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Empress Elisabeth of Austria (1865) - Franz Xaver Winterhalter

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Happy ‘Fashion Friday’ - Carnet de bal

(Carnet de bal: literally “dance card” en Français, is the dinky yet dead-posh little booklet or fan a girl would tote at a formal ball, a proper bit of social kit where she’d neatly jot down the names of every bloke booked to whirl her round the floor.

Dangling ever so jauntily from the châtelaine at her waist—snuggled up with other feminine paraphernalia like étuis, household seals, tussie-mussies, & clever little dress lifters. The carnet de bal might take the form of a tiny ornamental notebook or a brisé-style fan, often tricked out with a ribbon and a miniature pencil no bigger than a cigarette stub.

Often times Carnet de bals were cleverly fashioned from deliciously luxe materials such as: mother-of-pearl that caught the Light like opals, creamy ivory polished to a soft gleam, or even panels of chased gold.

They served as both a practical social timetable & a glittering status bauble, the sort of thing that made the whole rig look frightfully smart & ever so with it in the ballroom glow)