DAY 71: Invitation to a Ball!

The third option for the final dress change of the day--after Dinner Dresses and Evening Gowns--was the Ball Gown.

Dresses like these were made to sweep across a ballroom floor to the strains of waltz, the trains held up by a loop over a lady's finger. Arms and neck were fully exposed and usually adorned with jewels; fresh flowers were also pinned to the gown or in the hair. These were the most exquisite and costly dresses a woman owned, and the detailing was deliberately fanciful--notice the embroidered and jeweled butterflies leaping off the bodice picture here.



Debutantes were traditionally presented by their families at a ball, and a girl's first ball gown was extremely important in framing her for Society as a marriagable young woman. Debutante ball gowns were a virginal pastel, like the two pictured here, and as balls were often thrown during the spring Season, neutral colors made sense. 







I particularly love this tulle? silk chiffon? peach gown with the olive and russet tones in its floral trimmings; I imagine an auburn-haired girl would look ravishing in it!

For older or married women, however, ball gowns could be every shade of vivid. Here are two I love--a scarlet one from about 1900, attributed to Charles Worth's son, Jean-Philippe, that would have looked fabulous on Jennie Churchill...

...And a sapphire blue gown I mentally invoked when I wrote of Jennie dancing with Charles Kinsky at his private ball in the New Cafe. Notice the beaded fringe at the bodice that would have swung as a lady danced. The style of this is probably also around 1900, as it lacks a bustle. 

Here's a close-up of the shoulder detail--lace, and more dangling fringe beads set into the lace. Tziganes music, and Bertie glowering from a corner!

One of the cleverest gowns I've found was this russet embroidered silk, made with two different bodices, one for use as a Dinner Dress, and a second for use as a Ball Gown. This probably dates from the mid-1880s. It would be up to the lady's maid, of course--in Jennie's case, her maid Gentry--to sew the appropriate bodice onto the gown for a particular occasion. Note Charles Worth's signature in the seam tape of the final photograph.

For more images from THAT CHURCHILL WOMAN, visit the  Pinterest board behind the novel.