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.

Wet spring florals

 

 

cameo pendant - gift from Jay

everything else - retail

 

These little purple flowers are growing wild around a rose tree in my new courtyard. 

Everything outside looked so lush after a day of spring rain I just had to take some photos.

 

I've left a purple stripe in my hair and it's slowly fading to lavender. It sort of shows here. I quite like it and I think I'm going to dye my short side purple to match. 

Frustrating as it was to maintain, I do miss the colour.

Black, white, beads, stripes

 

 The pattern: McCalls 6646 (bodice only. The skirt was improvised by me)

 The fabric: Striped polished cotton - 40's? 50's? Who can tell me?

The location - My new kitchen!

 I op-shopped this polished cotton years ago and have been holding on to it wondering what to do with it. I wanted to use it for something special because it is just so wonderful. Finally I got sick of it wasting away in my fabric stash and decided to just use it. Surely anything I made with it would end up looking fabulous?

 It has a lovely little floral print which I wanted to bring out with perhaps some red shoulder straps or blue bows at the front. I couldn't decide so I went with the red ribbon sash.

It's removable and and it works. I'm pretty sure some red, or blue, shoes would look nice too.

Here it is without the ribbon.

Hey look! Matching nails. That works, too.

I feel like I look uncomfortable in these pictures (I was actually having fun!). 

Or maybe I look heavier. Do I have more of a chin?

I don't know. Maybe it's just these photos. *bangs head on desk*

The backdrop here is a bead curtain hanging in my new kitchen, in the doorway which leads to the laundry. I have always wanted a bead curtain.

Oh, oh! And I FIXED MY HAIR. Ding dong, the green hair is GONE. I really didn't want to try purple again and have the green come back to haunt me, so I just went with good old black.

The shaved side is still pink. It's a bit brighter now. I'm going to grow it out, but I'll keep dyeing it pink as it grows.

But back to my dress. I should mention how I made the skirt.

I cut the cotton into several 22" lengths, which I then stitched together to make one long piece. I gathered one long edge and stitched this to the waist of the bodice. This makes a skirt which is quite full but not floaty like a circle skirt (ie more wind-resistant). I'm starting to really love skirts like this because they can be made as gathered (or not) as one prefers.

Twirl, twirl.

The end.