A day with Miss Fisher's 1920's costumes

Yesterday, along with Jay and Mumsie, I visited the Rippon Lea estate to see the Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries Costume Exhibition.

The exhibition features many of the beautiful and glorious costumes from the television series based on the books by Kerry Greenwood. I love, love, love the books and the series is, well, good enough I suppose! I'm the sort of person who likes books to be adapted into series and films with nothing altered. The series is light and silly and it's fun to see the characters come to life.

 First stop, tea and scones. And some photos, of course.

 

Dress - ASOS

Boots & tights - old

Cameo necklace - gift from Jay

Cameo ring - (old) Samantha Wills

Upon entering the mansion (a situation in which I find myself every day, darling) we were delighted to discover a rack of coats, capes and feather boas, accompanied by a bowlful of fascinators and headbands, available purely for the purpose of dressing up and getting into the swing of things.

 

 

How could we resist?

 

One of the actual costumes is shown behind us here.

   

    

As you can see, I was not enjoying myself at all. And is that an admirer in the background? 

One of my usuals, no doubt.

Time to get down to business and see the exhibition. Sadly, no other photography was permitted, so here are some of the costumes we saw, as shown in the souvenir booklet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 If you are not able to visit the exhibit I can only highly recommend watching the series to see more of the costumes, as they are quite exquisite. 

The exhibition was spread out through several rooms, with headless bodies and large (fake) knives lying around in abundance. I'd never been to Rippon Lea before, and seeing the house was as much of a treat as seeing the costumes.

 After the exhibit we took a stroll around the gardens. We couldn't have picked a better day for it.

I was very excited by everything we saw. 

"A bridge! Someone take my photo with this bridge!"

"A tree! Someone take my photo with this tree! It's huge!"

"OMG! A seat! Wait! Wait! I need a photo with this seat!"

I ended up with almost 200 photos. I was a happy little black duck.

Green Marilyn dress

Pattern: Vogue 8727, view B

 

 

Alterations:

The skirt. The skirt is made up of front/side front, back/side back pieces, but I didn't have enough material for this. I think when the skirt is made correctly, it is slightly fuller than a circle skirt. I used a circle skirt from another pattern here.

The bodice. This dress has a very high, short waist. I extended the waistline by a couple of inches, and it still sat high. This is a problem for me, because I already have a high waist. A high waist on a dress gives me a lovely pregnant-stomach look. So I added an extension to the bodice on the front only. You can't really see it from the outside but in the lining it's more obvious.

And now here I am larking about in it.

~*~ ..the end.. ~*~