Decadence

There is something about decadent clothing, similar to these turn-of-the-century-spats, that I find myself coveting lately. The dark eyes, the bold lips, and barely flushed cheeks, highlighted by tight curls, unraveling brocades, crushed velvets, and antique trims, it leaves my head spinning and reeling like I've just smoked one too many cloves.

There are two designers on Etsy whose clothes I covet and pine for more than almost anything lately: Louise Black and Boudior Queen. Both designers create one-of-a-kind pieces that are whimsical, dramatic, luxurious, and sinful.

This dress by Louise Black, her Silk Rose Tea Party dress, is a site to behold. I imagine it in a 19th century high-end home, with heavy velvet draperies, women with hair so big to heavens (only for it to hold all of their idle, malicious whispers). Perhaps the woman who wears it is muttered to be a harlot; she's youthful, lively, likely to change social dynamics and interactions with a mere flick of her wrist. She's a Party Girl Vigee-Lebrun, who has a tongue of foreign tongues and wits to harm a man.

Meanwhile, in a silver turban and Boudior Queen's Innocent Claudia dress, we have the coquette small stage star, drinking of the green faerie, trolling around with vagabond artists and petty lords. Her dress begs of men and women to whisk her to their boudior, rolling in beds of silk dupionis and incensed tobacco smokes. She'd set her most tempestuous lover's poems of love and intensity on fire after a heated and devastatingly dramatic quarrel.

Both gowns are for women who storm the room in a flurry of passion and energy, to captivate their audience with coy glances and carnal knowings, but tease the viewer with an unanticipated modesty and class.