Wonderful, weird couture

From the Department of Cool Victorian Clothing, in conjunction with the Department of "Stuff You See a Lot Of in Steampunk Jewelry that Is Surprisingly Historically Accurate":

The internet was abuzz a couple of months back over the restoration of the dress from John Singer Sargent's Lady Macbeth:


Courtesy JSSGallery.org.

If you missed it, it's well worth a look: here are Virtual Victorian's and the Daily Mail's articles on the dress.

The interesting elements? A.) The dress was famously worn by the gorgeous redhead actress Ellen Terry, who I have always found M to rather resemble, in 1888, and B.) it's adorned with hundreds and hundreds of actual beetle wings. You know, like these and these.

The description of the repair process in the first article linked is also quite technically interesting for those who do such delicate work.