Vorher Nachher kg: Costume College 2013, the rest of the story

I could of course just link you to the photo galleries of Loren and Jen but I want to gush about Costume College one more time. Both ladies were kind enough to let me use their photos for this final recap.

Check the rest of the photos from their galleries:

Loren's photos

Jen's photos

Like I have previously told, right after I first stepped down in my old English cut gown I found myself in very famous company. Some of us were hungry so Kendra, Jen and I sat down to get a bite to eat and only a moment later two familiar faces showed up. Alyxx in a beautiful Charles II gown with a lovely metallic glow and Loren wearing a spot on recreation of one of my favorite fashion plates. Look at that hat!

The Thursday evening party was filled with a lot of "It's so nice to finally meet you!" and "Hi, I know you!" I had such a wonderful time and I smiled until my cheeks hurt. Here I'm finally meeting Elisabeth and Vanessa whom I've wanted to meet since first finding both through the Truly Victorian forum a long, long time ago. Although it took me a while to recognize Vanessa in that fabulous wig.

I've already covered much of the Friday morning riding habit and redingote meet-up but I didn't yet tell you that I was thrilled to find my boys there.

One thing I learned for possible future Costume College trips is that hair is stressful. I hope to make more wigs and pre styled hair pieces. I only had one wig, the curly 18th century "mullet". The rest I made from my own hair and rats and unstyled hair pieces. I did better than I expected with the tall 18th century hair but I had such hair trouble all Saturday.

On to Friday night, one of the highlights being getting to wear my new redingote with Kendra's. The Ice Cream social itself was a busy and packed event and I kept loosing my friends and found it hard to find the person you were looking for. Adding to that my late arrival and we didn't get too much time to spend together in our matching outfits. But what time we got was fantastic! Before Costume College I thought that we managed to make two very different interpretations of the same drawing and I thought it was the perfect example of how everyone always puts their own twist in their projects and two dresses never look the same. But seeing her there I jumped for joy over how exactly the same we looked. Every time I turned to look at her I got this surreal just like looking in to the mirror -feeling.

There were of course a lot of fantastic outfits to see so I went to get my camera and was able to post some Ice Cream social photos already in my previous post but here's a few more.

She's so awesome.

Friday evening is also when the legendary pink drink party happens. We left the Ice Cream social to Alyxx and Loren's room to get ready. Unfortunately I don't yet own the official pink camo uniform or even a tiara but Alyxx was wonderful and helped me with the latter by borrowing me one. My wig completely swallowed it but it's there. And look at Elisabeth's cute hat.

The party was fabulous!

My non-wigged evening glamour provided by Alyxx.

The next morning was all about the hugely successful Curtain-along meet-up. As I was already able to tell you about that I give you Katherine's incredible knitted pineapple.

I of course wish that everyone would always have enough time to finish everything in good time before arriving to the hotel but that doesn't always happen. Fortunately there is a silver lining. Some of the best times I had was in someone's room helping to get the dresses together. Sometimes by just providing moral support and sometimes by picking up a needle. This was one of those occasions.

After some sewing we went to the English country dance class.

And then we got ready for the gala.

I've told this before but I'm going to say it again. I absolutely loved our accidental natural form dress group! I was beaming as I got to walk down with my friends. We should have gotten more group photos of the three of us.

Loren managed to take a picture of my hair when it wasn't yet falling too badly apart. I tried to make a nice hairdo, but my hair just wouldn't co-operate and I ended up just twisting it in to a bun and piling some hair pieces on top. But I was having too much fun to care and just fixed it a few times and later let my hair down when I got too tired of fixing it.

I had really looked forward to seeing Cathy's gala dress and after a long hunt I finally found her.

Back when I had just made the decision to come to Costume College and was still planning what to wear, Jen was the one to come up with the idea of the Toulmouche project, to combine a ball gown project with those boudoir paintings for a more relaxed outfit for the late night dancing in the gala. I'm so grateful of that. It was a brilliant plan! It had been a long day so it felt good to loosen the corset laces and relax a bit.