And I was thinking about the black frock of mine with the pleated skirt. I haven't worn it since the winter, but I think if you took the gold belt off and put on a black one, and just put some of that black lace that is in the cardboard box... round the neck, I could wear it quite nicely.
This is Mrs. Brandon planning the re-modeling dress for the funeral of a relative in the 1939 novel, The Brandons, by Angela Thirkell, an English novelist. Although Mrs. Brandon is a well-off young widow, she was not above having a dress that she already owned reworked by a servant in order to make it appropriate for a particular occasion. All black was then considered appropriate for a funeral of a relative. Wardrobes were smaller and each dress far more detailed than ours today, so that re-modeling a dress made economic sense even for people with money
The lace would be a luxurious yet appropriate touch. The fact that the lace was kept without having a present purpose is telling; hand-made lace was so expensive that it was removed from dresses that were discarded in order to be applied to new garments. Of course, the making of lace by machine was invented in the late 19th century, which made lace much cheaper, and it is possible that a nice piece of machine lace would be treasured. Because Mrs. Brandon is so wealthy--she honestly doesn’t want to inherit anything from her dying relative--the odds seem good that it was hand made lace.
For Thirkell’s novels, go to Virago books: https://store.virago.co.uk/collections/author-angela-thirkell-pid-57706