Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, Mistress of the Robes – Lecture
Friday 21 Mar 2025, 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM
The Johnston Collection, Melbourne
Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough, is best known as an ambitious political climber who rose through the ranks of late seventeenth-century England to become the favourite of Queen Anne in the early eighteenth century. However, Sarah’s position as Mistress of the Robes is less well studied. This talk discusses Sarah’s work as an astute household manager with a discerning eye for fashion who reformed the queen’s Office of the Robes at the last Stuart court.
Make a Sixteenth-Century Spanish Farthingale – Workshop
Saturday 15 Mar 2025, 1 day course
The Centre for Rare Arts & Forgotten Trades, Ballarat
In this full-day workshop, you will use historically accurate methods and materials to create a half-scale hooped farthingale, based on a surviving sixteenth century example from Spain. Through clear demonstrations and group tuitions, you’ll be taught sixteenth century sewing and construction techniques, as well as how to make ‘ropes of bents’ – just like Queen Elizabeth I’s tailors and farthingale-makers!
300 Years of Women’s Fashion – Workshop
Saturday 30 November, 2024 @ 9.30am-5pm AEST
Australian Centre for Gold Rush Collections
Join dress and material culture historian Dr. Sarah Bendall, along with museum experts at Sovereign Hill, for an engaging one-day intensive that explores 300 years of European and Australian women’s fashion. Participants will delve into the history of women’s dress and dressmaking through informative talks, dressing demonstrations, and an exclusive behind-the-scenes experience in Sovereign Hill’s Costume Department and Gold Rush Collections.
FABRICATING THE WORLD SERIES | East Indies goods and the rise of female retailers in early modern London
Saturday 12 Oct, 2024 @ 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM
The Johnston Collection, Melbourne
In late 17th-century England, textiles from the East Indies and the Middle East abounded, irrevocably changing fashionable clothing and furnishings, forging powerful trade networks and laying the groundwork for colonial expansion. This lecture examines the roles of women as not just consumers but also as merchants, retailers and makers during the period from 1670 to 1701, when new forms of merchandising allowed women to play new key roles in the fashion marketplace.
History Matters: The Complicated History of the Corset
Friday 31 May, 2024 @ 5:15pm AEST
Australian Centre for Gold Rush Collections
We are in the midst of a corset resurgence with celebrities, social media influences and most fashion retainers wearing or selling some form of ‘corset’. While corsets might be fashion now, they were a vital part of women’s everyday dress for nearly 400 years. Join Dr. Sarah Bendall as she uncovers the history of this controversial garment.