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White dresses, redux
Patricia Ruggiero
Jan. 20, 2001, 10:57 p.m. (Message 24434)
The women of our recently revived demo group have selected a new dress pattern but can't agree on the color. One member is certain that white is the "official" color because "it's what they wear at St. Andrew's and in Edinburgh." Most of us are quite happy with white, official color or no, but a couple of the women are strongly opposed to white. I offered to consult the Strathspey archives to see if this particular aspect of the White Dresses for Demos topic had previously been discussed. The download is slow and I've only gotten through about 3 years. As time is running out for an answer, I'm appealing to the List -- For an RSCDS demonstration group: 1) Is there an *official* color, and is it white? 2) Is there a *preferred* color, and is it white? 3) Nobody knows? Nobody cares? Many thanks for your advice (and your patience). Pat
The women agreed to a princess *style* dress. Two of the women who live in town offered to browse the pattern catalogs. I've heard that they found a suitable *pattern* but I've not seen it yet, so can't say how close it comes to our original conception. Will pass on the relevant info when I have it. Pat
Pat I assume you meant you used the Strathspey search engine http://www.tm.informatik.uni-frankfurt.de/strathspey-cgi/search. I just tried it and entered "white dresses" and it pulled up a voluminous list of entries. To the best of my recollection, when this was discussed in the past, the consensus was that there is not an "official" dress color. One point that I recall was that the white dresses were intended for girls and young women and that often when past that point black dresses were worn. Personally, I think it would be much more interesting in a set to have similar dresses/outfits but to have one woman in white, one in black, one in red and one in green IMHO. Dianna Dianna L. Shipman xxxxxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxx.xxx.xxx PMB 134, 1302 Waugh Drive Houston, TX 77019-3908 Scottish Country Dancing and More web page: http://home.att.net/~diannashipman phone: 713-522-1212
When I first got involved in dems I was not too happy about having to wear white - when I started the POW Group I decided that we would be different - we wore (still do) different coloured skirts, all the same pattern and length from the ground and for day dems wear white blouses while for night time dems we wear black leotards under the skirts and have tartan sashes looped around the neckline. Our patron was Jean London who was a great friend of Jean Milligan's. I decided to ask Jean about the white dresses before I made what was then a radical change. Her comments were as follows: "When we first started doing demonstrations in Scotland all the young ladies had a 'good' white dress so Jean thought there should be no extra expense hence we all wore our 'good' white dresses." When Jean came back to Sydney and started SCD here the same thing applied - so the ladies wore their white dresses and the men that first danced in Sydney wore their cricket creams and danced in sandshoes. At that time none of the men here had kilts. I would also be interested to know what pattern you have chosed - I find it difficult to find a pattern that suits all our varying shapes! Good luck - and our coloured gear gets lots of positive comments and lots of others have followed this lead. Jan Wilson Alexandria, Sydney Australia