Venetian ball

In my professional life I'm working as a museum pedagogue in an historical mine, and World Heritage Site. Around 1,5 hours drive from us is another historical mine and during the summer we try to keep up a tradition to go and visit each other and have fun together. This year the other historical mine, Sala, invited us to a Venetian masked ball in their underground ballroom, they have been doing quite a few 18th century events and tried to profile them as 18th century.

I decided to wear my navy anglaise. As for the rest of the people going we had had a bit pf presentation of 18th century fashion, some of them had watched costume dramas and then they had created a lot of nice outfits, not historically correct but great for having fun in an 18th century way.

We were a couple of people who arrived early in Sala to get dressed. I had had minor disaster with my wig when I tried to restyle it, so this is what it looked like.

Photo: Frida Unnerud-Björsland

Still I had made two rats, one was a net stocking that I simply filled with foam to make a long roll and one was a donut that I had covered with some dark loose hair that I had. I managed to pin the wig over the rats and into something decent. Since I dyed my hair bright red it's no way that I can hide my own hairline though, so the next time I'm going to an event I need to get a wig that I can work my own hair into.

Photo: Frida Unnerud-Björsland

I'm quite happy with the result, I pinned some feather on top as well. This was the first time that I wore the anglaise with the trim that I added earlier this year, and I love how it has transformed the whole gown.

Except for me wearing my anglaise there was a mix of how people had come up with their clothes. I had lent out my printed anglaise to one of the girls, one of them had borrowed from our museum, one has a mix of her traditional folkcostume and a wedding gown she found in a second hand store, three of them (including the guy) had sewn most of their outfits, and then there was another second hand store.

Photo: Frida Unnerud-Björsland

When we got underground there was of course dancing. We learnt one polonaise, one renaissance dance I can't remember the name of and one anglaise. My feet and legs hurt a lot the day after, since my shoes have very thin soles and we were jumping/dancing on the bedrock, so now spring in that dancefloor.

Compulsory "I'm all dressed up and underground" photo.

A full body picture of me in the anglaise.