18th century blog

Barry Lyndon
I have attempted to watch this movie twice on TV, never getting past the first half hour before completely losing interest as I find it violently boring. After seeing pictures from the movie and reading about it, thinking “how could a movie with this stuff in it possibly be boring?!”, I was determined to watch it in its entirety.

Now I’ve watched it, and I still found it the most boring movie ever. Not only boring, but I disliked pretty much every character, especially Barry himself. I couldn’t concentrate on it all and had to do other stuff while watching it to get through it at all. The first part of it is all country people and military men, which doesn’t interest me at all, but later in the movie there are some very nice costumes. I have to say they’re not interesting or plentiful enough to watch a movie this boring though.

On the other hand I know many people love this movie and consider it a masterpiece , so don’t take my word for it being horrible. See some more film stills after the cut.

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The costumer’s guide to movie costumes
A site with pictures of 18th century costumes from movies.

Muxa’s gallery
Lots of pictures from and related to Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette movie.

Amadeus by Milos Forman may not be all that accurate when it comes to costuming, or anything else for that matter, but really, who cares in this case. To me it’s one of the best movies ever, with amazing actors, and the overall feel and look is fantastic. There are four more pictures after the cut.

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The Kyoto Costume Institute
Lots of photos of actual 18th century clothes.

Historical costumes by Bjarne Drews
Absolutely amazing costumes and embroidery. He also has another website with some more things: http://home0.inet.tele.dk/drewscph

I’m not sure this exhibition is still there, but earlier this year I visited Malmö museer, in Malmö, Sweden, and they had a small exhibition with a few 18th century clothes and objects.

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Livrustkammaren, or the royal armory, is a great museum located inside the Swedish royal castle. They have some great 18th century clothes and things in their permanent exhibition, and at the moment they’re having an exhibition about shoes, many of which are from the 1700s. The rest of their stuff is fantastic as well though, one of my favourite museums.

More info can be found at their website.

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I have a flickr group called 18th century fashion. It’s not terribly active but pretty good so far.