Historical Fancy Dress

Tag: Victorian Fancy Dress Ball

  • Victorian Fancy Dress Ball Advance Registration Reminder!

    A quick reminder that the advance registration deadline for the April 2nd Victorian Fancy Dress Ball in New Haven is today!  Hit Paypal or get your check into the mail ASAP!  (Get the flyer with registration information here.)  This is your chance to try the cotumes and descriptions found in Historical Fancy Dress for yourself!  Here are the details:

    On Saturday, April 2nd, in New Haven, Connecticut, there will be a fancy dress ball in the style of the 1880s, featuring live music, Victorian dancing, refreshments made from historical recipes, and a chance to bring fancy dress costumes to life!

    The ball will be held from 8:00 to 11:30pm at beautiful Pratt Hall, less than a block from the New Haven Green and only a few blocks from the historic Yale University campus.  The dancing will be precepted by dance historian and teacher Susan de Guardiola (author of the Capering & KIckery dance history blog and owner of Historical Fancy Dress) with live music by the noted dance trio Spare Parts, heard recently on the soundtrack of the film Bright Star.  The dances will be a typical Victorian mix of couple dances (waltz, polka, schottische, galop) and set dances (contras, quadrilles).  All set dances will be taught during the evening, and there will be a workshop from 3:00 to 5:00pm the afternoon of the ball to help people wanting to learn the couple dances.

    For those in New York City, there will also be a pair of pre-ball workshops on Victorian couple dances and set dances this Sunday, March 27th.  Full details are here; a workshop flyer may be downloaded from this workshop flyers page.

    Obviously, fancy dress based on the styles of the 1880s is strongly encouraged, and this blog is intended as a resource for costume ideas.  The evening will include a procession of costumes.  Since this is a fancy dress ball rather than a masquerade, masks are not necessary.  To preserve the beautiful floor, please make sure to have clean dance shoes or indoor-only shoes to change into at the hall so as not to track dirt or grit into the ballroom.

    The ball is strictly limited to 80 people due to the size of the hall.  Advance registration ($25 per person, or $18 for ages 13-21) is recommended.  At-the-door prices are $10 higher and admission will be available only if space permits.  Younger children may attend with their parents, and are expected to be strictly supervised throughout and withdrawn from the ballroom if they become too tired/fussy to display polite behavior.

    A flyer with registration information may be downloaded here.

  • A Fancy Dress Ball, Singapore, 1884

    Newspapers of the era often published lists of the costumes worn by guests at fancy dress balls.  The lists were typically provided in advance, so it's possible not all of the costumes worked out, as anyone who's ever tried to finish a costume at the last minute before a ball will understand.

    The lists below are from a fancy dress ball held by British expatriates in Singapore and are taken from an article on the ball published in the Singapore newspaper Strait Times Weekly on February 23, 1884.

    From the description of the ball itself:

    On Thursday evening, the Fancy Dress Ball, which for some time past had been looked forward to, took place at the Town Hall.  The upper room is well known to all visitors as being one of the handsomest in the Far East.  On the present occasion it was simply and tastefully decorated, in a manner which was well adapted to enhance the architectural features of the building.  The result was such as might have been expected from the interest evinced by the fairer portion of the community, and the skill and attention they bestowed upon their costumes, which contributed so materially to the success of the entertainment.  One could not fail to notice, among the many handsome dresses, that there were several in the disposal and arrangement of which the fair owners displayed an intimate and correct knowledge of true artistic and aesthetic principles.  The style of the costumes was exceedingly diversified, some being of a purely classic type and thus pertaining to the tragic, while there were some which were the representatives of comedy, and others again which successively adopted comic character.

    The general effeect [sic] of the intermingling of thse many and varied styles and colors, whether seen in the Hall itself or viewed from the gallery above, furnished a spectacle not only charming to the eye, but one which those who witnessed it, will not readily forget…

    …Dancing commenced shortly after nine with an opening quadrille which extended the entire length of hte Hall.  The floor was in excellent condition, and the music was performed by the Regimental Band of the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers.  It is no wonder that these and other attractions rendered the visitors loth [sic] to part, and prolonged the dancing after supper far into the small hours.  At what precise time the company would have separated it is difficult to determine, as dancing only stopped upon the Band playing the National Anthem.

    The entire article may be found online at the website of the National Library of Singapore.

    In looking through the lists of costumes, some trends are obvious: historical costumes of the previous few centuries, characters from plays, and national/ethnic costumes of various kinds.  Classic fancy dress costumes such as Harlequin and Folly are also represented.  More unusual examples are the gentlemen attending as "Bat" and "Paint Box" and the lady depicting "Economy."  There are also a few cop-outs: "Civil Service Uniform" and "Evening dress, 19th century" suggest that not all the attendees made any special effort at costuming.

    While some couples may have coordinated costumes — the Cavalier and the Lady of the 17th century appear to be husband and wife — it is actually more common for the costumes not to match: Ralph Rackstraw wth Follie, Peasant of the Black Forest with Persian Lady, and so forth.  The substantial disparity in numbers between ladies and gentleman probably reflects the nature of society in a distant colonial posting of that era.

    Here are the lists of costumes, reformatted to separate the ladies' and gentlemen's costumes and with the names of the wearers omitted to save space:

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