If you live in the Portland area and love history and dressing up...

If you live in the Portland area and love history and dressing up...

• 11.05.2011

I'm at my mom's place this weekend helping her out with a fundraiser she's doing for the Hillsboro Historical Society.  The Time Travelers' Marketplace and Ball--fun idea to celebrate history of all eras and raise money to protect and preserve historic Hillsboro, a (once) small town outside Portland.

The marketplace, during the day, and the ball in the evening will have live entertainment and performances from history and costume lovers--swing dancing, old-fashioned guitar/fiddle music, a super awesome magician, and--wow--a historic sword-fighting demonstration.  (Plus a raffle for Tony Starlight's and tons of door prizes to local businesses).  And a model of a life-size tardis, maintainted by my brother-in-law who looks an awful like the newest Doctor from Doctor Who.  (Seriously, they look sooooo similar).

Anyway, I'm helping my mom organize stuff today but we're also cutting out (yikes!) her dress for the event (yes, it's in... 7 days and we're just now starting).  She'll be wearing a silk Regency-era ballgown.  I think I'll wear an 1830's ballgown we have from a fashion show a while back, with lots of great accessories.  (My mom owns a business making historic clothing for reenactors and museums and such, so I've always been very lucky to have super cool historic clothes to wear).

This is what I wore last year!  Copied from an 1879 Berthe Morisot painting.  Here's the story of how we made it.

So, as I originally mentioned... if you live in the Portland area and love history and dressing up (in any era!), come on down next Saturday.  And you'll get to meet me!  I'll be wearing a silk dress over undergarments like these:

Source: collectionsonline.lacma.org via Kay on Pinterest

Oh!  Also there will be Kristen Behlings, a super talented local hairstylist who teaches classes on doing retro-era hairstyles.

She also models for AlexSandra's Vintage Emporium, one of the best vintage shops in Portland or maybe anywhere ;).  Her hair looks so great in all the pics of her modeling for AlexSandra's Etsy shop!

Anyway.  If you're around and want to dress up and go dancing, I'd love to meet you at the ball!