The Costume Society’s Annual Conference 2025 will focus on all aspects of dress from what we know in Britain as the Georgian period of 1714 to 1815. Tickets are now available to purchase.
In the 1998 The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, exhibition ‘The Ceaseless Century’, the late Richard Martin, Curator of The Costume Institute described the period and the subsequent two centuries as a touchstone to discuss ‘the complex navigation that characterises fashion revivals.’
We will consider clothing of the period from around the world and also explore how the styles of the time have been recreated for subsequent stage and screen dramas and how later fashion designers have used the era as inspiration for contemporary collections.
In the year that sees the V&A Museum celebrate two hundred years of ‘Marie Antoinette Style’ in a major new exhibition and The Science Museum explore ‘Versailles: Science and Splendour’ the Society seeks to contribute to our understanding of the continuing impact of the ‘Georgian’ era.
The Conference will be held on-line in four sessions (the afternoons of Saturday 18th October and Saturday 25th October and the evenings of Wednesday 22nd and Wednesday 29th October).
Our international speakers will consider clothing of the period from around the world and also explore how the styles of the time have influenced later wearers.
The conference presentations cover themes including:
- Making, marketing and retailing of fashion and dress across the world
- The impact of social, political and technological revolutions
- The wardrobe choices of individuals during the period
- The impact of colonialism, discovery, world trade and cultural exchange
- Revivals of styles from 1714-1815 in later fashion choices
- Recreating garments based on those of the period
The Conference Schedule:
Session 1, Saturday 18 October 14:00-17:00
Highlight Speaker: Hilary Davidson, Global Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen: Communities and Colonies
Summer Anne Lee, Founding Fashions: The Revolutionary Wardrobes of Washington, Adams, and Jefferson
Fatima Giordano, Queens in the Mirror: Fashion and Image Choices between Maria Carolina and Maria Clementina in The Kingdom of Naples
Gabriela Juranek, "It’s not that we approve of those belts placed so high that they make the waist disappear..." Social discourses surrounding fashion à l’antique in late 1790s Paris.
Session 2, Wednesday 22 October, 19:00-21:00
Michelle Barker, ‘What Lies Beneath’ - The Study of the Inner Workings of a Court Pair of Stays and How They Might Relate to the Court Mantua
Serena Dyer, The Makers’ Hand: Recreating the Practices of the Eighteenth-Century Mantua-Maker
Dr. Anne Bissonnette, ALCTC Pattern Project: Mapping Changes in Cut, Construction and Embodied Practices
Session 3, Saturday 25 October, 14:00-17:00
Guest Speaker: Amy Wilson, Healthy, Virtuous and Fertile: Natural Mothers and Elite Dress in late Eighteenth-Century England
Joanna Jarvis, The Regency Crisis of 1788: Dress as a visual marker of allegiance
Sally Tuckett,‘Simplicity and Extravagance’? Scottish Dress Through the Eyes of Paul Sandby in the Wake of the ‘45
Javier Gimeno Martínez, Queenship and Fashion Magazines. Queen Maria Luisa de Parma’s Dress in Goya’s ‘Charles IV of Spain and His Family’ (1800)
Claire Batt, Fragment, Part, Portion - The Value of Unpicked Gowns in Museum Collections
Session 4, Wednesday 29 October, 19:00-21:00
Jennifer Parker, Reimagining Rococo: The revival of Georgian styles in the Lolita fashion subculture as performative protest
Virginia Hill, The Reluctant Fashion Editor: Carolina Arienti Lattanzi, the ‘Corriere delle Dame’ and fashion in Napoleon’s Milan”
Carter King, Indigenizing European Fashions in the Georgian Period: How Historic Haudenosaunee Dress Expands Georgian Fashion through Interventions in Identity and Material
Please contact Philip Warren if you have any queries.
