Hi peeps! Following on from my Quick Freebie Fix post of a few days ago, I decided to hop around the grid and poke around Marketplace to find some gorgeous Victorian gowns for you, both freebie and extremely cheapie!

Hop behind the cut for bounteous bustles :)

Our first stop simply has to be the epitome of Victoriana in Second Life: the Caledon sims. We’re going to Caledon Victoria City, and at the landing point we’ll find several carts containing freebie and dollarbie items (guys, there are suits and top hats and other essential items for the fashionable Victorian gentleman available, too). Ladies, we’re going to pick up the dollarbie Lady Dawn Hat from Hatpins (found on the first cart) and then we’re going to head to the Silver Rose store, just behind those carts to pick up the freebie pack of three Bourgeois Dresses, in green, copper, and purple.

Here is the purple dress, together with the hat:

And here are the other two colours:

Also on the first cart you’ll find this pretty free Fleur de L’ete dress and bonnet, from Montagne Noir:

At the Caledon II sim, To a T has this free 1898 Victorian Day Dress and Hat, as I blogged a few days ago. Here’s Mar wearing both:

The Chemical Kisses store has lots of L$1 gowns on Marketplace, and even some full avatars! Her’s Mar wearing the dress and hair from the L$1 Eloisa avatar (details on her skin and shape to come at the end of this post) –

Next up is the very demure Helena day dress and bonnet. Again, this is L$1 from Chemical Kisses:

The last of the L$1 dresses I’m featuring from Chemical Kisses in this post is Ariadne (which has a fabulous, slightly dark, governess-y feel to it).

Be warned: the bows on the Ariadne dress have bling in them, so if you don’t like that then create a new script in your inventory, call it Scrubber Script, go to my Useful Scripts page and paste into your new script the Scrubber Script text you’ll find there. Edit linked parts on the bows on the wrist and the back, and look in the big, silvery diamonds. You’ll find several of them have a script called ‘shine’ in them. Drag your scrubber script into each of these prims to remove the bling, then you can delete all the scripts.

For the final frock we’re going to The Free Dove, to get this lovely Cassandra dress from Lvs & Co:

That’s the dresses, now for the basics! Of course, Victorian ladies didn’t wear lots of makeup or flashy jewellery, and their hair was very elegant. So, Mar picked out some suitable freebies. Her Cecile skin and Jelly shape are from the free Cupcakes pack at FabFree.  Her hair in this first pic is Audacity’s Renee from Savoir Hair. Her eyes are the current freebie (Autumn Moon) from Poetic Colors, and her jewellery is from Eolande’s Basic Essentials (pearls) collection at The Free Dove:

In the second look everything is the same, except the hair and jewellery. The hair is Exile’s Susan, from the fatpack at Savoir Hair (Mar’s wearing the ‘brownsugar’ shade here), and her jewellery is from Eolande’s Basic Essentials (glazed hearts) collection at The Free Dove (SL must have burped when I was taking this pic, because it simply would not rez the necklace!) –

For an elegant AO (animation overrider) that works with long, bustled skirts, newbies under 30 days old can go to Caledon Oxbridge (follow the red arrows until you reach the College of Avatar Customisation) to grab the free-to-newbies-only Ballroom Gown AO. Those over 30 days old can still find this AO for L$25 here.