I was so pleased to be asked to speak at the History Symposium this past month! It was a fantastic experience, and I strongly recommend that readers check out the rest of their offerings -- there are years' worth of presentations on all sorts of topics relating to the early nineteenth century, particularly the War … Continue reading “Much Depends on the Proper Display of the Contour”: Corsetry in the Early Nineteenth Century
Category: 1810s
What’s the Deal with the Great Male Renunciation?
This is a concept I've had issues with for a long time. I don't tend to think about it (as I prefer to think we've moved past it as a field), but a couple of weekends ago it came up in a paper at an event I was attending and I started trying to formulate … Continue reading What’s the Deal with the Great Male Renunciation?
Late Georgian Hairstyles: Fewer Buns Than You'd Think
It looks like I made a Twitter thread on this back in February of 2020, and while I always intended to turn it into a blog post, I suppose it's not surprising that I, er, forgot about it. But I've been thinking about the basic late Georgian hairstyle for a long time, ever since a … Continue reading Late Georgian Hairstyles: Fewer Buns Than You'd Think
Before Victoria: Royal Weddings (Part III)
(Part I of this series and part II, if you're not coming to this from one or the other.) Royal weddings need to be dealt with on their own, because their dress traditions differed from those of ordinary and even aristocratic women. These differences are key to understanding the context of the gown that Queen … Continue reading Before Victoria: Royal Weddings (Part III)
Before Victoria: White Wedding Dress (Part II)
So, previously I showed you a lot of examples of actual white or white-ish gowns worn for weddings, including fashion plates (as they are intended to be prescriptive of real clothing - they exist to tell you what you can/should wear); these prove at least that white was worn. Now I'm going to follow that up … Continue reading Before Victoria: White Wedding Dress (Part II)
Mimic of Modes 