This late-Victorian dress demonstrates the levels of luxury attainable by a small-town storekeeper’s wife at the end of the 19th century. The dress was originally owned by Julia Torrens (née Taylor), who came to New Zealand from Lincolnshire with her parents when she was four. At 20, she married storekeeper Hugh Torrens and they had 11 children together, finally settling in Opotiki in the Bay of Plenty. The dress features a back-fastening boned bodice with a high boned lace collar. Pintucking adds texture to the bodice and sleeves and the line of the dress is accentuated by black lace trimming. This was known as ‘chemical lace’, a machine-made lace. It was produced
 by embroidering onto a base fabric that had been chemically treated to dissolve, leaving the pattern behind, and was more affordable than traditional handmade laces. The feather boa was owned by Julia Torrens, and was acquired by her at about the same time as she had her two-piece silk dress made. Feather boas were fashionable accessories in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods. Read more about wearing the colour black in the New Zealand Fashion Museum publication Black: The history of black in fashion, society and culture in New Zealand.