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 could go on forever on this subject, include an immense amount of artists, go on about the Pre-Raphaelites (I'll do a seperate blog about the Pre-Raphaelites), include a large gallery of each artist that i decided to choose to feature's work which I've tried to choose only 2 of each to include.. that was difficult. In the Victorian Era art styles varied a lot due to the advances in photographic technology. A lot of colour was used in the artworks to record the fine fashion and high society during Queen Victoria's 64 year reign. Due to the fine artwork that...

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...

1. They take mourning seriously. Women often wore mourning rings which were usually made from onyx or jet and featured hair from the deceased person. Some would even bottle their mourning tears. Often, women were hired to stand at a bachelors grave site, usually blonde, to cry inconsolably so that he seemed adored.  2. Hypnotism, divination and spiritualism were huge. They would attend many events where they could get their future read, speak to the deceased or be hypnotised. This was a big money industry in this Era which was usually filled with greatly paid actors. 3. Taxidermy was also...