A Trip Through English History

Robe à lá anglaise - silk, linen, hand painted. British.

ca 1780-85.

Victoria and Albert museum

source

Parsley's Tower, Weston-super-Mare William Brownell (active 1874–1890) North Somerset Council

This tower was built in the 1830s by developer Richard Parsley as a satire against the recent Catholic emancipation; meant to represent a bishop's mitre, the base of the tower housed a pigsty. A local newspaper turned the tables on Parsley with this poetic interpretation:

I LOVE Bloshka; they have in-depth articles and infographics on just about every type of historical fashion trend imaginable, from hair to shoes. You can get very lost in there.

Waistcoat, 1795-1800

From the Metropolitan Museum of Art

I’ve shared this guy before but I still can’t get over the fact that someone approved this and then SOMEONE SERIOUSLY MADE IT

What did this bird see? What has he lived?

Gloucester Cathedral!

Seriously?! That's my local! (I thought the background looked familiar but couldn't be sure...)

I'll be in town again the first half of next week, I'm going to go and find him! :D :D :D

If I remember correctly, he’s on a tomb. He’s at eye level (I’m 5’1”) so you can stare into his soul 😂😂😂

big things happening in england

The reviews are in

And of course

yellow silk evening dress with oak leaf design

c.1902

House of Worth

Fashion Museum of Bath

Checking Out Another Cow (1876) by Samuel Colman

Bilbo barely passed Old Took's record lifespan after having a supernaturally-life-extending ring for 60 years. which begs a question. what the hell did Old Took do

I have a theory that somewhere back up the line gandalf fucked a took. This sounds like complete crack but hear me out. The tooks are rumored to have “fairy blood” which in LOTR terms means either elves or maia. There is an ancestor who’s unusually tall and many of them are noted to live unusually long lives unless they meet with illness or injury, same as the numenorians did. They don’t hve extra pointy ears and elves don’t have a special interest in the line. But who DOES have a special interest in looking after tooks (and bilbo who is a took on his mother’s side/his adopted son frodo)? Gandalf. That dude is ALWAYS fussing over some silly little guy. He regularly brought the old took birthday presents.

Back in the day some bold hobbitess decided to climb that old man and ever since then gandalf has been looking after his line of tiny crazy bastards and no one will convince me otherwise.

Gandalf's attitude towards Pippin just took on a whole new layer.

prev had questions about the dressmaker thing which I agree this bio glossed over. so I looked it up, and holy crap

at the age of 18 this woman walked 250 miles (400 km) into Paris to take up a position as a dressmaker (Wiki is vague on this- I'm guessing apprenticeship?). her chaperone assaulted her and ran off with her travel documents, and the delay took so long that the job was given away to someone else. insult to injury, and how

so she became an assistant seamstress- pretty low on the dressmaking ladder -and worked her way up to, it sounds like, becoming a dressmaker proper in her own right. and yes, she made Princess Caroline's wedding gown in 1816

I can't swear this image is contemporary and the dress doesn't seem to have survived, but multiple paintings and etchings of the event show gowns similar in at least the general composition- white dress, purple or blue sleeveless overgown with gold fleurs-de-lys, etc. -so I'm inclined to at least sort of trust it

whether she continued any sort of fashion design or dressmaking alongside her marine biology career, I can't seem to find.

I can find a lot of people saying that she started as a dressmaker but "rose" to become a marine biologist, which. argh. one is not lesser than the other, people! she designed and probably fitted a princess' wedding dress (as a higher-ranking dressmaker, she likely would have had seamstresses working under her to do the actual stitching). she was already a prominent, successful woman; she just switched fields like a polymath boss!

there's also some debate over whether that's actually a photo of her- it dates from 1861, when she would have been 67 years old. some people age very slowly, hair dye existed, and it's a low-res photo, but...I'm still skeptical, personally

#history#long post#the devaluing of clothing-related trades is. depressing#I think a lot of it comes from the assumption that dressmaking was something All Women Learned back then#so it's 'just' menial commonplace work#putting aside the fact that There Are No Unskilled Jobs- most women did not make clothes for adults from start to finish#sewing a seam and mending (while also skills!) are not the same as cutting and fitting garments#it seems to me that most women besides the absolute poorest and/or most isolated had their clothes professionally made back then#there were different levels of dressmaker for different social echelons- and price points#you also had hybrid situations where a dressmaker would do the fitting and cutting and then let you do the sewing#saving money but still not the same as Well All Women Could Do What Dressmakers Did#tl;dr- Celebrity Fashion Designer Becomes Celebrity Marine Biologist is the correct way to characterize this woman's career path

3,163 notes

Tags from @marzipanandminutiae's post, added back because they add context to the whole thing.

I have so many questions about Henry V's fashion game.

Born #onthisday in 1828, the English poet, illustrator, painter, translator, and serious wombat fan Dante Gabriel Rossetti… https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/o-uommibatto-how-the-pre-raphaelites-became-obsessed-with-the-wombat #otd

Wombat sketch by Edward Burne-Jones

My toxic tolkien trait is to draw boromir as if he survived and lived through all the Lotr events

Their faces are like that because he says that every time there's new devilry. And there's been a lot of devilry.

excuse me I'mtearing up a bit

Bodice

circa 1880-1910

“This black bodice is made of silk and features floral embroidery throughout. It is boned and has a pink crepe panel down the center front and a standing collar as well as black bead trim throughout. There are also buttons on the cuffs and it has leg-of-mutton sleeves.”

Grand Rapids Public Museum