Description
The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman's life - from family and friends to industry and Empire - told through her unique textile scrapbook.In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes.
Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album's pages.
Piece by piece, she charts Anne's journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain's cotton industry.
This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.
Review
I loved the beginning of this book and the story of how the dress book came into the author's possession. It was certainly fortuitous, as the author was obviously the right person to own the book and share it with us all.
I found out a few things that I previously had no idea about. Such as the ban on cotton imports when the trade in England was suffering. The book is littered with not just the story of the dress diary but research by the author of the textile trade and fashion throughout this period.
The book I found to be one that is to be dipped in and out of, although in sequential chapter order to fully appreciate the timeline of events.
I'm giving this book 4 out of 5 stars. My thanks to netgalley for this ARC to review.
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