Jane Austen Fashion Exhibition Persuasion NGV Information Times Opening Hours
Jane Austen Fashion Exhibition Persuasion NGV Information Times Opening Hours
Persuasion:
Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen
22 May – 8 November 09
Myer Fashion and Textiles Galleries, Level 2
Free entry
The period from the mid 1790’s to about 1820 (which included all of Jane Austen’s adult life) seems to have been pretty much the only one between the middle ages and the 20th century when women’s clothing styles, in the predominantly Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe, were neither corseted or tightly-fitted from the waist up; nor hoop-skirted, crinolined, heavily full-skirted, or bustled below. Later (Victorian) authors such as Charlotte BrontĂ« and Mrs. Gaskell sneered at the “scanty petticoats” of this period, but to our eyes these clothes generally seem much less burdensome (and much more like something somebody would actually wear in real life, instead of at a costume party) than the styles of the Victorian era.
Persuasion: Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen looks at the changes in fashion that occurred over Austen’s lifetime, with a focus on English women’s fashion during the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Drawing on work from the National Gallery of Victoria’s holdings of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century fashion, prints and drawings, decorative arts and paintings, and complemented by key works from other Australian institutions and private collections, Persuasion broadly surveys the years from the 1770s to around 1830, one of the most dynamic periods in fashion.
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