Historian of Early Modern Fashion and Material Culture
The probate accounts of Edward Harpur, a mercer and alderman from the town of Stockport in the Northwest of England who died in 1650, records almost 13 years of expenditure for his four teenage daughters after this death. Harpur was a prominent member of the town of Stockport, in both business and law, so his… Continue reading 1650s Middle Sorts Fashions: the Wardrobe of the Harpur sisters of Stockport
I recently sat down with Bernadette Banner to chat about maternity corsetry. Check out our video below! https://youtu.be/VCuWQ8t3dUI?si=g22uTvvBvzKRtArm
I've decided to launch a YouTube Channel where I will be talking about all things early modern dress, fashion and material culture. I've just released my first video on my top 5 books for those wanting to make 17th-century dress. https://youtu.be/_ubdtSEiXVg?si=8uwFzwoJHdLsILIs Please like and subscribe!
Sew with me! 1650s English bodice and gown reconstruction tutorial and notes.
A question I see pop up often, and one that continues to spark much debate in online costuming communities and between historians of dress is: Did early modern women wear anything under their skirts? If so, did they wear drawers? Susan North's recently published book, Sweet and Clean?, is one recent scholarly text that has… Continue reading Did Seventeenth-Century English Women Wear Drawers?
Quilted petticoats in England and America are usually attributed to and discussed in the context of the eighteenth century. This is likely due to the fact that all the earliest surviving quilted petticoats (to my knowledge) date from this period. Quilted Petticoat, c. 1740-60 (made), 1870-1910 (altered), British. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.430-1967. I am… Continue reading Quilted Petticoats in the Seventeenth Century
Shaping Femininity's book launch was held online on 4 November 2021. Chair: Rebecca Unsworth (Birmingham Museums Trust) Discussants: Hilary Davidson (University of Sydney / La Trobe) and Erin Griffey (University of Auckland) To watch the whole launch see the video below: https://youtu.be/JE5Z0BLKHnU
To celebrate the upcoming release of Shaping Femininity I've decided the post the pattern that I made of the garment when I examined it in 2017. A pattern for this garment has since been published by the School of Historical Dress in 2018's Patterns of Fashion 5. The School's pattern is much more detailed than… Continue reading Sittingbourne Bodies Pattern, c. 1630-50
The waistcoat is by far one of the most common pieces of clothing I have come across in the records of seventeenth-century women. While women did wear gowns during this period, if we look across the social spectrum we can see that waistcoats and petticoats were by far the most common garments that were worn… Continue reading Seventeenth-Century Waistcoats for Women: Jacobean Fashions
In 2018 I spent two months in the UK going through records relating to tailors, body-makers, and farthingale-makers at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and the Drapers' and Clothworker' Companies in London. While doing my archival research at the Drapers' Company hall, I mentioned to the archivist Penny that the unusual name of a… Continue reading The Life and Times of Theophilus Riley: Citizen, Civil War Conspirator and Body-maker.