First Entry
Hello there! Welcome to my new newsletter.
Hello there! Welcome to my new newsletter.
I'm a writer in many ways. I've been publishing a fashion history blog for more than a decade. I answer questions about European dress, society, and royalty on AskHistorians. And I tell stories.
I don't even know when I started doing that last one. I do remember typing them on the DOS-running family computer a very long time ago, though ...
As I'm starting to move toward publication,* whether traditional or independent, I thought it was time to make a newsletter specifically to connect with people interested in my fiction.
* I should note that I've technically been published for almost a decade. Regency Women's Dress is a book of patterns of women's clothing from the early nineteenth century. I also have a similar book on eighteenth-century fashion coming out within the next year or so. And I'm nearly to the point of printing a Regency England-themed TTRPG, "Dandies and Dandyzettes". But that's different.
This newsletter is not going to overwhelm your inbox. For one thing, I'd rather spend my time writing new stories than sending you something every other day! It will go out at least once a month, as I'm committing to sharing a breakdown of the clothing in some historic image with that frequency. (Educational content!) But I may send out another in between, or even more than one, depending on what I have to discuss. You'll also read about:
upcoming publications, when I have them
things I'm working on
books I really like
random bits of worldbuilding
concepts I'd like to write about at some point
Recently, I finished writing a short story to submit to an indie "sword sapphics" anthology. My initial thought had been to do a lady-knight-and-damsel tale, my usual kind of thing, but then I shifted to write a butch4butch romance between a palace guard and a flashy duellist. In the end, I think it's better for changing up my usual.
(I'll tell you more about that in a future newsletter.)
Almost as soon as I finished that and sent it out for betaing, I had an idea for a new story!
The specter of complete loss of her reputation haunts many a Regency heroine but rarely comes to pass. What if it did, though, and said heroine were sent to live in the country in disgrace for the rest of her life? And what if she then met a downtrodden ward of a country squire, likewise Outside of Society? And what if they fell in love?
I've started working on it, and love it already. I hope you do too!
Your first monthly fashion history tidbit:
From the Petit Courrier des Dames, May 20, 1834; at the NYPL
Translation of the caption: Amazon costume in wool cloth / Gros de naples hat, trimmed with argus feathers.
An "amazon costume" is a riding habit! This is a jacket and skirt ensemble worn specifically for riding a horse, but also sometimes for travel and walking. Because of the needs of side-saddle riding, the skirt of a riding habit was generally made much longer on one side, which you can see hinted at in the way the hem trails on the ground.
"Wool cloth" here refers to a specific, sturdy, inexpensive wool fabric rather than our generic use of "cloth" to mean "textile" - you can't use anything delicate for this purpose. Even in a riding habit of cloth, it was important to keep up the fashionable silhouette - by which I mean the massive sleeves, which were the height of fashion in 1834. The ends of the sleeves are covered with delicate white cuffs, possibly/probably embroidered muslin.
Gros de naples is a silk, one generally too heavy for gowns: it mostly appears in the fashion press for bonnets (particularly cold-weather bonnets) and outerwear. The bonnet on the woman facing the viewer has a heart-shaped brim, which was usually called a "Marie Stuart," a reference to fashion in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots (i.e. the mid-16th century). It looks like a fairly short brim as well, which was important to have when moving at speed in the open air, so that the wind would have less opportunity to pull a bonnet off the wearer's head.
The argus is a type of Asian pheasant. Its feathers are an uncommon bonnet trimming for the period, but not unknown.
Thanks for reading, and see you next time!