A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

The latest episode of the A Most Beguiling Accomplishment  podcast is out! As promised, it discusses the methodologies of fashion history and #PocketGate . Corset, 1860-1870; Philadelphia Museum of Art 1947-53-17 What does a corset have to do with the history of pockets? You'll have to listen to find out! Remember, patrons of my Patreon  get to suggest and vote on future topics of the blog and podcast!

Yep, it's happened! I was serious about starting a podcast, and I followed through, thanks to my excellent Patreon patrons . This first episode jumps right in as a verbal version of the Before Victoria  series of posts. The Marriage of Queen Victoria, 10 February 1840 , Sir George Hayter, 1840-42;  RCIN 407165 I would love it if you could give it a listen and throw me some feedback! The Podcast Source ( Android , Apple ) is an app that will allow you to subscribe and listen directly from Libsyn, where A Most Beguiling Accomplishment  is hosted; you can also subscribe through Google Play  or iTunes , or listen right from the Libsyn webpage. The second episode will be a discussion of what fashion history is , a much more theoretical topic, although I won't be handling it in a dry manner! I'll be chatting about the history of the field, the differences between fashion and dress, how different ways of studying dress come together to produce the best research,...

A few days ago, I introduced you to my new Patreon page , but I wanted to give you more background about why I decided to do this and so on. With this blog, I try to bridge the gap between costuming/reenactment and academia. I do post about sewing projects, when I do them (unless I'm just following the directions from a pattern packet, there's not much scope for research there), but what I really like to do is read primary and secondary sources, take something fresh from them, and share it with everyone else. This is the kind of research you normally do for publication or a conference paper, but I don't really want to write for journals or conferences - I want to write for you , the public. It's not pure theory that I find intriguing, but the mixture of academic research with practical application, which leads to posts on  fashions in petticoats and stomachers , or early nineteenth-century corsets . Or even more esoteric topics that might not be relevant to your s...