A 1925 Oldie But Goodie

Do you ever have an older, well-liked garment that you’ve stopped wearing for some reason or other, but then decided to wear again and were very pleased that: 1) it still fit (though perhaps differently) and 2) brought you more joy to wear than you remembered? It’s a great feeling for both self-made and store bought items!

I had that experience back in January with my 1925 beaded evening gown. With a ‘made’ date in 2013, it’s one of the older 1920s dresses in my closet. It’s not that I didn’t continue to like the dress, it’s just that I’ve been choosing to wear newer dresses to 1920s evening events for the last few years.

My decision to wear it this year was encouraged by the fact that I wanted new photos. My current photos are mostly from this wearing in 2013 and while they’ve done the job for the last 7 years I feel that I’ve upped my photo game in that time.

To start, it was fun to style the dress with different accessories than in the past. The new photos have my silver American Duchess Seaburies (a better match for the colors and evening style of my dress than my American Duchess Astorias in 2013), a thrifted, jeweled bracelet, and sparkly, dramatic clip earrings gifted to me by a friend.

In addition to updated accessories and more confidence with my photo poses (that’s just from practice!), it was wonderful to have the fabulous lobby of the Fairmont Copley Plaza Hotel as my background for these new photos.

The holiday decorations were still up and they are lovely, but even without them I think we can all agree this is a pretty snazzy lobby. I believe it is still true to its original design from the opening of the hotel in 1912, with 21′ high gilded coffered ceilings, Empire style crystal chandeliers, and Italian marble columns (according to Wikipedia).

In addition to the traditional tree decorations, the lobby also had this unusual and gorgeous flower display with a nod towards traditional holiday colors in a more contemporary way.

Look at the green lilies!

It was a pretty fabulous background for updated photos of this dress. I’m so glad it still fits and continues to bring joy!