The Victorians etiquette was complicated, right? Victorian etiquette rules meant the wrong dress was social death? Let’s bust some Victorian dress myths, see why we think the Victorians changed clothes 10 times a day, and talk about why Victorian era rules of etiquette seemed so riduculous.
We think that a Victorian gown was only for one occasion : a ball gown, a tea gown, an opera gown, et c. Victorian etiquette rules for ladies did require different styles of Victorian clothing for different social events, but Victorian era rules about clothing were not as hard and fast as we think. I read more than one Victorian era etiquette guide to learn about Victorian social rules for what to wear, and discovered that this particular bit of weird Victorian history has been confused by confirmation bias! Turns out, a Victorian ball gown was not that different from any other kind of Victorian evening gown, and Victorian clothing could easily be worn for multiple kinds of social occasions. It’s a combination of classism and modern misunderstanding that makes us think Victorian manners dictated how you could dress so strictly, and made us think the Victorians changed clothes so often. I hope this bit of Victorian dress history makes more sense now, and that we can consider these Victorian myths busted.
This video is the first in my series on making an evening gown for a character from the Victorian novel Daniel Deronda. Subscribe and turn on notifications to see the rest of the dress-making process!
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0:00 You’re wearing WHAT?!
0:27 Designing a Victorian dress
1:46 We’re not doing Gone With The Wind.
2:40 General dress etiquette
5:10 Why so many rules?
6:27 Understanding primary sources
10:20 So what do you wear?
12:06 New project time!
Attributions :
Photo of a red Balenciaga dress, cropped, CC Attribution 2.0 Generic
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en
Emoji from Twemoji v2 project, CC Attribution 4.0 International
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en
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