Nicola here! A couple of weeks ago I went on a family visit to my native county of Yorkshire. It was a great opportunity to catch up with the places I used to love visiting as well as with family and friends. When I was a child one of my favourite local places was a house called Lotherton Hall near Leeds The name itself sounds exactly the sort of place you would find in a Bronte novel and I remember wandering through its rooms lapping up all the historical displays and soaking up the atmosphere. It was one of the places that fostered my love of history.
When I went back a few weeks ago I barely recognised the place. It now has a bird garden, a café and a shop, an adventure playground and beautifully landscaped gardens. It was an absolute delight rediscovering it.
Inside the house there was an exhibition called “Fashionable Yorkshire: Five Centuries of Style.” Each exhibit not only showed the clothes that women wore but through them gave an insight into the lives of those women. They reflected the period they were made in and provided an insight into the women’s place in society. Yorkshire women have always been renowned for their sense of style – my grandmother was a good example – so this was particularly fascinating.
The first exhibit was extraordinary. I wasn’t allowed to take a photo but here it is from Wikipedia. It’s a portrait from 1620 of a woman called Margaret Layton who had been a lady in waiting to Queen Anne, the wife of James I. In the picture she is wearing an embroidered jacket of linen stitched with silk and silver thread in a curling pattern of plants, flowers, insects and animals. In the display case next to the portrait is the actual jacket that Margaret had worn to have her portrait painted 400 years ago. I found this mind-blowing!
Move forward 100 years and there were some gowns worn by the ladies of the Priestman family, who were Quakers. Many Quakers rejected the fads of fashion and dressed plainly, without lace and trimmings. There was trouble in the Priestman family when the eldest daughter, Rebecca, attended a church meeting in a fashionable riding habit with a turned down collar. Her mother roundly scolded her to it and cut the collar off!
I’ve sneaked in another picture here from a different exhibition, at Cusworth Hall, because I loved it! It’s late Regency and made me think of strawberries and cream!
During the Industrial Revolution of the 18th and 19th centuries many Yorkshire families moved up in society through making a fortune in trade. One such was the Illingworth family from Bradford who became prominent in local society in the Victorian era. Mary Illingworth’s clothes reflect this wealth and status with a dress from the Paris designer Worth. Another family, the Norths, were factory workers who rose to become amongst the richest families in the world through investment in mining. They bought a mansion in London and decorated both it and themselves in sumptuous style! Here is one of the Victorian gowns that was featured, made by Worth and worn by Mary for her daughter's wedding in 1881.
One other thing I noticed about the Victorian gowns was that they were significantly larger than the earlier ones and indeed later ones in the exhibition. Apparently this is because both ladies became rather imposing Victorian matrons as a result of their lavish lifestyle!
Bringing the exhibition into the 20th century were a number of items from the wardrobe of two working class
girls of the 1950s. They were extremely fashion conscious and the clothes are a mixture of ready-to-wear and home made garments, simple but very stylish. The bag and jewellery is from a 1950s wedding. By the 1950s mass-produced clothing was no longer seen as cheap and shoddy but instead was fashionable and desirable.
The whole exhibition was a fascinating walk through 500 years of fashion history and the women whose lives were reflected in the clothes. My favourite was the 17th century jacket but I would have loved to try a version of the Regency gown too!
What would be your favourite century or decade of fashion style? Victorian bustles or 1960s miniskirt? Regency silk or Tudor ruffs?