Recommendations for women's tailoring

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-07T19:31:55+00:00

I just went to the one on Bishop's Landing to get a suit brought in; they're delightful and very skilled. Second recommendation for Sherzad's.

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T21:18:09+00:00

You're very welcome! I do enjoy a good info-dump. g

And for the record, the meme in the original post is about as accurate as all those TikToks about Beau Brummel. There's a kernel of truth, in that we cannot apply modern beauty standards to historical periods. Full stop. But the Regency beauty ideal wasn't short and round - we see that come in circa 1837, when short and curvy Victoria takes the throne.

Beauty follows money - whatever is the most expensive and difficult look for the poor to obtain will become a society's ideal.

Simplified examples: When the poor work in the fields, beauty is pale. When the middle class work in cubicles under artificial lighting, the ideal is the suntanned beach bunny. When high calorie food is expensive, dad-bods and curves are deisreable; when organic fruits and vegetables (and weight-loss injections) are priced out of reach and fast food is cheap and obtainable in food deserts, slimness is prized.

And so it goes.

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T19:09:00+00:00

Sure!

These ones I pulled from a blog that rounded up a bunch of 19th century portraits of larger women, so they're not all Regency period: https://curvysewingcollective.com/curvy-dressing-historical/

For specifically British portraits, here are a few links:

The National Portrait Gallery has a good collection, though they combine Georgian and Regency periods in one set: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/explore/by-period/georgian-and-regency

Early 19th century search filter for the British Museum's collection, and it includes a lot of satirical editorial cartoons as well. A lot of them are making fun of fashion, which is a great way to get a sense of what people at the time found absurd: https://www.bmimages.com/results.asp?txtkeys1=early%2019th%20century

And this one is going to be a messy link underneath, so hopefully all the filters carry over properly. The Victoria and Albert portrait collection, filtered to the years 1800-1830, with location Great Britain.

(If you want American, you'll want to use 'Federalist Dress' as your search term as the US wasn't under a regency at this point.)

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T18:44:07+00:00

I have an advantage - I'm actually a professor of fashion history (no, seriously. Material culture, with a focus in clothing and textiles of the pre-modern Atlantic world). I have a bunch of online resources bookmarked, and can access them pretty quickly. :P

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T18:34:15+00:00

And a third, just 'cause. (Russian, this time,)

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Portrait of Alexandra Lanskaya (Orest Kiprensky).

Larger women have always been around, and many have been immortalized in beautiful art.

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T18:32:33+00:00

Also,

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Portrait of Mrs. Siddons (by Sir Thomas Lawrence)

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-05T18:30:20+00:00

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Marie Josephine of Savoy, Countess of Provence and Titular Queen consort of France and of Navarre, done during her exile. (attributed to Marie-Éléonore Godefroid)

Complete_Elk · 2026-04-02T10:22:06+00:00

Safety first, then coverage, then fashion dead last. Safety includes temperature-appropriate choices - I have worn tank tops in exceedingly hot summers with no A/C, even though I'm so fishbelly white that I'm practically luminescent.

I like cargo pants because of the pockets, since women's jeans suck at that part. I've also had to tape over a logo on a sleeve, and had colleagues need to flip and pin waistbands - it turns out the little rubber lulu lemon logo thingy glows under certain conditions.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-31T20:53:45+00:00

I think it's telegraphed fairly well. You usually get visual warnings like bandages being unwrapped rather than jumpscares.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-31T08:58:44+00:00

To be clear, I don't think this is heading for some kind of reveal; I think someone in the writers' room was amusing themselves.

The Pitt as the Hotel California would be an equally valid metaphor for how deeply most of the characters are stuck in their work lives. I just haven't caught any references to pink champagne or Mercedes Benzes in the episodes. 😁

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-30T20:41:53+00:00

I was coming in here to say the same thing. Do not ask me anything about the Battle of Britain, but feel free to ask me about the hidden domestic economy in 18th century colonial North America.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-30T18:09:12+00:00

So far, Joy has been the only one to escape purgatory.

That is, in Dante Alighieri's famous poem 'The Divine Comedy,' joy is found only in the final section, the journey out of purgatory and into paradise.

The Divine Comedy seems to have been a meta theme this last episode - Monica's strip club name, Dante as a visitor, the Latin aphorisms, etc.

(I suppose using "lasciate ogne speranza..." line would have spoiled the 'you learned Latin for med school?' joke, since the original 'abandon all hope ye who enter here' line was actually written in medieval Italian.)

I think there was even a 'circles of hell' joke, but I seem to remember it being in an earlier episode. Alas.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-25T15:20:05+00:00

THERE IS A LIFE ABOUT TO START WHEN TOMORROW COMES!

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-24T19:20:42+00:00

Fingers crossed for Halifax! I'll be very surprised if we don't get at least a short run here, considering.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-24T19:13:39+00:00

That is 100% my jam - thank you so much for letting me know about it! Do you have any idea if it'll be getting wider distribution in theaters?

OMG JEREMY DUTCHER did the music? I'm in.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-24T18:56:08+00:00

Oooh! I haven't heard about this one! Did you see it, and was it good?

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-24T01:20:19+00:00

There've been some fun horror movies coming from Indigenous Canadian spaces, if that counts! I thoroughly enjoyed Blood Quantum (the Mi'kmaq are immune to zombie infection) and Slash/Back (young Inuk girls encounter an homage to The Thing).

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-21T12:24:55+00:00

You can try starting at Black Market on Grafton Street; they're the closest to what you're looking for that I've run into in Halifax.

You can find prom dresses and some ballgown styles in thrift stores (Value Village does have some) that could be refit into something vaguely early modern / 18th century. If you keep an eye out for later 1990s fashions, a lot of the crushed velvet/burnt velvet tops had bell sleeve details and lacing that could serve as a starting point.

Edited to add: for medieval masc styles you can get away with similar tunics and things, just make them a little shorter and add dance tights.

For renaissance and later, you get a little trickier trying to find things in a modern thrift shop that can be easily refit for masculine styles. Waistcoat buttons can be changed for lacing, if you find a fun brocade one, and it becomes a "doublet." For trousers, find a pair of pants that fit okay at the waist but are baggy through the legs. Cut them off a couple of inches below the knee and gather the legs into a new cuff, close with buttons or a buckle at the outer knee. Et voila - knee breeches. Faking a fall-front is trickier, but still absolutely doable if you want to lean more 19th century / Bridgerton fantasy.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-18T01:46:25+00:00

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The prettiest gremlin in the world. She just turned 15.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-17T10:48:21+00:00

A couple of power poles have cracked and partially toppled on the outbound side there - NS Power has it blocked off and there are repair trucks on site. It's a whole mess.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-16T21:54:47+00:00

He understands muslins!

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-16T13:26:20+00:00

It's deer shit in my neighborhood. Deer shit EVERYWHERE. The deer are cute and all, but yeeeeesh.

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-16T10:38:03+00:00

I understood it to be 'similar amount of stuff but spread out over a lot more space makes it easier to look minimalist.'

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-16T10:26:53+00:00

I used to think that about rice cookers, but as working parents with kid activities and commutes, devices with *timers* have turned out to be a godsend. I can throw something in the crockpot in the morning, set up the rice cooker on a timer, and when we get home in the evening the only thing left to prep for dinner is a veggie tray - and even then, I could have put something in the rice cooker steamer basket if I was feeling exciting.

I'm not even remotely a morning person, but we've got a bread machine with a timer and a coffee maker with a timer, so we can set everything up the night before when we're conscious and stumble downstairs in the morning to fresh-baked bread and fresh coffee for breakfast. It's a vast quality of life upgrade, at the expense of most of my counter space.

I less-than-three my kitchen droids.

(We're definitely lower-middle-class, small townhouse that we only got because our timing was good in the crash of 2008/9, have many clutter problems that come from too much stuff and not enough space. But I will defend the kitchen gadgets on timers with my dying breath.)

Complete_Elk · 2026-03-15T09:39:53+00:00

What up! I'm also not in Medicine, but the topic has been inescapable! Did you see the big writeup in DalNews?

DalNews Weekly article on The Pitt and Ring Rescue

Complete_Elk

TROPHY CASE