Little red dress

Little Red Riding Hood fancy dress costumes are quite a popular form of fairy-tale outfit, especially for couples going to a themed costume party together, whereby the lady goes dressed in a Little Red Riding
Hood outfit and the man goes dressed as the Big Bad Wolf.
Origins of the classic fairy-tale can be traced back to oral versions of the story, which came from a number of different European countries. However, it was not until the 19th century that the Brothers Grimm first wrote out the story as we know it today. Importantly, this version of the tale was the first recognised version to have a happy ending.
Such is this fairy-tale's place in our popular culture that Little Red Riding Hood fancy dress costumes are extremely popular at Halloween and at costume parties throughout the year, this is despite the fact that there has never been a Walt Disney production of the story, nor any other major film of note. Nonetheless, it remains one of the nation's top bedtime stories and perhaps that is why the Little Red Riding Hood outfit remains so popular.

Nowadays, there are a number of great looking costumes to choose from, available at specialist websites online. Below are three different outfit suggestions that you may wish to consider, in order to turn heads at the party.
The classic outfit
The classic outfit is probably the nearest costume to how we all picture the innocent young girl on her way to her grandma's cottage in the middle of the woods. These costumes are usually quite conservative in style and are based around a red dress and a red hooded cape. The must have accessory is of course a basket and some of these come with a wolf's head inside.
The sexy outfit
The sexy costumes seem to be even more popular than the classic outfit nowadays. They are usually based around a mini dress, which is often red, white and black, and a red hooded cape. Accessories usually include fishnet stockings and even knee high black leather boots. They are costumes that ooze sex appeal and strongly suggest that perhaps Red Riding Hood is not quite as innocent as she first appears.
The Big Bad Wolf outfit
For a man wanting to go to a Little Red Riding Hood themed party there is really only one choice of outfit. The Big Bad Wolf fancy dress costume comes in a few different styles, but perhaps the best variation are those that feature the wolf in grandma's dressing gown and mop hat.

Fashion Silhouette Col Blue Dresses

So many of the examples above featured blue tones, Santorini blue, bright Yves Klein blue through to sea green blue tones, all make the blue family a major colour for 2009. These dresses below show not only the variety of the blue tone, but also the changing silhouette of the year 2009.

The silhouette of the first blue dress begins with an undefined drapery in the sleeve shoulder area.  Moving along the line, the royal dress develops a slight A-line that compliments the asymmetric shoulder line.  Next is a simple blue summer shift with decorated neckline, it has an easy flared A-line silhouette.  The final dress in the line-up features a green dress with extra fullness in the form of medium restrained pleats, but the skirt has visibly widened.

 

Far Left - Wallis Spring Summer 09 - Blue stingray dress £50/€80.
Centre left - Matalan Dresses - Et Vous ruffle one shoulderr dress £25 - Matalan SS09 Women's Apparel.
Centre Right - Wallis Spring Summer 09 - Beaded neck shift dress £60/€95.
Far Right - Dorothy Perkins Spring Summer 09 - Blue jacquard mini dress £40/€60.

Citrus Yellow and Green Dresses - The 2009 Fashion Silhouette

Even with so many styles of dress available, the most noticeable trend for summer dresses 2009 is for a bold strong colour, with drapery in a gradually widening skirt silhouette.  Fashion designers achieve this by employing double layer skirts.

Volume, once a dirty word in early noughties fashion, now seems so normal compared to just a few years ago.  The shoulder line has widened and covered bare shoulders giving a fifties/early sixties touch of fashion.  This is groomed dressing.  You can also see actresses wearing examples of this dress style in the TV series 'Mad Men'.

In the line-up of 4 summer dresses below, the rich green strapless dress shown left has a fuller silhouette with a much wider skirt and a deep inverted pleat. The prom bodice is also higher than in previous seasons.  The apple green sleeved and yellow dresses all have draped soft pleats which add volume fullness. 

Far Left - Dorothy Perkins Spring Summer 09 - Green taffeta prom dress £40/€60.
Centre Left - Dorothy Perkins Spring Summer 2009 - Lime bow front shift dress £40/€60.
Centre Right - Dorothy Perkins Spring Summer 2009 - Yellow linen shift dress £35/€55.
Far Right - Dorothy Perkins Spring Summer 09 - Yellow bow front dress £45/€70.

Online Dress Up and Makeover Games

Online fashion games fall into a few general categories. The simplest fashion-themed games include dress up, makeover, fashion design, and room decor. More complicated games fall under the categories of puzzle solving, time management, arcade and action, and card and board games.

Girly Fashion Games

Ages 3 and up.
(GFG) posts simple dress up, makeover, and room decor games in a blog format. Special categories include fairies, dancers, and pets. Young children can easily play GFG games using only the mouse to point, click, and drag to dress and apply make up to dolls and to rearrange rooms and doll houses.

Category pages can get noisy when multiple games include music. Clicking on the title of a game isolates it on its own page and solves the noise issue.

Cartoon Doll Emporium

Ages 6 and up.
CartoonDollEmporium.com (CDE) hosts thousands of free games. Within the CDE virtual world, players can make their own doll, adopt a pet, raise a baby, decorate a room, earn cartoon dollars, form clubs, and interact with other CDE members.
In addition to games, CDE provides a platform for writing original stories and creating art projects, as well as for participating in polls, voting, a fashion design contest, and doll awards.

Read on 

CDE contains advertising and interactive components such as chat, but is fully COPPA-compliant (coppa.org) to protect children's online privacy.

Big Fish Games

Ages 6 and up.
Big Fish Games (BFG) offers popular online and downloadable fashion-themed and other games. BFG fashion games range from simple dress up, makeover, and fashion design to more complicated fashion-themed mysteries, puzzles, hidden object games, and more.
The Big Fish Games Community allows members to earn tokens by playing online games and to interact via chat, friends lists, and forums. Players use tokens to enter lotteries to win cash, prizes, and more tokens.
In addition to online games, Big Fish offers free trials of games and a game club for purchasing downloadable games at discount. Popular downloadable fashion games include Satisfashion, a fashion design time management game, Masters of Mystery - Crime of Fashion, a hidden object game, and Fashion Solitaire, a card game.
Home decor offerings include Home Sweet Home, an interior design time management game, and Dream Day First Home, a redecorating and hidden object game.

Fashion Design Schools

A Degree is Important for a Fashion Design Career

For those who are serious about working in the world of fashion design, a degree in this field is almost a necessity. Although one may have an extreme amount of raw talent in the area of design, most employers are looking for someone with a degree. Furthermore, fashion design programs teach a comprehensive curriculum, which will help fill in any gaps a person may be lacking in their own knowledge.
There are Certificate Programs, as well as two-year Associate Degrees and four-year Bachelor of Science Degrees offered in the field of fashion design. Any degree is beneficial, with the Associate's Degree including a more intensive study as it is a shorter program. However, since this is a very competitive field, a Bachelor's Degree may be the best route as it allows for more classes as well as more experience.

Another major benefit to completing a degree is that most schools and colleges offer internships to students, as well as solid networking for the job hunt. Internships provide the much needed experience to be fully prepared for a job in this field. Additionally, an internship often leads into a job with the same company, or provides contacts for related job openings.

Fashion Design Schools and Institutes

Fashion design colleges and schools are plentiful. One option is The Art Institute, which has 19 locations in major cities across the U.S., as well as online degree programs as well. Some of the other top schools offering fashion design are:

• Berkeley College, New York (online programs also available)
• International Academy of Design and Technology (online programs also available)
• Academy of Art University (online programs also available)
• American Intercontinental University
• Westwood College (online programs also available)

Examples of Fashion Design Classes

Individuals looking to get a fashion design degree may already have a basic knowledge of skills such as drawing and sewing. However, those enrolled in this type of program will be educated in a variety of areas such as sketching, art theory, color theory, fabrics, pattern making, and sewing. This is just a small sampling, and any number of fashion design schools can give examples of their curriculum.

Designing Clothes

Sumptuary Laws

In a society as rigidly structured as Medieval Europe, sumptuary laws were probably inevitable. As cities and trade developed, more untitled individuals became rich from trade and the nobility noticed a disturbing development -- mere merchants could now afford to clothe themselves in expensive material! This was unacceptable, of course. If the common rabble could afford silks and scarlets, then it was going to become increasingly difficult to tell who was who. As a result, laws sprang up all over Europe dictating who could wear what. Certain colors, materials, styles, and even decorative patterns were forbidden to anyone without a good pedigree. The laws varied from place to place, and included such eccentric details as how tall a lady's hennin could be (it was proportional to her rank), what classes of people could wear pointy shoes (no one at or below the level of "artisan"), and that peasants should never wear more than one color at once except, perhaps, a differently colored hood for special occasions.
There were other, less obvious reasons for instituting sumptuary laws, however. In some places, it was the clergy who pressed for the laws, fearing that fashion (and hence, vanity) was getting way out of hand. The clergy generally targeted fashions that were too revealing or ostentatious, e.g. men's short hemlines and women's trains. Sometimes the purpose of regulation was to keep young noblemen from bankrupting themselves in an attempt to keep up with the latest fashions at court. Being titled did not automatically mean you were rich, and young men in particular were prone to ruining their family fortunes. Finally, some places instituted sumptuary laws as a means of protecting local industry or stimulating trade. In England during the fourteenth century, for example, laws prohibited the purchase of any non-English fabric, protecting their wool industry against the threat of cheap foreign imports.

Social Markers

Clothing has meaning beyond its beauty or utility. I have already outlined how sumptuary laws helped reinforce social strata by relegating certain fashions and materials to specific segments of society. Clothing also served to send more specific messages. Just as we can identify police officers, medical workers, and even store clerks today by their uniforms, clothing differentiated certain groups in Medieval society. The wealthy were responsible for clothing their servants -- what better way to advertise one's power than to dress them all alike, in a livery based upon the colors of one's coat of arms? Some nobles even dressed their children in livery. The coat of arms itself is another example of a clothing signifier. While it never really caught on for everyday wear, coats of arms or their devices did appear occasionally on formal clothing, and were specific enough that one could immediately identify the wearer's parentage.
Members of guilds often dressed in specific colors, and were therefore readily identifiable as tailors, tanners, etc. Members of religious orders dressed in distinctive habits, which earned them nicknames -- the Franciscans, for example, were sometimes called "Cordeliers" after their distinctive belts of knotted cord (and I am amused to note that, as I write this, my spell-check not only recognizes the word "Cordeliers," but capitalizes it for me, suggesting that the name is still in use). Doctors, especially during times of plague, wore a sack-like bird mask over their heads, and the protruding beak was filled with various herbs to keep harmful vapors at bay. Pilgrims carried a distinctive staff and a bag for bread. Sometimes they wore emblems and souvenirs from the sites they visited, such as the scallop shell of Santiago de Compostela. It was important for them to be identifiable: because of their holy mission, it was a gross offense, both legally and spiritually, to harm them. Potential cutthroats were, I'm sure, grateful for the warning that killing the traveler with the staff would earn them an extra hot place in hell.
Medieval people had a horror of leprosy. Some communities tried to force lepers to wear distinctive clothing, and for a while, in the south of France, sufferers had to wear a patch in the shape of a duck's foot. Imposing standards of dress on lepers, however, proved difficult since no one wanted to get close enough to do it. Instead, lepers used a rattle or clapper to warn others of their approach, and this had one advantage over clothing -- you could tell when one was coming up behind you.
Local laws required Jews, "Saracens," and sometimes even Christian deviants to wear distinctive clothing, or markers on their clothing, so they could be readily identified. Again, the details varied from community to community. For Jews, the markers most often consisted of a round patch, usually yellow, about the size of a human palm, to be displayed prominently upon the front of the garment. They could sometimes get out of wearing it -- for a fee, of course. Muslims were marked with a yellow crescent. In fact, visible religious identification may have begun in Islamic countries as a means of identifying those who were exempt from heeding the call to prayer. In Christian Europe, however, lawmakers were more interested in segregation, in preventing intermarriage, and in increasing the revenues brought in by tolls and taxes levied exclusively on non-Christians.
The clothing worn by prostitutes was also heavily regulated. Their required markers were sometimes extremely visible: striped hoods or cloaks, black and white pointed hats, and yellow dresses are just a few variations. These later evolved into armbands of a certain color, or a hood cut in a distinctive shape. Fur, jewelry, and even embroidery were generally forbidden to prostitutes, although the reasons for this are ambiguous. It may have been because such finery was only considered appropriate for respectable women, but it may also have been for the protection of the prostitutes themselves. Such visible wealth could have made them targets for robbery, and with no male guardians, they wouldn't have had much legal recourse.

Last Thoughts

What fascinates me most about medieval clothing is how little we know. That seems to contradict what I said in the very first paragraph, I realize, but it underscores an important point -- medieval clothing is largely a matter of interpretation. Very little fabric remains from that era, thanks to Europe's climate. Writings contain references to articles of clothing that sometimes can't be identified precisely. Artwork depicts men much more frequently than women, or depicts farmhands laboring in their Sunday best, or gives us representations that are hard to understand. A painting of a woman with a butterfly veil, for example, raises more questions than it answers: if the veil is presumably held up by wires, how thick were they? Were they visible? Could you have put your eye out with one? Was the veil stiffly starched, or do the wires hold all the weight? No one knows for sure. The information has to be interpreted, and interpretations differ. This is part of why the costumes in Camelot look like they're from the 60s, and those from A Knight's Tale, when we watch it years from now, will look so very turn-of-the-millennium. We see the Middle Ages, ultimately, through the prism of our own experiences.

Prom Dresses 2010

Prom dresses Jovani 2010 are on sale until all dresses are sold

Hurry up, prom dresses quantities are limited

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