A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

Episode four of the podcast is live! This time I'm discussing the history of regional dress in Europe, "national costume" schemes, and where most modern folk dress traditions come from. I will be posting an illustrated, written version of the episode here - but not very very soon, because I'll be going off this weekend to see Anastasia  on Broadway and the Visitors to Versailles  exhibition at the Met! The next episode will be on court dress, addressing the English and French courts as well as a number of others. I don't know which yet - it always depends on what sources I can find - but I really want to address other regions, because fashion history does tend to be so focused on the two above. Spain and Sweden at the very least!

This episode took me forever to write. I was originally going to start with a blog post I wrote a few years ago, relying on primary sources on mourning from the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries. Then, as I started to go through it, I started to reinterpret a number of the primary sources, and then I came across Lou Taylor’s book, Mourning Dress: a Costume and Social History , and I realized that I needed to fully read it and regroup. So. (This is the transcription of the episode, for those who prefer reading to listening, or want to go back and double-check something they heard.) Walking dress and evening dress in the general mourning for Princess Charlotte, La Belle Assemblée,  Nov. 1817 Funerals and mourning goods seem to have become status symbols in Europe in the late Middle Ages, when royalty and the upper aristocracy began to indulge in long funeral processions with large numbers of mourners and horses in black draperies. Male mourners would wear loose gown...

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,...