"Boning" or the Other Side of the Story

This is a guest blog by Loretta, concerning the recent "professionally" done photoshoot:

The whole story started out months ago, a beginning wherein your Heroine contracts a healthy infatuation with a certain pinstripey Thai silk. She was mildly feverish with it. It was fortuitous also that she didn't end up with a wine-purple dress with lilac pearl trim, fate interceded and ended the coupling before it could come to fruition. Incidentally the wine-purple silk went on to live a wonderful life as the lining of a beautiful cloak, which the Mercenary is likely to have in stock soon. The lilac pearls were destined for something better and your Heroine knew it the moment she put the two together, just like she knew that Thai silk was meant for the lilac pearls – it was at first sight. Let's jump to the wedding photos…

The marriage is a happy one, except for the lack of boning, which was in your Heroine's original design for the bodice based on the Midwife's Gown from the movie Sleepy Hollow. Note that the thin Thai silk is of a fairly floppy persuasion, though your Heroine is of the opinion that while boning would make the bodice more fitted, the cut is lovely enough that the missing boning is but a peccadillo.

As for your Heroine's experience of being photographed "professionally," she has only this photo and the following caption to add to the Mercenary's stellar observations.

H: "This hair and makeup makes us look like chorus girls…"
CM: "It's good that we look like Chorus Girls, everyone wants to bone chorus girls!"

More photographs under the cut.

Commissioning a dress like this (in real silk and with seed pearls, as this one is) from the Costume Mercenary would cost something in the region of £90-100.