Marie Antoinette Dress
This dress was a lot of fun to make, even though it was quite challenging. The dress is based on Simplicity sewing pattern 4092, which uses plastic boning to create a fairly rigid dress and underskirt. Because I was trying to evoke Marie Antoinette I opted for the wider underskirt to make the skirt stand out more at the sides like the rococo dresses of the mid 1700s did in France. I did not, however, put any bows on the dress - I do not like that style. So it looks a bit like a hybrid between American colonial style and styles that were popular in the court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
All of the fabrics were synthetic, which also takes away from the authenticity of the look. This has been a tremendously fun outfit to wear for my classes when I taught French, and it always inspired a brief history lesson about Marie Antoinette with my students.
