"Dress is at all times a frivolous distinction"

…but that doesn’t stop us costume geeks from getting all obsessed, does it now?

Syracuse University English instructor Amy Leal discusses her obsession with period costume and how it does not always quite mesh with her academic pursuits.

It doesn’t do to admit to such activities in academic company. Kipling popularized the term “Janeites” in a story about an Austenite Masonic Lodge created by soldiers to get them through the horrors of the Great War. Being a member of what one critic called the “frilly bonnet brigade” is a bit like joining that secret society. In her book on Austen fandom called Janeites, Deidre Lynch cautions “the career-conscious critic against letting the wrong people know of her desire to, for instance, wear Regency costume and dance at a Jane Austen Literary Ball.” Making replicas smacks too much of scholarly dilettantism, of playing dress up with the canon like a little girl or boy tottering around in mother’s gigantic heels with a slash of forbidden carmine on the lips.

She comes up with an excellent reason (which also will do for the study of history in relation to literature, as well):

I make clothing reproductions because I am fascinated with the “felt life” (to appropriate a Henry James term) of past eras. What did Regency hair smell like? What did cheddar cheese taste like back then — tangy from some subtle differences in soil and fodder two centuries ago that we would be hard pressed to define? What was it like to wear Charlotte Brontë’s silk traveling dress (pattern available from the Northern Society of Costume and Textiles) after wedding Arthur Bell Nicholls? How might such considerations have influenced the writing of the period? I want to know how Emma combated bad breath and what the bristle of a muffin seller’s cheap linsey-woolsey felt like on the wrists.

Works for us.

Regency corsets (when daring misses wore them at all) were designed to push up and smooth down (except for a horrifying contraption known as a “steel divorce,” which separated the breasts into distinct pointed silos) and accentuate the high waistline.

Weren’t we just saying that?

Thanks to Alert Janeite Lisa for the link.

For those who would like to know more about the clothing of Jane Austen’s time, Serena Dyer of Pemberley Designs will be publishing a free quarterly e-newsletter on period costume, Dressing Jane. The first edition, concentrating on the dress of the 1790s (the period in which Becoming Jane takes place, if you are interested) will be mailed on August 10, so make haste and sign up!