You asked for it, so here’s an occasional open thread to bitch about anything tangentially related to history, costume, movies, or TV shows! Or whatever else is on your mind right now. Note that URLs are automatically held for moderation, but most anything else goes as long as you’re not bitchier than we are!
It’s a long holiday weekend for the Frock Flicks team here in the U.S., and we’re taking next week off because year two of this pandemic is taking a toll. Breaks are good! Hope all of you get a chance to rest, recuperate, and recover from gestures vaguely around all this.
How are you doing?
I will be seeking out comfort frock flicks this weekend, which for me means 18&19th century ones…Cranford i.e
Cranford is perfect comfort watching.
I’m plotting turning my 18th century goth fabric* into a vintage dress, either wrap or shirtwaist style. Anyone have pattern recommendations?
*purple bats on an ivory background
No pattern recs, but I love the sound of that fabric. By any chance is it from Colonial Williamsburg? I have 3yards from there that sounds similar :) I will someday make an 18th-c. jacket & I have a solid purple taffeta that coordinates for the petticoat. Of course, I’ve had this fabric for at least a decade…
It’s the very same material. I’ve given up on being able to attend events for now, so I’m hoping to use it for everyday wear.
You’re wiser than me!
Watching Death and Nightingales. I’m so fucking bored with the hair down equals young trope, and It won’t die anytime soon!
Get ready, I’m planning to write about this next Snark Week!
Yeah, thanks Kendra, looking forward to it!
I was too depressed to care while watching that one…
Why do so many shows think that leather jeans are an adequate substitute for proper paned trunkhose in supposedly Elizabethan settings, not to mention doublets open to the navel, no hats? As for armour — seldom if ever do we see the padded cap that is worn under a helmet, nor the mail coif that often goes between the layers? Or swords that aren’t right for the period?
I always wonder about the leather pants thing too! Generally with codflaps!
Because it’s “cool” & “hip.” (gag puke)
Say what you will about Shakespeare in Love, Colin Firth dominates in his pumpkin hose!
Sandy Powell knew what’s what!
I shall watch The Boleyns: A Scandalous Family” on YouTube. I need to go back 500 years to forget, for a time, Gilead-in-Texas, climate change, the pandemic, schmucks who don’t want us to vote, etc.
I hear ya.
I finally saw Bridgerton, absolutely binged it. Thanks to you all for preparing me for the weird costumes and hair choices. I was able to remain in my seat and not throw my laptop over the balcony. it was silly and fun and reminded me very much of Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase. I’ve also watched The Dig, Bletchley Circle: San Franscisco and am basically Frock flickin’ my way through my newly acquired Netflix account!
Awesome, enjoy!
I saw a 70s wedding catalog on Pinterest a few weeks ago and the bridal head piece modeled with this generic 70s Victorian nightgown-type dress was a literal UNFORTUNATE BIGGINS
Thought I would leave it here for reference – if anyone is interested in USSR’s fashions in fifties, there is great contemporary documentary on youtube about GUM, the main universal store in Moscow in 1954. No subtitles, but so many fabrics and dresses and shoes!
I just watched the more dreadful movie. The Arrangement with Kirk Douglas playing the most awful selfish man in the throes of a mid-life meltdown. We’re supposed to sympathize with him, and maybe back in 1969 they did, but in the 21st century all you can see is how badly he’s treating his wife, and his mistress, and even his mother by siding with his demented and occasionally violent father. I’m happy to say that the ending, at the father’s funeral suggests that wife and mother are getting new men who actually care about them rather than seeing them as servants or trophies, but the mistress seems stuck with him.