Abstracts
Abstract
This article challenges scholars to look beyond conventional audiences for Victorian studies and to go beyond conventional subjects, into the world of Victorian and Neo-Victorian fashion. It holds up the career of Dr. Valerie Steele, Director of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology, as a model for how to conduct historical research into Victorian clothing and how to bring the results of that research to a broader public. It encourages academics to use the Internet to connect with a non-academic public that is already engaged with the Victorians through the medium of clothing, and it urges readers in general to see Neo-Victorian “mashup” dressing as an opportunity for serious exchange of knowledge about nineteenth-century culture.
Appendices
Works Cited
- Aaltonenen, Gaynor. “Good Vintage.” The National Trust 106 (Autumn 2005): 20–27.
- Anderson, Fiona. “Museums as Fashion Media.” Fashion Cultures: Theories, Explorations and Analysis. Eds. Stella Bruzzi and Pamela Church Gibson. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. 371–89.
- Bolton, Andrew. AngloMania: Tradition and Transgression in British Fashion. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006.
- Clockwork Couture, A Fine Steampunk Clothier. 2009. 1 October 2009 <http://www.clockworkcouture.com/>.
- The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Dir. Karel Reisz. Adapt. Harold Pinter. Perf. Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep. United Artists, 1981.
- Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. Boston: Little, Brown, 1969.
- Gardiner, John. “Theme-park Victoriana.” The Victorians since 1901: Histories, Representations and Revisions. Manchester and New York: Manchester UP, 2004. 167–80.
- Garfield, Simon. Mauve: How One Man Invented a Colour That Changed the World. New York: Norton, 2001.
- Green, Penelope. “The New Antiquarians.” New York Times 30 June 2009, New York ed: D1 +.
- Green-Lewis, Jennifer. “At Home in the Nineteenth Century: Photography, Nostalgia, and the Will to Authenticity.” Victorian Afterlife: Postmodern Culture Rewrites the Nineteenth Century. Eds. John Kucich and Dianne F. Sadoff. Minneapolis: U Minnesota P, 2000. 29–48.
- Hughes, Clair. Dressed in Fiction. Oxford: Berg, 2006.
- Joyce, Simon. The Victorians in the Rearview Mirror. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2007.
- Kaplan, Cora. Victoriana: Histories, Fictions, Criticism. New York: Columbia UP, 2007.
- Louie, Elaine. “Shopping With: Valerie Steele; High-Heeled Historian Exalts the Shoe.” New York Times 17 Jan. 1999, New York ed, sec. AR: 6+.
- McNeil, Peter. “‘We’re Not in the Fashion Business’: Fashion in the Museum and the Academy.” Fashion Theory 12.1 (2008): 65–82.
- Miller, Lisa Madden. “Modern Lace: Victorianism in Contemporary Dress and Decorating.” Mid-Atlantic Almanack 11 (2002): 5–12.
- Postrel, Virginia. “Dress Sense.” Atlantic May 2007: 133–35. The River Junction Trade Company, Manufacturers and Dealers in 19th Century Dry Goods. 2009. 1 October 2009 <http://www.riverjunction.com/>.
- Rosenman, Ellen Bayuk. “More Stories about Clothing and Furniture: Realism and Bad Commodities.” Functions of Victorian Culture at the Present Time. Ed. Christine L. Krueger. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2002. 46–62.
- Shannon, Brent. The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860–1914. Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 2006.
- Shefer, Elaine. “Pre-Raphaelite Clothing and the New Woman.” Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies 6.1 (1985): 55–67.
- Steele, Valerie. The Corset: A Cultural History. New Haven: Yale UP, 2001.
- Steele, Valerie. Fashion and Eroticism: Ideals of Feminine Beauty from the Victorian Era to the Jazz Age. New York: Oxford UP, 1985.
- Steele, Valerie and Jennifer Park. Gothic: Dark Glamour. New Haven and New York: Yale UP and the Fashion Institute of Technology, 2008.
- Victoriana. 2009. 1 October 2009 <http://www.victoriana.com/>.
- Wilson, Elizabeth. Adorned in Dreams: Fashion and Modernity. London: Virago; Berkeley: U of California P, 1985.