Dress Historian Kate Strasdin Breaks Down Period Costuming in TV & Film

Dress historian Kate Strasdin joins us to break down famous period costuming featured in movies and tv shows, including The Personal History of David Copperfield, Bridgerton, Gentleman Jack and Little Women. Order your copy of The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes here: bit.ly/3IJCwe6
In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.
Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.
Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.
This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.
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[@cassychesser]

Re: corsets, I wish people knew there were different kinds of corsets throughout history, and tight-lacing was only a Thing for a very narrow period of time. Generally, women were meant to be able to bend and move and work while wearing them.

[@janderson6257]

Jo's hair is short because she sold it to provide money for Marmee's trip, not because she was attempting to appear unconventional.

[@DrKateStrasdin]

I must have had an absolute brain freeze there! I knew that, I love the story so clearly had a ‘moment’ 🤦🏼‍♀️

[@abelchavez2463]

I think it's spoken out of context of the film and in specific reference to the aesthetic decisions that the filmmakers made.

[@gwenhughes8650]

I think it conveys both. Jo is willing to cut her hair to pay for Marmee's trip. Other girls may not have been so willing *because* it was unconventional.

[@rosilindschroeder1880]

Thank you. Quite correct!

[@auntiejx3]

Also in quite a few daguerreotypes of the era ( Civil War ) quite a few women had short hair..it was fashionable…

[@criminallettucewraps5207]

lol when she was talking about women wearing corsetts and hit me with the wearing skinny jeans thing I instantly realized I would skateboard in the tightest damn jeans imaginable.

[@elizabethwoodville104]

She didn't mention that men would have had to take their hats off in church but women would have to keep theirs on (for the church scene in Gentleman Jack)

[@hedgewytch88]

I like the lateat Emma rendition. Best historical costumes ive seen in a long time

[@curiousworld7912]

I've read that corsets were actually beneficial to maintaining good posture. I think they've become this symbol of oppression because of our perceptions of the 19th century and all things 'Victorian' and, because they are a uniquely feminine piece of apparel. Much as in the 1960's, the bra became a similar symbol of feminine oppression.

[@harrietennis4046]

They would not wear corsets under those (Bridgerton) dresses. They would be short stays and even if they were wearing long ones they wouldn't be cinched in like that. If you look at the empire line dresses like Daphne's you can't see her waiste so why pull it in?

[@hedgewytch88]

I don't think they wore them against the skin either

[@AJansenNL]

The court dress in Bridgerton looks French, not English. The English ones still had panniers, which made for a rather ridiculous silhouette with the fashionable short bodices.

[@rezzer7918]

Fascinating

[@TundeEszlari]

King video.

[@AlexandraLynch1]

For all the corset hysteria, I think the equivalent thing women just....wear and accept...is heeled shoes. I didn't realize how pervasive it was until I shattered my arch and can't wear them any more....and wow.

[@nevem5010]

👍

[@moonlily1]

I'm not sure why Strasdin chooses to ignore how the details of Little Women completely ignore the historical context of the situations involved. While she takes Gentleman Jack to task as to exactly how masculine she could really get away with dressing, she reserves none of those caveats for Jo March, who, as a woman from a lower middle class family, will receive even less indulgence from society, and also as a woman who has to make an effort to provide some income, and who wants to be a writer and will be rejected by the publishing world if she goes about trying to sell her work dressed in a manner that would be considered simulataneously slutty and borderline cross dressing. Nearly impossible. As well as the nonsensical notion that every member of the March family has their own color palette, when, as she very well knows, most people would buy a single bolt of cloth and make one dress for each girl. Then the characters are never wearing bonnets or hats, and she well established in her previous comments that in this era one never left home without hats.

[@hedgewytch88]

Bridgerton is awful.