to go home!  My new life here is wonderful!
corset, dress, photo

New Corset Photoshoot

As promised! Charles was at my house for long enough to take some photos!
For my birthday, my friend who does costumes made me a corset: It is super nice! Here I’m wearing it with my FanPlusFriend giant skirt.


It certainly does make me sit up straight!

Check out all the detail:
Fully laced at the back:

And just in case you didn’t know how huge this skirt is…

Outfit rundown:
Blouse: Offbrand
Skirt: FanPlusFriend
Corset: Handmade by my amazingly skilled friend 🙂
blouse, clothing, dress, shopping, skirt, victorian maiden

What I Like vs. What I Wear

I admit that I get obsessed with clothes sometimes. When there is a super wonderful item of clothing on the wubs that is in my power to buy, I go a bit crazy. I ask everyone I know, Will this look good on me? What do you think of this? I even ask the Internets.

If I do cave in and buy the item, it’s true love for a few days, but after that… sometimes that wonderful dress/blouse/skirt doesn’t look all that great on me.

Remember when I went to the Victorian Maiden Press Room? It was so much fun. I bought a lovely blouse and a lovely skirt:


Lovely right? And they go together well. I tried them on at the shop, and I wore them out on the town. I felt frigging beautiful. But then I got back home, into the sweltering heat, and I couldn’t wear them any more. Too hot. When Autumn came around, I had trouble coordinating them. It looked too dark. Now I sometimes wear the skirt with a different top, but rarely wear my blouse. Which is a shame because I love it so much. The fabri c is so nice, it fits so well, but it just looks overdone. I need a cream coloured blazer to go with it, I think. I’ve been looking! I want this one from Mary Magdalene, but it’s super out of stock.


This is an R-Series blouse that I bought from Qutieland a couple of years ago. Quite nice, right? I thought so too, for a few months. The fabric is an interesting texture which I like, ribbon and lace collar is cute, the buttons are nice, and it’s a good fit. However! It’s really short! Observe how the shirt curves up over the hips of the mannequin. This means that you can only really wear this with a high-waisted skirt. I like wearing jeans sometimes, and this looks really good with jeans, except you have to wear another top to cover the gap between top of jeans and bottom of blouse. The other problem is that it looks kind of schoolgirl-ish. I’m 23, and I don’t want to look like a schoolgirl. Changing the ribbon might help.


We all know about this blouse – pretending to be off white in this photo! It’s a Mary Magdalene replica. It’s really good quality, and not short on me. But! IT’S TOO FRILLY FOR ME. I can’t handle it. The cuffs are SO frilly – they really puff out and make it hard to wear a cardigan. And maybe because I’m quite fair – it’s hard for me to pull off having a white high neck blouse.
Next there are two items I bought from FanPlusFriend. On the mannequins, they look so lovely! I think I was going through a pirate kick when I bought these.
This blouse is made of satiny clingy fabric that would probably melt if I ironed it, and the creases won’t fall out. It has corset lacing so it does fit well, but the arms are really long. And who wears a jabot?


This skirt was one of my obsessions for a while. I was amazed at the drop pleats! They are pretty cool. But when it arrived, I noticed that it was GIANT. It is TOO LONG for me. I can’t walk in it without tripping. It’s just very voluminous. But pretty rad still. The fabric is super soft and lovely. I plan on selling my two F+F items soon, if at all possible.

Time for some success stories! Yes, I have some! I’m just going to share my three favourite pieces.
Firstly, my gorgeous Adele Bustier Dress. I think I can safely say that this is my favourite dress ever. It is so choice. I highly recommend picking one up.
It cost me a LOT to get this. I used a shipping service, Gosurori Order, who bought the dress for me in Japan and mailed it out. That cost me a fee, and the AUD wasn’t so good at the time either. It was super expensive. But since I adore this dress so much, it was totally worth it. I wear it all the time, usually with the next piece I’ll show you.


This is another R-Series blouse I bought from Qutieland. This blouse is practically perfect in every way, plus it was a lot cheaper than brand. The fabric is a light polyester (I guess) that feels gorgeous against my skin. The blouse has corset lacing so I always fit well. I adore the buttons – little faux pearls – and the details. I’m considering buying myself another one while they are still for sale. Mine has been loved almost to death! The buttonholes are fraying and the pearl paint is coming off the buttons. It’s getting a little pilly. But it’s still so beautiful. I wear this with the above dress and it’s lovely.

Lastly, my most recent purchase. I got this high-waisted skirt off the sales comm about a month ago. It’s VM, it was cheap, I thought why not. It had a little damage. Since it arrived, I’ve probably worn it more than ten times. It is nice enough that I can wear it to somewhere posh, but I can also dress it down to wear to uni. It’s A-line, which makes it easier to wear casually. Not a great photo I know, but this is a super lovely skirt! Top marks! I do plan to take photos of myself wearing all this stuff, but who knows when that will happen.

SO NICE.
Well that’s the end of my rant, for today. I omitted some of my other clothes, because they’re Summer clothes and I haven’t worn them in ages! Who knows whether I still like them or not?
Is there a lesson to be learned from this? I think the lessons are: Don’t Buy Dumb Colours, You Look Silly In White Blouses, Don’t Buy Something You Have Nothing To Wear With, Don’t Buy Extreme Things, and It Helps To Try It On.
I’d welcome advice about what to wear with my neglected clothes. I’d love to wear my old VM skirt and blouse more often…
dress

Help! Which colour?


So I’m thinking of buying this dress by Surface Spell (through Qutieland). It’s a replica of Victorian Maiden’s Fairy Chiffon Doll Dress, which I adore (if you look at both links you’ll see every colour except the red). Victorian Maiden doesn’t sell that dress any more, and the Surface Spell one costs about one third of the price. I’d love to buy it, but my problem is this:

What colour do I get???
It comes in white, offwhite, red, dark red, black, and pink. Out of those, I only like offwhite, dark red, and black. So out of those three colours, which one do I choose?
Should I buy one, see how I like it, and then buy the other two? That’s a bit wasteful, and weird.
Offwhite could look a bit like a wedding dress, but it also is easy to coordinate. White goes with pretty much everything. But I am kind of pale, and it could wash me out.
Dark red is one of my favourite colours to wear. My favourite coat is dark red, my favourite hat is dark red. I wear red cardigans all the time. But a whole dress made of red… would that be a bit much?
Black would be gorgeous, but I don’t know if I can pull it off. I have some black performance clothes and it looks weird if I wear them while I’m not performing. However, it would be fairly easy to coordinate… maybe.
I’m in a PICKLE.
dress, victorian maiden

New (ish) dress


This is my absolute favourite dress. Victorian Maiden’s Adele Bustier Dress, from 2009. I tried this on while I was in Japan, but didn’t buy it. I bought it recently through a shopping service, GosuRori Order. They were really good, and it came extremely quickly – but – gosh it was expensive.

Worth it. This dress makes me feel like a princess. No matter what kind of posh place I visit, I’ll always look good enough in Victorian Maiden. I’d visit the Queen in this dress.
This photo was taken the day before a bit percussion concert last term. This was the dress rehearsal. And that’s Charles.