Hello lovelies,

what can I say, I finally managed to go to the Zeitentanzball Vienna, a historical ball in Vienna, and it was amazing.

It all started back in 2025 when I got the message from an acquaintance that the registration for this Vienna historical dance event had just started and if I'm interested, I should register now. When I saw the message I immediately registered. I was so excited because I also like the theme of this year as it was “Fairytales”, which is perfect for a historical costume ball.

The text from their website

The text from their website

So my goal for a few months was think about a fairy tale and turn it historical. I played with some ideas (Princess and the frog, Frau Holle, Goldmarie, etc) until I landed at Sleeping Beauty or Dornröschen, in German. My concept was easy: mash something from the 18th century together with lots and lots of roses and boom, that's my sleeping beauty costume. 

I remembered that I made a robe á la francaise back in 2018 and I didn't like the outcome as it was so boring. Here is the dress from 2018 and here it is worn. Look how boring it is.

 And here a picture from 2018:

So, where to begin with the transformation of the dress? My first step was ordering roses and some twigs. And shoes.  I wanted pink matching shoes that would fit both this outfit and also my historical fashion-inspired wardrobe and other Japanese fashion outfits.

Then I started to pick open the seams of the ribbons and the decoration of the whole dress and the stomacher and set them aside.

Initially I had the idea of making my own lace for the stomacher. A great idea if I had more time. This time my project was not time sensitive but there was still no time to make my own lace. Just for this I made my own pattern. It is based on lace from a stomacher I found on Pinterest.

As you can see, the top part was a bit of a mistake but the bottom part already looks really nice. I could not figure out what stitch was used for the middle part so I just went for a honey comb ground. The idea that I could make my own 18th century lace was so thrilling for me, I was one step closer to full-fill my dream of making my own lace for the dresses.

As the stomacher was the most elaborate part of the dress, I also wanted it to look fantastic. For this, I found some amazing white lace in my stash. I added it to the stomacher and decided, there was still not enough bling. So I added beads, and afterwards, smaller rocailles beads and then I finished it off with shiny rectangular beads.

Once I was happy with the blingness, I added bows and roses. And the stomacher was officially done. 

The dress was now void of any flounces and decoration. It looked empty and sad, but when I finished adding the roses, it looked like a completely new historical ball gown.

Who is she and what did she do to the other dress? I felt so satisfied with the transformation. It really looked like an enchanted forest where Dornröschen sleeps in the castle. It was not difficult sewing the roses onto the dress. I took a thicker thread and just want around the leaves. It was much trickier trying to sew the harder branches onto the dress. 

My shoes arrived in time and while they didn't look like the picture, they were marvelous - and a bit too big for my tiny feet.

And now the only thing left was dressing up and enjoying the evening. 

The arrived with an uber as I didn't want to take the public transportation in this look. We were very early and had to wait almost 45min for the doors to open. 

When the doors opened the dance master Pia led us in a circle into the room until it was filled with people. The historical dance room was an amazing room that was a bit unexpected to find as the outer exterior was quite ugly. 

We danced and danced and I was happy we went to the dance-preparation two nights before. After a few hours of dancing there was a food break. There was a lot of meat and cheese, greaves, and greaves with potato. Definitely nothing my partner could eat so he ate one Bretzl. Poor him.

And here is the room, waiting for the midnight event to start. Look at those amazing costumes! I recognized Frau Holle, Schneeweisschen und Rosenrot, Frog Prince, and so much more. Other's were not as elaborately dressed as we also had a woman dressed as a cat in leggings. What I found more interesting was that there were a lot of older people (60+) and people my age but only a few people younger than us. We actually expected to see a lot of people our age, no idea why. 

 

And now, mesdames et messieurs, the moment you have probably waited for. My outfit! It was a successful all in pink look. 

I love how perfectly the shoes match the underskirt. I had an amazing evening and I hope to go to more balls and historical dance events in Vienna, now that I know they do exist! (Although mostly organized on Facebook where I deleted my account. Dang.)

And here is a short reel I made of the event: 

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Thank you so much! 

All the best, 

Auris Lothol