Divine evening dress, 40s/50s?

Vmode

Vmode

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Up next to tickle your dating brainmeats, this stunning black evening dress in verrrry heavy (poss. silk) taffeta, with back metal Aero zip.
The bodice is boned in segments with thin boning that has unfortunately snapped in a few places- does anyone know, or can direct me to, a boning timeline of when the different sorts were introduced? It seems to be a kind of celluloid? Looks like pasta ;)
From the silk velvet band under the bust, it is flared in bias cut panels.. the back also has an extra 2 panels in the velvet, making an awful lot of dress!

With a full circle underskirt in what feels like linen-cotton, there's also a back 'under-train' in netting that hangs a little lower than the hem. Can anyone tell me what this is called?

Please forgive the background of my kitchen, my Mum, and my Gran having a cup of tea :headbang:

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Thanks!
Ava
 
Nice gown! Looks late '40s to early '50s (those are thin straps I see?) and the boning is probably plastic. I recommend replacing it, a haberdasher will have it. Celluloid would not make good boning and they certainly wouldn't have used it by the time this dress was made. I think the netting is called horsehair (even though it isn't) but hopefully someone else will remember it.
 
Hi Nicole,

Yes, there are very thin straps (which are needing a little careful work!), and I'm hoping to replace the boning shortly, I have some Rigilene which is the same width and should do the job.. Other than that it's pretty immaculate, I'm so chuffed with my bargain buy!

The netting isn't similar to any 'horsehair' I've come accross, I've only seen it in strips/bands and in this dress it makes up almost half of a full skirt.. Feels silky! Hmm...

I'm still pondering the boning topic, might it be possible that the maker used 'old' boning? Celuloid was still in use for that purpose around 1905/10 or so- I think?- but the length I removed from my dress just doesn't feel like plastic... when burnt (yeah I set some on fire) it didn't really behave like plastic- can anyone advise how to tell for sure? Of course if it's 60yr old plastic it won't behave like modern stuff so that's probably irrelevant..!
Immediately on removing it had that 'old plastic'-type smell, like lucite.. I haven't come accross it before in other boned dresses, and it certainly hasn't held up very well over time, very brittle! .. Busy googling 'boning history', but it's mainly coming up with corsetry examples. And other uses of the word Boning, which isn't helpful at all.

:) Ava
 
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