lacey

Five Fab Finds and a History Lesson: Lace Edition

Filed under: Apparel

The most beautiful, intricate, and valuable lace is always handmade, created with painstaking care and based on the methods started by women centuries ago. With its beginnings traced back to the darning of tattered fabric hems, lacemaking really gained traction in Europe in the 1500s when weaving it out of cotton, silk, or flax became a prestigious and sought-after skill of high class women as they strove to make themselves and their outfits more beautiful and extravagant. Depending on the method used (by hand, with needles, or by some other variation of technique) it was not uncommon for a single inch of lace to take a skilled woman 2 hours to complete. No wonder it was so expensive!

Today lace is available in every size, color, and pattern imaginable (as demonstrated in our gallery below) but I still love the set of old, yellowing doilies my grandmother gave me the most.

Gallery: 5 Fab Finds: Lace