Rose's Tea Gown...

Rose's Tea gown is actually her lunch dress. The dress pictured here will probably be the only one of it's kind I'll ever make, due to the fact that the materials to reproduce it appropriately are impossible to come by. It belongs to Christina, a customer of mine who also owns one of my Boarding suits. The dress swallows up yards and yards of large venise galoon lace, which is hard to find and if found, very expensive. I couldn't find any and substituted with the border of an embroidered sheer. If you'd like a dress like the tea gown, contact me, but it will likely be of a different color or similar in color and use other lace than this for the skirt. My fee will be $250, materials are extra.

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The pictures were taken inside due to weather and with a flash, they absolutely don't do this dress justice. The green color of the underlying charmeuse dress is just like it was in the film, a deep, rich, yellowish green.

My version features a different back neckline to accommodate a zipper closure and has a walking vent up to about the back of the knee. The skirt in the film must have been a true hobble skirt, I could not see any opening in the few short seconds you see Rose on deck, walking away from Cal.

Well, never say never, because I made a second version, this time much simplified, for myself, to wear to LA. It has worked out for me that I could attend this years' ( 2004) JASNA annual meeting in Los Angeles and I plan to wear this to dinner one of the nights I'm there. I also managed to track down 2 websites of online fabric retailers that carry polyester charmeuse in this green shade. It's called Kiwi and finding these should make future dress versions easier. I will post pictures of myself wearing it once I return.