Beware of Italics

I'm measuring my weight now.

I fell down the rabbit hole of trying to find old Eaton's catalogs, but we're going to make do with Sears, because Internet Archive has a scan of the 1922 spring catalog.

One of the reasons I like to pin 1922 on the fanciful "whenever" of The Blue Castle is that waists started to descend toward the hips, and the silhouette was pretty straight up and down. While most dresses are shown with sashes, a girdle of red beads isn't impossible. (It's also a good year for squishy hats.)

Placement of the waist is critical. Back in the early 1910s, there was a shift from the Edwardian S-curve to a more straight silhouette, too. But that one was Regency-inspired, so waists started high. By 1913, they'd dropped to the natural waist line, as this Ladies Home Journal spread shows. This is almost the last gasp of that straight-ish silhouette.

By 1915, skirts are wide and fluffy, as this page from The Delineator shows.

Now, if we want a fairytale reality in which WWI didn't happen, I'd love to put Olive in the fluffy fashions above, but Valancy in the straighter styles of 1918, also from The Delineator. The lower, looser belts could count as a hip-level girdle.

Waists retreat to the natural waist and skirts become a little more gathered in 1921, per the Eaton's catalog.

Then waists get softer and lower again for 1922 (back to Sears).

By winter 1923, waistlines have fallen below the hip bone (Eaton's), so Valancy's beaded belt would no longer be daring.

Realizing this was the basis for "sob of fall and song of forest" by @batrachised ! Elite ball knowledge

Ohhhh I love the fashion of this book. I wanna see Valancy's unique eyes with that low-waisted 1920s dress. I was concerned about her spending at first—but then I realized she's got free room and board so it's whatever. Dream job...

I've been imagining PEI for the setting of this book, but turns out it takes place quite far south. And aspens—the trees that made May look like October while I was in Canada!! Green lakes and orange trees... magical...

Is this the first time I've read a character say "Thanks" in an LMM book—that wasn't a child?

"She was not in the least afraid, with Barney at the wheel. Her spirits rose rapidly as they tore along. She ceased to feel ashamed. She ceased to feel anything except that she was part of a comet rushing gloriously through the night of space."

She got a pretty green crêpe dress with a girdle of crimson beads, at a bargain sale, a pair of silk stockings, to match, and a little crinkled green hat with a crimson rose in it. [...] Valancy put on her green dress when she got home. Then she took it off again. She felt so miserably undressed in its low neck and short sleeves. And that low, crimson girdle around the hips seemed positively indecent. [...] the girdle had given her flat figure an entirely different appearance. She pulled her green crêpe from its hanger and put it on feverishly. It was nonsense to feel so—so—naked—just because her neck and arms were bare. [...] She flung on her coat and pulled the little, twisty hat over her hair.

I feel that The Green Dress should not be as hard to fancast as I found it to be. I follow @the1920sinpictures (lovely blog, by the way), which regularly posts images of beautiful vintage dresses, and every time one comes up, I look for whether it has TGD Vibes. I don't even need it to actually be green! I'm just looking for shape, style, etc. And I tell you what, I have not had a direct hit so far.

Images under the cut - and I will go ahead and credit posts and reblogs by @the1920sinpictures for most if not all of these; I've lost track of the source for some).