TAFT MUSEUM TO HONOR JANE AUSTEN’S FASHIONABLE LEGACY.

Dress, Spencer, and Cape, Pride and Prejudice, 1995, Simon Langton, director. Worn by Julia Sawalha as Lydia Bennet. Dinah Collin, costume designer. Day Dress, Pride and Prejudice, 1995, Simon Langton, director. Worn by Polly Maberly as Kitty Bennet. Dinah Collin, costume designer. Pinafore Dress, Pride and Prejudice, 1995, Simon Langton, director. Worn by Lucy Briars as Mary Bennet. Dinah Collin, costume designer.

Jane Austen: Fashion & Sensibility will open to the public on June 11, featuring 40 costume pieces from film and television adaptations of Austen’s works. Pre-selected by Cosprop Ltd., a costume house based in London, these garments have never before been displayed by a North American venue. From the embellished bridal gown worn by Kate Winslet as Marianne Dashwood in Sense and Sensibility (1995) to the tailored breeches worn by Matthew Macfadyen as Mr. Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (2005), each article of clothing offers a fictionalized glimpse into the Georgian and Regency eras. The exhibition is to be presented in the Taft’s Fifth Third Gallery and historic house.

Read all: cincinnatimagazine/taft-museum-of-art-to-honor-jane-austens-fashionable-legacy
 

“My mother has ordered a new bonnet, and so have I.

“My mother has ordered a new bonnet, and so have I; both white strip, trimmed with white ribbon” Jane Austen, Letter to Cassandra, May 1801.
The first Easter bonnets were spring bonnets. They must have felt wonderful to wear after the restrictions of Lent and the gloomy clothes of winter.
Eleanor Houghton, a practicing milliner and Regency dress expert, has made two bonnets for Chawton house Library to commemorate the bicentenary of the publications of Pride and Prejudice and... Mansfield Park. One of the images below shows the ‘1813 Lydia Bennet Bonnet’, which we use to illustrate Regency-period clothing for our school groups. The other, the 1814 Maria Rushworth bonnet, was auctioned to raise funds for our charity at the Jane Austen Society of North America meeting in Montreal in 2014. The historically accurate headdress took over sixty hours of labour, twenty five metres of natural straw plait and ninety metres of cotton thread to make. Read Eleanor’s fascinating blog post from last year here:

http://www.chawtonhouse.org/…
Eleanor will be returning to Chawton House Library this summer on 24th June during Regency week to give an evening talk on clothing in the time of Jane Austen. Tickets will soon be available to buy via our website.

Vintage ideas

 

From wardrobeshop: We have many vintage ideas for bizarre weddings and we encourage you to use our style guides! But with all these “hurry-scurry” wedding ideas,we forget about younger gals who are about to wear something vintageous and unique for their winter or spring formals.
So let’s catch our breath and look up the best vintage inspired ideas for the younger gals’ winter balls.
We decided to dedicate this post to all the lovers of Jane Austen’s world. Here we will list the main protagonists’ characteristics and style guidelines for each character. These may be useful for all young Jane Austen’s admirers. To start, let’s have a glimpse at Emma Woodhouse, successfully performed by another British lady, Gwyneth Paltrow. She is very pretty, clever and rich. She always demonstrates elegance and, sometimes, modesty with her look andisn’t afraid to share thoughts, whichare actuallyoften times about the happinessothers. But, as usual, there must be one big BUT: thinking about the others she plans their lives for them. And oftentimes the views of people don’t coincide with those of the heroine. So a beautiful romantic modest dress that also carries expensive grace is just for such kind a lady. It must look expensive and modest simultaneously to reveal both romantic and masterful beauty of its owner. Read more: wardrobeshop

Trains and how did they manage to keep their hems clean......

During the late 18th century, early 19th century, trains on gowns were de rigueur. I chose to show the two gowns below, since the styles were popular when Jane Austen was a teenager and wrote the first editions of Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, and Pride and Prejudice.

I (janeaustensworld) have often wondered how delicate muslin gowns survived the harsh laundering that was required to remove stains made from dusty floors and muddy pathways. Even the grandest ladies wearing the most expensive dresses promenaded on gravel walkways or shopped along city or village streets. How did they manage to keep their hems clean in an era when paved roads and sidewalks were almost impossible to find? Read the answer and see beautiful illustrations on janeaustensworld

During the 18th century and much of the Regency era, trains were popular on evening and court dresses, and at times on walking gowns. The length of the train shortened as the 18th century progressed, but even shorter trains swept over lawns and grounds and sidewalks. This fashion turned out to be quite expensive, for after several short walks, the fabric would be quite soiled or would need replacement. Oliver Goldsmith wrote in Citizen of the world (1760):

Nothing can be better calculated to increase the price of silk than the present manner of dressing. A lady’s train is not bought but at some expense, and after it has swept  the public walks for a very few evenings, is fit to be worn no longer, more silk must be bought in order to repair the breach, and some ladies of peculiar economy are thus found to patch up their tails eight or ten times in a season.”

One imagines that the delicate muslin trains of the Regency era were as easily wrecked by wear and tear, and that only the rich could afford such an extravagant consumption.
Read more: Janeaustensworld

1805-1810 French evening dress, V&A museum 

Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy - Netherfield Ball

Played by Jennifer Ehle & Colin Firth — bij Jane Austen's House Museum.

 

 

Elizabeth Bennet & Mr. Darcy

Jane Austen's House Museum

 

 

Elizabeth Bennet - day dress, spencer & bonnet
Played by Jennifer Ehle — bij Jane Austen's House Museum.

 

Elizabeth Bennet - day dress
Played by Jennifer Ehle

 

Jane Bennet - day dress, spencer & cloak
Played by Susannah Harker — bij Jane Austen's House Museum.

bbc/drama/prideandprejudice/

 

Hosting a ball

“The characteristic of an English country dance is that of gay simplicity. The steps should be few and easy, and the corresponding motion of the arms and body unaffected, modest, and graceful.” – The Mirror of Graces, 1811 
 
In a society governed by strict rules regulating the interaction of the sexes, the dance floor provided one of the only places marriage partners could meet and courtships might blossom. The ballroom guaranteed respectability and proper conduct for all parties since they were carefully regulated and chaperoned. Even so, under cover of the music and in the guise of the dance, young people could talk and even touch in ways not permitted elsewhere.

As far as the opportunity to meet people went, private balls had the very great advantage over public ones in that the hosts controlled who attended. One could be assured of the quality of guests at a grand house, so chaperons could rest a little easier that their charge was not interacting with someone below her station.

Hosting a ball was no small matter. Musicians had to be hired and supper for all the guests provided. Cards or invitations were sent out no less than two to three weeks prior to the event and a reply was imperative with a day or two. After the ball, thank you notes were expected of all the guests in appreciation for the hospitality. Read more: a-private-regency-ball

Edward Knight’s Silk Suit

This silk suit- a suit of two pieces, frock coat and breeches- has been in the Knight family since the 1790s.

Edward inherited the Godmersham estate in Kent and the Chawton estate in Hampshire from Thomas Knight. He was a relative of George Austen, Edward and Jane’s father. Thomas and his wife were childless and had “adopted ” Edward, and made him their heir. This grand inheritance enabled him to provide a productive and happy home for Jane Austen her sister, Cassandra, their mother, Mrs Austen and their friend Martha Lloyd from 1809, at what is now the Jane Austen’s House Museum in the village. Austen only

Regency Fashion:

In the 18th century the hand-made net was very expensive and was made of the finest thread from Antwerp: in 1790 this cost £70 per pound, sometimes more. At that time the mode of payment was decidedly primitive: the lace ground was spread out on the counter and the cottage worker covered it with shillings from the till of the shopman. As many coins as she could place on her work she took away with her as wages for her labour. It is no wonder that a Honiton lace veil before the invention of machine-made net often cost a hundred guineas. Heathcoat’s invention of a machine for making net dealt a crushing blow to the pillow-made net workers. The result is easily guessed. After suffering great depression for twenty years the art of hand-made net became nearly extinct, and when an order for a marriage veil of hand-made net was given, it was with the greatest difficulty that workers could be found to make it. The net alone for such a veil would cost £30. – A history of hand-made lace: Dealing with the origin of lace, the growth of the great lace centres, the mode of manufactures, the methods of distinguishing and the care of various kinds of lace, Emily Jackson, p. 170
janeaustensworld

Pelisse

The pelisse was given to Hampshire Museums Service in 1993. The donors' great, great, great grandfather was Jane Austen's elder brother James (1765-1819), who got it from their grandmother, who had received it from Eleanor Steele (nee Glubbe, b1857). She had visited the Knight family as a young lady of eighteen, and was given the dress by Miss Marianne Knight, sister of Captain John Knight, around 1875. At the age of seventy three she eventually felt that the pelisse should return to the Austen family, and sent it to James's great granddaughter Mrs Winifred Jenkyns. Her note accompanying the parcel reads: "I missed the little coat for a long time but lately it turned up. I cannot remember if it was 'Jane's'  but it seems probable" arthistorynews/Jane_Austen

regency fashion.

Look at ekduncan.blogspot.com and my fanciful muse.blogspot and see beautiful fashion pictures from the Regency period.

Clothing from the Austen era displayed at Sudley House

An exhibition of clothes and accessories from the Jane Austen era has opened at Sudley House, Liverpool.

Costume Drama: Fashion from 1790 to 1850 features clothing from National Museums Liverpool's collection.

The exhibition is at Sudley House until May 2012.

"We cover the period from 1790 to 1850 so it's about a 60 year span and during that time there were a lot of changes in costume in terms of the the style, as you would expect," Pauline Rushton said.

"There were political changes going on, economic changes and many social changes where people were rising through the social levels and fashion was filtering down for the first time."

National Museums Liverpool has a collection of thousands of items of clothing, and those from the 19th Century have been used for research by television production companies making costume dramas.

"Most of these garments were donated to us over many years, most in the 1950s and 1960s in particular," Ms Rushton said."There's a variety of colours, some of them are more vibrant than you would expect because at this period they are still using natural dye, but even so they could achieve these very bright colours. It was possible to get very vibrant, striking colours even with natural dyes.

Liverpool's 19th Century position as one of the world's busiest ports, and the wealth that came with that means the museum has a sizeable collection of clothes from the wealthy families who lived in the city.

"We were a very rich city in the 19th Century, increasing decade on decade. "The rising middle classes from the 1830s onwards were wanting to make a statement about themselves as a group, wanting to show off their wealth through what their wives and daughters wore in particular."

"We do have a fantastic collection of clothes connected to merchant families, stockbrokers and cotton traders so we can represent those people very well.

Pauline Rushton has curated the collection of clothes Many of the items were acquired decades ago, and often with few details of who they belonged to but for some items the museum has been able to piece together the story of the family who owned them.

One of the dresses in the collection is linked to the slave trade that much of Liverpool's wealth was originally built from. "It probably belonged to the daughter of a Liverpool sea captain called James Goode who was a slave ship captain," Ms Rushton explained. "We know a little bit about his family, we don't know the name of his daughter who probably wore this in the 1820s but he certainly sailed in a number of sailing voyages between Liverpool, Angola and Trinidad. "It's interesting that we have a relic of a family directly involved in the slave trade in Liverpool at the time." She added: "What we don't have, which is true of most museums, are the working clothes that people wore more generally because they weren't considered the kind of thing you should collect. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-merseyside-

A reticule was a small handbag

A reticule was a small handbag that could be hung from the wrist to be used in much the same manner as an evening bag is today. It might also be called an indispensable. The reticule became an indispensable accessory because the line of the newly fashionable high-waisted Empire gowns would be interrupted by any object lodged in a pocket. In December 1801, Katherine Wilmot, an Irish woman on Grand Tour visiting Paris, described reticules as like a "little workbag." (Read her description of the French fashions on page 15 and of reticules on page 16 in Elizabeth Mavor's book The Grand Tours of Katherine Wilmot.) The bag might be knitted, made of rich cloth with a gold chain and closure, or derived from such items as shells. Netting reticules and covering screens were considered suitable pastimes for young ladies. The term purse during the Regency would only be used to describe a very small leather bag for carrying moneys as in a change purse today. A reticule might contain a fine linen handkerchief, a calling card case filled with the Lady's card, a small purse for tips, a vinaigrette, the Lady's seal, a tablet and pencil in a small case, and a tin of breath mints. Each case was probably housed in a small velvet bag to prevent scratches.

Hair jewellery

Hair jewellery with which we are most familiar is, I suppose, mourning jewellery, which often contained a lock of hair of the deceased and would have been given to members of the deceased’s family as a memento. And indeed hair did not need to be made into jewellery to be treasured. Jane Austen’s hair was kept as a momento, as was a lock of her father’s hair, and both are kept in the collection of the Jane Austen’s House Museum. Do note the label -My Father’s Hair- is written in Jane’s hand:

 

royal wedding dresses

This video, produced in the run-up to last week’s royal wedding contains an interview with Dr Joanna Marschner on the styles, meanings and history of the royal wedding dresses worn over the last 200 years, from Princes Charlotte onwards.



The Historical Royal Palaces website has a wonderful blog and You Tube channel.


on the blog of the Historical Royal Palaces

Fashions of the Extended Regency Era

 read:   fashion

Black velvet bonnet

From JA's letter to Cassandra Austen, Tuesday 18 December 1798 (Deirdre le Faye 1995 edition, p 25-26):

I took the liberty a few days ago of asking your Black velvet Bonnet to lend me its cawl, which it very readily did, & by whic I have been enabled to give a considerable improvement of dignity to my Cap, which was before too nidgetty to please me. - I shall wear it on Thursday, but I hope you will not be offended with me for following your advice as to its ornaments only in part - I still venture to retain the narrow silver round it, put twice round without any bow, & instead of the black military feather shall put in the Coquelicot one, as being smarter; - & besides Coquelicot is to be all the fashion this winter. - After the Ball, I shall probably make it entirely black.

Getting Dressed in 1805

Bridal Fashions

How common the white wedding dress was during the Regency is hard to say, but we have some reasons to suspect that it was more prevalent than many may think. Although no bridal fashion prints survive from before 1813, paintings of wedding scenes, such as Highmore's 1743 illustration for Samuel Richardson's Pamela, do depict brides in white. Veils seems to have become popular somewhat later in the century so most brides either wore flowers in their hair, a cap or sometimes a hat.

When Jane Austen's niece Anna married Benjamin Lefroy in 1814, she wore "a dress of fine white muslin, and over it a soft silk shawl, white shot with primrose, with embossed white-satin flowers, and very handsome fringe, and on her head a small cap to match, trimmed with lace."*

Although bouquets and flowers with personal meanings came into vogue during the Victorian era, flowers and herbs have been used in weddings since the beginning of time as a way of showing love and well wishes to everyone. The first recorded use of wedding flowers dates back to the ancient Greeks. Flowers and plants were used to make a crown for the bride to wear and were considered a gift of nature. Bridesmaids would make the floral decorations including garlands, bridal bouquet and boutonniere.+

Wedding Announcements
The newspaper announcement was, perhaps, the most socially important part of the wedding. Jane Austen, herself, once wrote, "The latter writes me word that Miss Blackford is married, but I have never seen it in the papers, and one may as well be single if the wedding is not to be in print."

"I suppose you have heard of it; indeed, you must have seen it in the papers. It was in the Times and the Courier, I know; though it was not put in as it ought to be. It was only said, 'Lately, George Wickham Esq., to Miss Lydia Bennet,' without there being a syllable said of her father, or the place where she lived, or anything. It was my brother Gardiner's drawing up too, and I wonder how he came to make such an awkward business of it. Did you see it?"

http://hibiscus-sinensis.com/regency/weddingdress.htm

Portrait of Jane Austen from James Stanier Clarke, the Librarian of the Prince Regent

 

This is the very important, recently recognised, 19th Century Portrait of Jane Austen, painted in 1815 and discovered in the exceptional "Liber Amicorum" (Friendship Book) belonging to the Rev. James Stanier (later King George IV of Great Britain and Ireland). Clarke was a competent, if amateur, watercolourist whom Jane Austen acknowledged as her friend in the last letter she wrote to him in 1816. Detailed and solid evidence of the Book and the Watercolour has been published in "James Stanier Clarke and his Watercolour Portrait of Jane Austen" by Richard James Wheeler and is available.
This portrait of Jane Austen makes Clarke's Friendship Book a literary treasure of inordinate rarity. The National Portrait Gallery in England incorrectly claims an absolute monopoly in Jane Austen portraiture by owning the only depiction of Jane Austen in the world which (they say) "can be authenticated": (ie by the Gallery themselves). Their picture is a very slight and unflattering drawing reputedly made by her sister Cassandra; but largely disseminated to the public at large by numerous illustrators in an "improved" version. It has been described as "a disappointing scratch" and is a desperately poor memorial of the novelist. Nevertheless physiognomists identify the sitter as the same person appearing in Clarke's watercolour.

The National Portrait Gallery's claim to a monopoly is incorrect. There are in fact just three portraits of the novelist (including Clarke's) which are known and claimed to be authentic.
The Friendship Book itself is a time-capsule from the Age of Sensibility, beautifully bound in its original tooled green morocco.

It contains, additionally, more than 100 contemporary paintings, drawings, holograph texts, verses (mostly signed and dated) and autographs by notable artists, authors, poets, sculptors and naval characters of the late 18th and early 19th centuries: (eg George Romney, John Russell, John Flaxman, William Hodges, William Hayley, Anna Seward, Charlotte Smith, Nicholas Pocock, Nelson's Captain Thomas Masterman Hardy).

Regency Corset