It's no secret that Queen Victoria is one of my favourite monarchs in history, alongside Mary Queen of Scots. Both such fierce women in a very male dominated world. Queen Victoria was actually born Alexandrina Victoria and took the name Victoria at her coronation in 1838 at the ripe age of 18.  Queen Victoria was the longest reigning monarch in history until our very own Queen, Queen Elizabeth II took her place.  Being the fifth in line for the throne, no one knew she would become Queen. Her grandfather was King George III, his son and heir to the throne...

Okay let's start a new blog segment called "From The Designer". This segment will allow myself, Tori-Anne Gill the clothes designer and owner of Dark Thorn Clothing, to get into the nitty gritties of Dark Thorn Clothing. We can discuss anything you'd like to know and be completely transparent with the approach so you, the consumer, can feel even more connected and in touch with Dark Thorn. In Chapter One I'm going to discuss the collection structure behind Dark Thorn Clothing. Lets dive in. Each Dark Thorn Clothing collection is limited edition. Only a small run of each collection is...

The Victorian Era is the era of time when Queen Victoria ruled the English Kingdom. During this time fashion was exceptional. Touching base on the trends I'm going to break up the Era into 5 sections. To begin, I'm starting with the obvious, Pre Hoop 1840-1855. Pre-Hoop. Between 1840 and 1855 fashion was about the how wide you can get your skirt and the smallest you can make your waist look. Women would achieve this by supporting the skirts with petticoats, some would even wear up to 5 petticoats at a time underneath their shirt to achieve the widest skirt...

I stumbled across Thorngrove Manor a while ago when i did a google search to find beautiful old manors within South Australia to do my original Rebirth photoshoot. To my surprise when i decided to do some research on Thorngrove i discovered the manor was only built in 1994! Who would have known? You can book in to stay at this beautiful luxury hotel through many booking sites. I'm just going to post some pictures now because 1. it doesn't have any real history and 2. the Manor speaks for itself.. prepare your eyes for the beauty.   Tori-Annexx  

Penny Dreadful is another one of my favourite TV shows which provides me with such great inspiration for designs. The styling is so beautiful and very Victorian. Even the darkness of the whole television series gives me inspiration on mood. I would describe the feel of Penny Dreadful as... dark supernatural. It is set in the 19th century and includes characters such as Dorian Grey from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Grey, Mina Harker and Abraham Van Helsing from Dracula and Victor Frankenstein and his monster from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Types of character in this show include witches, lucifer, vampires,...

I am going to start a new thread of blogs under the tag of 'Alluring Locations'. Here you will discover places that inspire me, catch my eye or i find completely bizarre and beautiful along with their history (if you're a history lover like me). To start this thread of blogs off i'll start with a bang; The Winchester Mystery House The Winchester Mystery House was built by Sarah Winchester who had married into the Winchester family by wedding William Wurt Winchester. The Winchesters are known for their Winchester rifles that were 'The gun that won the west". They had...