Dolly Varden (costume)

Add links
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Music sheet cover depicting women wearing Dolly Varden costumes.

A Dolly Varden, in this sense, is a woman's outfit fashionable from about

a character in Charles Dickens
, and the items of clothing referred to are usually a hat or dress.

Name

fashions of the 1770s and 1780s.

Fashion

The term "Dolly Varden" in dress is generally understood to mean a brightly patterned, usually flowered, dress with a

Gallery of Costume in Manchester holds a more typical Dolly Varden dress in its collections, made of white linen with a pink and mauve flowered print.[3]

A Dolly Varden hat, as it relates to the dress, is usually understood to mean a flat

ribbons, very like the 18th-century bergère hat. It is also closely related to the Pamela hat or "gipsy hat" that was popular during the earlier part of the century.[4]

Although the typical Dolly Varden fashion of the large overskirt and polonaise died out with changes in fashion at the turn of the century, the names continued to be associated with chintz patterned fabrics and peplum style dresses. Even in the late 1930s, chintz patterned fashions might still have the name 'Dolly Varden' attached to them.

Popular culture

The Dolly Varden fashion

popular songs, such as G. W. Moore's "Dressed in a Dolly Varden" and Alfred Lee's novelty song, "Dolly Varden" (published Cleveland
, 1872), which contains the lyrics:

Have you seen my little girl? She doesn’t wear a bonnet.
She's got a monstrous flip-flop hat with cherry ribbons on it.
She dresses in bed furniture just like a flower garden
A blowin' and a growin' and they call it Dolly Varden.[5]

In the 1870s, the Theatre Royal in London presented an entertainment called The Dolly Varden Polka, composed by W. C. Levey.[6]

Writing in 1880, Charles Bardsley reports that the forename Dolly (as a diminutive of Dorothy) had enjoyed peaks of popularity in England from 1450 to 1570 and again from 1750 to 1820, but had since fallen into decline. He continues: "Once more Dolly, saving for Dora, has made her bow and exit. I suppose she may turn up again about 1990, and all the little girls will be wearing Dolly Vardens."[7]

A notable use of the name in theatre was Dolly Varden, a comic opera starring Lulu Glaser, which opened in 1902.[8] Although the main character conforms to the Dickens character, the play itself is based on William Wycherley's The Country Wife, first performed in 1675.

In

Alexandria Quartet, Scobie, a gay Binbashi
, tells the protagonist Darley that when he cross-dresses he wears a Dolly Varden hat.

The fashion led to the naming of the

Dolly Varden crab.[10]

The name is also commemorated in an eponymous decorative cake. One recipe features in the 1980

Australian Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake Book. Also known as a 'Princess Cake', the modern Dolly Varden cake uses the torso of a doll (sometimes called a doll pick) inserted into a conical cake which is then decorated as the doll's dress. 'Dolly Varden' aluminium cake tins are now broadly available from cookware retailers for this purpose. The name for the cake no doubt developed from the Dolly Varden dress. However, in the late 19th century, the Dolly Varden cake was different. Many recipes call for a double layered cake with one layer as a lemon or vanilla cake and the other as a rich spice or fruit cake. Chunks of cherries in the cake were often used to mimic the chintz of the fashion.[11]

References

  1. ^ The Ladies' Treasury (2005). "Fashion in the 1870s and '80s". Retrieved 6 February 2010.
  2. ^ 1869 Fashion doll wearing Dolly Varden costume in the collection of the V&A Museum of Childhood. Retrieved 6 February 2010
  3. ^ Dolly Varden dress[permanent dead link] in the collections database of the Gallery of Costume, Manchester. Retrieved 6 February 2010
  4. ISBN 9780486319636
    .
  5. ^ "Scans of two 1872 Dolly Varden themed music sheets". Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. Retrieved 21 January 2009.
  6. ^ Levey, W. C. The Dolly Varden (polka music) composed by W. C. Levey Retrieved 6 February 2010
  7. ^ Bardsley, Charles W. (1880). Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. London: Chatto and Windus. p. 107.
  8. ^ "Dolly Varden".
  9. ISBN 9780520029750
    .
  10. ISBN 978-0-486-42068-4
    .
  11. doi:10.1386/ajpc.2.1.37_1
    .

External links

Notes

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Dolly_Varden_(costume)&oldid=1209283496"