American Duchess Historic Shoes Blog
Holiday Shipping Deadlines, 2019
Here's just a quick reminder to get your American Duchess and Royal Vintage orders in by the following dates so we can ship them out and get them to you...
Historic & Retro Winter Shoes & Boots
Sleigh bells ring, are you listening? In the lane snow is glistening... <3 Here's our annual guide to this year's historic and retro winter shoes and boots from American Duchess...
The Countess of Melbury's Ball c. 1789 - Inspo!
The Met, 1780s Italian gown. Inspiration for my own gown for this event. Next March, 2020, I am attending the Countess of Melbury's Ball in Walnut Grove, California. The event...
Book Review: Women of the 1920s: Style Glamour, & the Avante-Garde by Thomas Bleitner
Louise Brooks On the eve of the 2020s, the spell of the exciting and revolutionary 1920s looms large. It was an unforgettable era with deep cultural shifts and powerful aesthetics....
Winter SALE at American Duchess & Royal Vintage
La la la la la - it's that time of year where we put, like, everything on SALE! Here are the links: American Duchess This year we have the traditional...
The Isabella Mactavish Fraser Pattern & Documentary!
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are very proud to release to you today the Isabella Mactavish Fraser gown pattern and construction PDF along with our short documentary about this famous tartan...
The Reno Tweed Ride, 2019
Chrissy wore her bicycling pants, spatterdashes, and a corset on her Columbia 1920s reproduction bike. The same weekend we invaded Virginia City with our Spoop-Troupe, we enjoyed the local Tweed...
The Nevada Statehood Ball - An Evening in 1864
The crew - Abby, Chrissy, me, and Caroline at the Nevada Statehood Ball, 2019 - photo by Chase Stevens. A few posts ago I shared how I refit my 1860s...
A Spoopy Day in Virginia City, Nevada
The Spoop-Crew in Virginia City, NV. No actual buckets of blood were consumed, but we thought about it.... Several weekends ago a group of friends came to visit us here...
Altering My 1860s Evening Gown
Currently on my sewing table is a "simple" alteration to my one-and-only 1860s evening gown. I made this gown, along with a matching day bodice, back in 2014 and over...
Adventures in England - Nature, Painting, and Fashion
Hadiran's Wall, UK Chris and I have recently returned from a vacation in Cumbria, UK, visiting the famously gorgeous Lake District. We rented an airbnb cottage for the entire length...
I Made a Vintage Style Raincoat...Somehow
I live in the desert. We get, oh, a handful of days of novelty rain per year and so a raincoat is not something that regularly factors into my wardrobe....