ornamentedbeing:

One of my all time favorite Victorian Fancy Dress images.

 

Mrs Arthur Paget, 
later Lady Paget
(d 1919)
née Mary (Minnie) Stevens

as Cleopatra

 

For the Ball, Mrs Paget - as one of the three Cleopatras present - commissioned one of the most spectacular and certainly the most expensive costumes from Worth of Paris at a reputed cost of over $6,000. The train is of black crêpe de chine, embroidered with gold scarabs. The bodice, encrusted with gold and diamonds, is held up on the shoulders with straps of large emeralds and diamonds. The square headdress is made of cloth of gold with striped black and gold sphinx-like side pieces studded with diamonds, and encrusted with diamonds.

Crowning her is an ibis headdress, with outstretched wings of diamonds and sapphires. The remainder of the headdress is of uncut rubies and emeralds, all real stones from her own immense collection, surmounted by the jewelled crown of Egypt. She wears round her neck row upon row of necklaces of various gems, reaching to the waist, and a jewelled hem-length girdle. A small diamond asp nestling on her right shoulder give a hint of Cleopatra’s doom. The small Ottoman wedding coins attached to her wrist- and arm-bands are an anachronism.

With such riches, her closeness to the Prince of Wales and her extravagant literary salons, Mrs Paget had aroused the resentment of some other society ladies. However when she entered the Ball followed by a “negro servant” holding a fan of ostrich feathers over her head, other guests “gasped with wonder and astonishment.”

This image was made at the Ball, but not used in the Album which includes a portrait in costume by the photographer J Thomson of Grosvenor Street which captures Mrs Paget’s delicate waist more clearly as well showing to better effect the gold scarab motif on her train.

This is so stunning! And timely — we were discussing the late nineteenth-century tradition of costumed portraiture in my Orientalism seminar just yesterday. :)