“The Dress Diary” is an intimate record of one wardrobe — and its era. Anne Sykes’s collection of fabric remnants, lovingly preserved in an album, documents not merely her life but the Victorian era.

She parties like it’s 1899. Oregon’s Adelaide Beeman-White is winding back the clock on haute couture by dressing like she stepped out of a time machine from the late 19th century. Instead of the ...