Victorian Fancy Dress: Lady Lurgan, née Emily Julia Cadogan [left] and Lady Sophie

Victorian Fancy Dress: Lady Lurgan, née Emily Julia Cadogan [left] and Lady Sophie Scott, née Cadogan [right] as "Furies" – Alecto and Megæra — Devonshire House Masquerade Ball (1897)According to the Lafayette archive,Both ladies were the daughters of the 5th Earl Cadogan, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1895 to 1902…. The sisters dressed for the Ball most impractically as two of the personifications of vengeance, known to the Romans as “the Furies.”Taking their costume components from Dante’s Inferno, they commissioned the costumer, Mrs Mason of New Burlington Street, to create “classical draperies” with hanging sleeves of crimson gauze shot with gold. For Dante’s “waists cinctured with green hydras”, they wore girdles of jewelled serpents with emerald and ruby eyes. Where the Inferno states “For hair they had horned snakes and poison adders”, they wore jewelled serpent head-dresses. or as The Queen stated: “they were wreathed around the head with reptiles”. [x]Evidently – based on reporting by The Queen on 19 July 1897, Lady Scott looked like this illustration, including “’diamond wings’ not worn for the photographic portrait”: -- source link

More pics about