Get this look: Victorian style in Miss Potter
From Renata Espinosa

New York—Not only are period pieces prime family holiday viewing material, but they can also fuel one’s fashion imagination and serve as a source of wardrobe inspiration. Take “Miss Potter,” for example, which premiered on Sunday, December 10 in New York. Set in late Victorian and Edwardian England, the biopic “Miss Potter” stars Renee Zellweger as beloved children’s book author Beatrix Potter, who wrote and illustrated the classic “The Tale of Peter Rabbit.”
Come spring, you may want to go Victorian and give high-necked blouses, nipped waists, maxi-length skirts a try. For the more daring, androgynous looks such as stiff menswear-inspired collars, loose, wide-legged trousers and voluminous frock coats can add an element of dandy style to one’s wardrobe.
The Spring 2007 collections of three of fashion’s most cutting-edge designers - Alexander McQueen, Nicholas Ghesquiere for Balenciaga and Yohji Yamamoto - all featured elements of turn-of-the-century dress, which for women was typically characterized by small waists, soft bustles, and leg of mutton sleeves and for men, detachable collars, frock coats and waistcoats.
In “Miss Potter,” Zellweger’s character spends a good deal of time in the English countryside, where the inspiration for her whimsical paintings and books stemmed. To truly embrace that aspect of the film, one might want to don a particularly fantastical dress by Alexander McQueen’s that featured exaggerated Victorian sleeves resembling a garden trellis, with embroidered vines trickling down the face of the dress. McQueen’s lush take on Edwardian fashion for spring also consisted of bodice-fitted jackets, heavy, richly layered long skirts in romantic colours from that era such as dusty rose, charcoal grey and ivory.
At Balenciaga, Nicholas Ghesquiere went sci-fi and put a futuristic twist on the Victorian hourglass silhouette, using shiny high-tech fabrics and elaborately constructed jackets with a corset effect and sharply cut shoulders that echoed the historical leg of mutton sleeve.
And for a Victorian-inspired statement for those who might want to shun the constricting corseted look, one need only to turn towards Japanese avant-garde master Yohji Yamamoto, whose menswear-inspired high-necked white shirts, dramatic tail coats and sweeping trousers give the modern, progressive woman - and Beatrix Potter was one such woman in her day - a more comfortable alternative.
McQueen, Ghesquiere and Yamamoto are designers known for setting the directions of trends to come, so fashionistas, prepare for a Victorian and Edwardian revival.