Anyone who's still reading Rixo may have noticed that I have become the poster child for failing to blog in anything like a regular and timely fashion, though I'm planning to spend some of the weekend slowly chipping away at my double-digit list of unfinished posts.
This has been due both to lack of time and to a general malaise over the last eighteen months which has left me struggling with this odd reluctance to finish and post much of anything. It's something between procrastination and perfectionism. Hence the long list of drafts. It's a little better over on Kickery (my dance history blog), though I have some similar troubles there.
So I've come up with a brilliant (for some value of brilliant) new project: a third blog!
Now, before you all decide to stage an intervention, let me note that this is going to be an easy, low-maintenance blog that will consist primarily of reposting short blurbs of period source material. Almost no creativity needed! I've carefully prepared for its launch by writing/transcribing an entire month's worth of posts in advance so they will just magically appear a couple of times a week (Tuesdays and Fridays, at the moment, starting next week) without me having to worry about it. And I've made sure to have enough material at hand for several years' worth of biweekly posts so I don't have to worry about major research. I anticipate this absorbing one evening per month, which seems manageable. (Sleep is overrated, really.)
The new blog is really a spinoff from Kickery. I've given it the utterly unromantic name of Historical Fancy Dress, since it will focus on the fancy dress costumes worn at masquerade balls of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. (Above left: the frontispiece to Masquerades, Tableaux and Drills, published by Butterick -- yes, the pattern company -- in 1906. Click to enlarge.) I've been poking around at this topic in a desultory sort of way over the last couple of years out of frustration that on the occasions when people -- like me -- do hold fancy dress balls, many people don't seem to have a clue what to wear. So they wear modern costume or plain historical evening dress. And that's just not as exciting.
I'm assuming that a large part of the problem is that people just don't know what to do or how period fancy dress works. And that is easily addressable by providing information, which there's an ample supply of out there. Hence the new blog. I plan to post mostly short descriptions and illustrations of fancy dress costume ideas from period sources, with occasional digressions into related topics like different kinds of fancy dress balls, hair and makeup, what to do about gloves, and so forth. I may cross-post on Kickery occasionally regarding things like themed fancy dress quadrilles, but I decided this was a topic worthy of a separate blog rather than just a Kickery category.
So if you have an interest in historical fancy dress, or historical costume in general, or historical dance in general, feel free to trot on over and check it out, subscribe to its RSS feed, etc. If you're just a big fan of my writing, you're weird HFD is probably not something you'll need to bother following, since I don't plan to do much original writing other than short comments.
Almost no creativity needed!
Sounds like a great detergent's slogan.
As for being weird because I'm a fan of your writing... I can't say I've never been so insulted because I got a few doozies from my manager these last few weeks. Heheheh...
Posted by: Serge | July 06, 2010 at 10:59 AM
Well, HFD now has exactly two posts up: a welcome message and the first post of substance. So you can see exactly how little of my own writing is going into it.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | July 06, 2010 at 11:03 AM
Anyone who's still reading Rixo may have noticed that I have become the poster child for failing to blog in anything like a regular and timely fashion...
Only because no one wants to make posters of me :(
Posted by: Neil W | July 06, 2010 at 03:10 PM
Neil:
Now I have three blogs to get behind on instead of two! Nyah!
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | July 06, 2010 at 06:43 PM
Doesn't your FaceBook page also count as a blog?
Posted by: Serge | July 06, 2010 at 09:53 PM
Serge:
No.
Posted by: Susan de Guardiola | July 07, 2010 at 01:41 AM