Pompeii To Paris

I met the beautiful and talented Leimomi last year at the Pride and Prejudice and Zombies ball, which she brilliantly organized and at which I discovered a predilection for wearing top hats and frock coats. We became Facebook friends, as you do, and saw each other at parties and whatnot, always very enjoyably; we may be the only two people in Wellington, for example, who have heard of the Gaskell Occasional Ball. Leimomi is a textile and costume historian, which means she is badass, so imagine my surprise and delight when she asked me a while ago to model one of her creations in a talk about Greek and Roman influence in European fashion over the centuries, featuring period costumes she made herself.

Here she is in a palla and stola—which I believe she hand-dyed. She spoke for at least an hour with no microphone and no notes, completely naturally and engagingly, to a rapt audience. I was the first model to come out so I got to hear the whole thing.

Leimomi put me in a robe a la francaise, sort of an over-the-top Marie-Antoinette-style type of a deal. This is what the rich folks in Europe would have been wearing when Pompeii was discovered—the whole point of the talk was to show how clothing changed from this point on.

I was pretty excited to wear this. When we had our fitting the week before I tried on one other dress, which I liked a lot, but I had a little feeling about this one, and once we got me strapped into the stays and into the whole thing I was in love.

Side view.

Back view. It’s in two main parts, the underskirt and then the top bit is like a hige overcoat that hooks over the stays and the chemise. You can also sort of see my awesome hair in this one—one of our dressers happened to have a fall that was pretty much exactly my colour, and she wove a ribbon and some fake roses and a fake bird’s nest into the whole thing and it was actually pretty hard to see where my hair stopped and the fake bits started. At the end of the show I was just able to take the whole thing off, like a hat. It was fun to be reminded of when I used to have waist-length ringlets, but I was very glad to give them back at the end of the show.

After the talk we went into the audience and people could come up and see the dresses up close. Lots of people were interested to know how I got my hips so big. I have pretty big hips, you know, but even I needed a little help from these panniers to get them to their full glory in the dress.

I don’t have a good picture of the front of the chemise a la reine dress but here’s the back. Apparently this caused quite a stir when Marie Antoinette switched to wearing this style—it would have been seen as quite indecent, even though it still involved lots of petticoats.

And the Regency dress, aka “The Lizzie Bennet.” I was particularly fond of this one. Actually, I was particularly fond of all these dresses—backstage while we were getting dressed, we kept cooing and squealing over one another (“You are the prettiest!” “No, you’re the prettiest!”) as we struggled into our various constricting undergarments and delightfully-designed dresses. What was so amazing, actually, was that each dress suited its model so perfectly—we all had very different body types, of course, but it wasn’t just that—it’s like we each got the dress that matched our personalities, somehow. I hadn’t met most of the other models before but it was cool to see how we all fit our dresses, in every sense.

The demureVictorian Greek-key dress. Here Leimomi talked a lot about the different ways people could show they were rich, once various fabrics and dyes and things began to get cheaper and sewing machines were invented.

Back view of the key dress, showcasing the beautiful hair ribbon.

We were all in love with this one.

Check out the train!

And this, the Victorian peacock-decorated Juno gown, I just couldn’t stop looking at—seriously, I was so glad to be able to listen to the whole talk. Leimomi talked about how, for the Victorians, everything means something, everything is symbolic. The Roman references are everywhere in this dress, which I just would not have guessed, you know? Also, dig that asymmetry!

Here are a couple of the turn-of-the-last century gowns, which, you can see, are looking pretty radically different to everything that’s gone before. Leimomi talked about the changes in undergarments around this time—in fact one of the models came on stage wearing only her skivvies to illustrate those points.

Detail of the laurel (like what they used to give to the winners of the Olympics) gown. Do you love the black hair and the black velvet sash? Me too.

Anna Jane rocking the very modernist 20s gown, with her own shoes that she found, clearly, in a shop that sells only awesome and amazing things.

Close-up on the red necklace and red lips.

Theresa models a stunning bias-cut 30s gown, which also happens to be Leimomi’s refurbished wedding dress.

Shoulder detail on the 30s gown, and also of Theresa’s winning smile. Her blue nailpolish is, hilariously, period-appropriate!

Here we all are (or about half of us), enraptured by Leimomi’s smart words.

Working the crowd. There I am in the front, rather uncharacteristically lifting up my skirts to show my underthings.

And here we are all together, on one of the funnest afternoons I’ve had for a while.

All photos by Daniil Ivshin, used with permission