#decade: 1840s

[designedandplated]

Evening and Day Dress for Women and Girls, September 1848.

[pejite]

1850s english manor - historically accurate

Hi! Here's the build I've been working on for the past two weeks. I've made plenty of homes for working-class and somewhat well-off folks, but I hadn't shared a mansion yet, so I was really excited to get this one done. It took me a lot of effort, and I had to cut back on the CC usage and simplify the interiors so Tray Importer wouldn’t crash when exporting the CC.

Anyway! This grand house features a beautiful garden, an entrance hall worthy of a mansion, and a library-living room that leads to the drawing room and dining room.

There are two full floors of bedrooms and bathrooms. The master bedroom is on the top floor and is split into two with a small hallway in between, so the lords of the house can sleep in their respective beds as tradition demands.

There’s also a nursery and a room for toddlers. The mansion boasts a large greenhouse and a full floor dedicated to the staff, where you'll find the kitchens and the servants’ quarters.

Lot details

64x64

§1.228,338 💀

CC included in the download folder.

the interior:

master bedroom(s);

nursery and toddler's room;

floorplans;

download (FREE on Google Drive)

[ganymedian]

How the doose does he manage it?

[starzknight]

So back to my "semi historically accurate disney princessess" we have elsa!

[roberttingle]

they were born in the same litter but separated at the puppy mill😭😭

[aliennasaprincess]

1840s dresses were a real moment

look at the material!!

[life-imitates-art-far-more]

Thomas Couture (1815-1879) "The Romans in their Decadence" (1847) Oil on canvas Located in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France

[clove-pinks]

Two men reading Le Charivari by Honoré Daumier, 1840.

Happy Eighteen-Forties Friday, my friends!

[is-the-19thcentury-man-okay]

Rating: NOT CUTE.

The vogue in 1840s men, incorrectly believed to be docile and low-maintenance, has led to many scenes like this. Even worse, some will indulge this behaviour, as though all that plaid-clad cake couldn't do wrong!

These 1840s men need immediate intervention with a book of etiquette: direct his attention to a chapter on the evils of tobacco, a crass and low habit. Giving your 1840s man the fringed joinville necktie or silly little walking stick he desires is harmless; his constant smoking is not!

Never be seen in cigar divans or billiard rooms; they are frequented, at best, by an equivocal set. Nothing good can be gained there; and a man loses his respectability by being seen entering or coming out of such places.

— Etiquette; or, A guide to the usages of society, with a glance at bad habits (1843)

[cagesings]

i know some people are mad at how most productions and most adaptions of the string of pearls/s.weeney t.odd story take place in victorian england instead of the late eighteenth century like how the penny dreadful was set, but i really appreciate how they go with the earlier victorian period rather than later? most other gothic stories take place in the late eighteen hundreds for the vibes and fashion and history and etc. despite the victorian setting, it still stands out.

[stellaluna33]

Ah, yes! This is VERY 1850s in my opinion! The rounded softness of the silhouette, the sheer WIDTH of those ruffled sleeves, the hair... Yes! She is SO lovely!

• Unidentified Young African American Woman, front view.

Photographer: Thomas M. Easterly

Medium: Daguerreotype

[designedandplated]

"Fashions for April 1843"

[pejite]

An 1840s Lookbook ; Wilhelmina Langley

This is my first lookbook! I’ll start making them for each decade, but instead of starting with the 1830s, I’m going with the 1840s since there’s more CC available, and by the time I thought of doing it, the 1830s had already passed.

In this case, Wilhelmina doesn’t have a party outfit or swimwear since she’s never had the opportunity to wear something like that.

Everyday / hair / dress / shoes

Everyday / hair / dress / apron / shoes

Going out or Formal / hair / hat / dress / shoes / socks

Mourning / hair / hat / dress / shoes / basegame gloves

Sleepwear / hair / dress / socks

Underwear / hair / dress / socks

Hot Weather / hair / hat / dress / shoes

Cold Weather 1 / hair / dress / shoes / socks

Cold Weather 2 / hair / hat / coat / skirt / shoes / socks / basegame gloves

[so-i-did-this-thing]

Hello, I have a question about fashion history.

Before I transitioned, I dressed 1850/1860s every day (with the accasional 1960s because miniskirts used to be fun before dysphoria took me hostage)

Currently my style is just misc vintage menswear, and despite all I look for in my fashion history books (the ones I use for my university costume course) I cannot figure out a way to make it more specific to certain era, other than with neck wear (but then you put a tie on and it could be any point in history again!)

What are some markers of specific periods in male historical fashion or what could I read to find out about them?

Ignore accessories right now and concentrate on fit and silhouette.

There is a world of difference between, say, 1840s and 1950s tailoring, even though men have been wearing suits & ties for ages now.

Look at these 2 fashion plates that were contemporary to the decades I just mentioned. Soft hourglass shape vs a sharp-edged wedge.

What I suggest is focusing on whatever era(s) you like best and picking apart the silhouette. Ask yourself things like:

How is this silhouette different from other eras?

Are the garments fitted or loose?

Where do pieces, like trousers, sit on the body?

How does the cut of the clothing influence the wearer's posture?

How does the fit of the clothing alter the wearers shape? What does it hide or change? What does it exaggerate?

What is it about a garment's construction that allows it to achieve these shapes? Pleats, darts, shaping via ironing, hidden structure/padding, etc?

Once you dial in the silhouette, you can then layer on details. But the silhouette is key to looking & feeling authentic!

[vincentbriggs]

Do you need a sewing machine to start making shirts and vests? Is hand sewing an option worth considering, or should I invest in a machine, in your opinion?

That's really a matter of personal preference!

Do you need a machine? Absolutely not! Every garment ever made before the 1840's was sewn by hand, and a lot of them after that too. I've sewn many garments completely by hand, including the early 18th century tiddy-out-violinist shirt, these bright orange breeches, and this green waistcoat.

Is it nice to have a machine? I think so, but again, individual opinions vary!

One of the costumers I follow sews everything 100% by hand because she finds it meditative and isn't interested in using a machine at all. Some people hate hand sewing and prefer to do everything by machine, with maybe a bit of hand finishing if they absolutely can't avoid it.

I do about a 50/50 split overall, maybe skewing a bit more towards hand sewing. I like to do pants, shirts, and nightgowns mostly by machine with some hand finishing, but for jackets and waistcoats I usually do considerably more hand sewing than machine, because I like 18th century tailoring techniques and think they give a nicer looking result. I do most of my buttonholes by hand, or I do them by machine first and then cover them in hand stitching.

Most people who sew do at least some of it by machine, but again, I don't know which way you prefer to work, so I'd suggest trying out both to see how you feel abut them.

For hand sewing, I suspect a lot of people hate it because they're using shitty needles and/or shitty thread, and perhaps haven't found good resources for hand sewing techniques.

Here's a post of hand sewing advice that I found quite helpful a decade ago. Use good needles because the eyes of the cheap ones have jagged edges and will ruin your thread! Use nice thread because the wrong kind will be twisty and tangly and will fray more!

Thimbles are good and useful, and typically they go on the middle finger of your dominant hand, and you use them to push the needle. I prefer metal thimbles and dislike using leather ones, but some people prefer the leather ones, or rubber ones.

The metal ones come in sizes, and I don't know how to find out your size aside from trying them on in person, but I know I'm a size 11.

One very important thing is that if you're hand sewing a garment, look for hand sewing specific instructions on how to do the construction techniques you're going for. A lot of the time when someone nowadays is trying to figure out how to hand sew a thing they'll just try and copy the machine sewn version, and a lot of the time that's inefficient and more difficult and the result looks worse, because machines and hands work very differently!

This is something I'm going to briefly discuss in the outro to the very long shirt video I'm working on, because it's so very common, and I've done it too! On several of my earlier hand sewn shirts I didn't know to turn the edge in on the front slit and do a little narrow hem, so I instead sewed on a facing for the front slit and cut and turned it, just like I'd seen on machine sewn shirts. This made it about 3x more time consuming, and the result was much bulkier and looked worse.

I've got so many more things to say about sewing but it's almost bedtime and I don't want to make this post too long.

For machine sewing, again there's a lot of personal choice. Some people like newer machines, some people like vintage or antique ones. I'm one of the ones who prefers solid metal vintage machines. I grew up using an old cast iron Singer, and the newer domestic machines just feel so plasticy and insubstantial to me. I'm used to ones that just do straight stitch and can also go backwards, but some people are perfectly happy with ones that can't even backstitch.

I do think that for a beginner the vintage machines are a better deal, because if you're patient and look around for a while you can snag one for really cheap at a thrift store, yard sale, facebook marketplace, etc. Also they're mostly metal and therefore harder to break.

I recently got a Pfaff (from I think the 1960's?) at an estate sale for 25 bucks. The zig zag mechanism is stuck and needs fixing, but I cleaned & oiled it up and it works just fine for regular straight stitching.

There are SO MANY online resources for how to clean, oil, and fix vintage sewing machines, especially the more popular brands, and a lot of the time cleaning & oiling is all they need. Read the manual and get an oil bottle with a nice long pointy thing so you can reach all the parts, and get some compressed air to whoosh out the fuzz. If it's old and hasn't been used in years, turn the hand wheel and observe every single place where metal rubs against metal, and Make It Greasy There.

(If you don't have the manual, you can often find those online too. I even found the service manual for my new-old Pfaff! I have the original users manual, but this one's for the people doing repairs.)

Oh this post is getting much too long! If you don't know yet if you like machine sewing, try seeing if you can use one without owning it, perhaps at a sewing class or in a makerspace. I know some libraries can loan out machines. A sewing class would probably be a good idea actually, if there are any available where you live!

Much like how you'll have a bad time hand sewing if you've got shitty supplies and no proper instructions on good techniques, you'll have a bad time machine sewing if it's not oiled well and if the tension is uneven.

There are so so very many things to learn about sewing and I hope I'm not making it sound too overwhelming, because I promise it's not if you take it one step at a time!

Also, when someone who's been sewing for a long time says "You may think you can ignore (piece of sewing advice), but actually that's bad and you will regret it", they're usually right. Oh, how I regret not learning to use a thimble years earlier than I did...

Sorry this post is so long, I hope it's helpful!

Basically, there's no one best way to sew anything, and you should try different stuff and see what works best for you, because everyone has different preferences.

[cringeborg]

Julie - 1840s day dress

Surprise! 3-5 outfits in 4 days? You betcha! I'm unemployed.

This is more late 1840s than early 1840s. Could work for early 1850s, even. Named after a somewhat niche opera character. I think she'd like this dress.

It's nothing fancy. 6 packages, 2 meshes, 150 swatches, 2 color overlays. I did some math and there should be 307,200 combinations. Can't guarantee my math is correct though.

As a whole this set is about 35 MB. Not bad!

AF Dress

BGC

Plain+Stripes: 60 swatches

Patterns: 90 swatches

Tagged as feminine

Found in the Long Dresses category

Polycount: 6494

Display index by decade

Disabled for random

TF Dress

Shorter variant for teens

AF version is required!*

Plain+Stripes: 60 swatches

Patterns: 90 swatches

Tagged as feminine

Found in the Short Dresses category

Polycount: 6530

Display index by decade

Disabled for random

Overlay A

Swatch overlay for the collar and undersleeves

32 swatches

Found in the Necklaces category

Overlay B

Swatch overlay for the lace on the outer sleeve

32 swatches

Found in the Bracelets category

*Both TF versions require their adult equivalents to work. If you want the plain TF dress, you need to download the plain AF dress, and if you want the patterned TF dress, you need the patterned AF dress. This was done to reduce file size. The adult versions still work independently.

Download (Patreon)

My TOU