A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

Edit: I guess this is the last time I try to post on Blogger from a mobile device - this post was finished and up, and then when I came back to work on another one I realized that most of it had been eaten and it was set back to draft. Why? Who knows. Probably user error. Apologies! This post is later in the month than I've usually been for the HSM. I just didn't know what to go with! But in the end, I've decided in the end is to give you a preview of Regency Women's Dress 1800-1830 (out sometime in October): the corset made out of brown cotton twill and its description. Corset 1805-1815 Courtesy of the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY N506.61 Longer corsets of this type were taken up not long after the turn of the century, and were worn for several decades, not falling out of use until the 1850s, when the popularization of the split busk made it even easier for a woman to put on or remove her corset herself. The shape gave a...

And what a great birthday it is! For this morning, as I came here to post a link to the Amazon US page for Regency Women's Dress , as it's now pre-orderable ... ... I noticed that I'm listed as the #1 new release in Textile & Costume ! Based, I assume, on preorders from my Facebook announcements! ( Amazon UK ) ( Amazon France ) What a really fantastic birthday present! I seriously grinned at the screen for a moment. The sites all say October but I've been assured that the publishing date is September 17 everywhere. Exciting!! Who'd have thought the "grand project" (see post tags) would have really come to this!

There's a piece on Vox that's been going around Facebook - I Love the Victorian Era, So I Decided to Live in It - by Sarah Chrisman, who's probably familiar to many of you as a blogger and author , even if you haven't read blog or book. Sarah Chrisman is the more public face of a married couple who live in Port Townsend, WA - and as much in the Victorian Era as possible. They very rarely use electricity. They have an icebox, mechanical clocks, fountain pens, oil lamps, etc. etc. etc. They wear pretty accurate historical clothing, which for Sarah includes a corset. (I don't know her measurements, but it looks like she skirts the edge of the period definition of tightlacing, and if she were wearing modern clothing she'd be classified as a tightlacer.) The response has been astoundingly negative . (Although some responses have been thought-through and eloquent.) I'm not totally surprised, because I know that a lot of people see the in-depth study of ...