Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians

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This interactive museum experience is sure to make you happy because it’s designed to trigger your happiness hormone called dopamine! Popcorn room, meditative fire lanterns, infinity digital landscapes and many other blissful attractions! The Georgians are known for many things, from courtly spectacle and political change to the birth of the Industrial Revolution. But one thing really set the era apart in history: the fashion. If there was one thing Georgian society did well, it was dress up. But rather than just look pretty, many of these garments tell a much bigger story. ‘Dress is so much more than just what we see on the surface,’ says curator Anna Reynolds. ‘I t’s fascinating what we can learn about a period when looking at it through a fashion history lens. Visitors might be surprised to learn how much the Georgian period has in common with the fashion landscape we know today, from influencers and fashion magazines to ideas about the value of clothes and how they can be recycled and repurposed.’ You can find out all about this and more at The Queen’s Gallery’s latest exhibition, Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians. Here’s seven things not to miss on your next visit. 7 Things Not To Miss At Style & Society: Dressing The Georgians 1. The Earliest Surviving British Royal Wedding Dress As well as influences from abroad, fashionable society increasingly looked to the lower classes for style inspiration, adopting previously working-class garments such as aprons and trousers. Knee breeches were worn by men for most of the 18th century; examples on display will include those depicted in Thomas Gainsborough’s portrait of the famed musician Johann Christian Fischer , 1774–80, and a red silk-velvet court suit from the 1760s, remarkably like that worn by Fischer, loaned by the Fashion Museum Bath. However, by the end of the Georgian period, upper-class men adopted trousers for the first time, a legacy continued today. The future George IV and Lord Byron were early adopters of the new style, as shown in a portrait of Lord Byron by George Sanders, c.1807–8. The exhibition will include items of jewellery from Queen Charlotte’s famed collection, such as a diamond ring featuring a miniature of her husband George III, given to her on her wedding day. Other accessories on display will include beautiful English and French fans, which reached their fashionable zenith during this period, some representing topical events such as the first hot air balloon flight, and jewel-encrusted snuffboxes, reflecting the craze amongst both men and women for taking snuff throughout the 18th century. The exhibition builds up a layer-by-layer picture of what the Georgians wore – from the practical dress of laundry maids to the glittering gowns worn at court – and charts the transformation of clothing and silhouettes from the accession of George I in 1714 to the death of George IV in 1830. As everyone wears clothes, it’s a good way to feel connected to the sitters of these portraits and imagine what their clothes would feel like. You certainly gain an appreciation of the craftmanship involved as everything was made by hand.

The fashions of this era are quite familiar to us, as these are the styles of dress portrayed in the popular TV adaptations and films of Jane Austen novels, such as the 1995 Andrew Davies adaptation of ‘Pride and Prejudice’ for the BBC. ITV’s Sharpe is based in this era too, during the Peninsular and Napoleonic Wars.

Dressing the Georgians

At the heart of the exhibition is a rarely displayed, full-length portrait of Queen Charlotte by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1781. (This usually hangs in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle.) Painted by candlelight in one night, it depicts the Queen in a magnificent diaphanous open gown of silk gauze with a matching petticoat, worn over a wide hoop and covered with gold spangles and tassels. From the practical everyday dress of laundry maids to the spectacular glittering costumes worn on formal court occasions, the clothing of the Georgian era reveals much about this revolutionary period of British history. Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians explores the ways in which fashion trends reflected the era’s cultural and political upheavals and how trade, travel, technological advances and influences from abroad all fed into the flourishing of diverse contemporary styles. The eighteenth century was a great period of innovation for optical aids, including the development of spectacles with side arms. Before this, they were generally of the pince-nez type (balancing on the nose) or a single eyeglass on a chain. The circular frame was most common because round lenses were easiest to grind. After Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-92). Known as Britain’s ‘Sistine Chapel’, The Painted Hall is located in the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich. One of the most spectacular Baroque interiors in Europe that took nineteen years from the start of the commission to its completion in 1726. It makes for a wonderful trip as part of a visit to Greenwich.

The exaggerated fashions of the period were a gift for caricaturists, coinciding with what has become known as the golden age of the satirical print. In the never-before-displayed New Invented Elastic Breeches (1784), Thomas Rowlandson depicts a large man being manhandled into an optimistically small pair of leather breeches by two tailors. On display for the first time will be Queen Charlotte’s book of psalms, covered in the only silk fabric known to survive from one of her dresses. The expensive fabric, decorated with metal threads to glimmer in candlelight, was most likely repurposed after the dress had passed out of fashion. As textiles were highly prized, Georgian clothing was constantly recycled, even by the royal family, and there was a thriving market for second-hand clothes. Advancements in haircare, cosmetics, eyewear and dentistry will also be explored. Immensely tall and wide hairstyles became fashionable for women in the latter half of the century, resulting in the development of an entirely new trade: the hairdresser. Quirky items on display will include a set of miniature bellows and a sprinkler used for applying hair powder, loaned by The School of Historical Dress.The exhibition will reveal how the Georgians ushered in many of the cultural trends we know today, including the first stylists and influencers, the birth of a specialised fashion press and the development of shopping as a leisure activity. From the popularity of fancy-dress and the evolution of childrenswear, to the introduction of military uniforms and the role of clothing in showing support for revolutions at home and abroad, Style & Society will explore what clothing can tell us about all areas of life in the rapidly changing world of 18th-century Britain. Painted for the Duke of Cumberland, this is a piece of propaganda exaggerating the contrast between the British redcoats and the Jacobite troops in Highland dress, reinforcing stereotypes of Highlanders as unshaven and barbaric. At the heart of the exhibition will be a rarely displayed, full-length portrait of Queen Charlotte by Thomas Gainsborough, c.1781, which usually hangs in the White Drawing Room at Windsor Castle. Painted by candlelight, it depicts the Queen in a magnificent gown, worn over a wide hoop and covered with gold spangles and tassels. The painting will be shown alongside a beautifully preserved gown of a similar style, worn at Queen Charlotte’s court in the 1760s, on loan from the Fashion Museum Bath.

These 1762 coronation portraits of George III and Queen Caroline by Allen Ramsey (1713–84) are wonderful to admire. Ramsay reported that he had ‘the Royal robes set up upon my figure’. It was common practice for clothing to be lent to an artist after an initial sitting to avoid the subject needing to sit for lengthy periods. This also reflects a unique phenomenon that was happening during the eighteenth century – previously, fashion trends were inspired by aristocrats and replicated by the masses, but the reverse started to occur. The elite started to look to the lower classes for inspiration, heralding an era of more relaxed dressing – what Reynolds refers to as the rise of street style. According to Reynolds, fashion can tell volumes about the seismic changes that occurred during the Georgian period.There was great interest at this time in ancient Greece and Rome, and this lady wears ‘fashionable full dress’, the style based on the drapery of classical statues. The waist is high and uncorsetted, and the materials light in colour and texture. Muslin had become a fashionable fabric. Her gown is still 18th century in cut, but for day wear it would have bodice, skirt and petticoat in one piece. Her accessories are varied: she carries a huge swansdown muff, wears long white gloves, has a tasselled girdle and a feather-trimmed turban. The portrait is shown alongside a roll of Chinese hand-painted silk from the 1760s covered with an almost identical pattern, on loan from The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle. Chinese, Roll of hand-painted silk, c.1760s (detail). However, the curator, Anna Reynolds, has set out to uncover the function of these garments in their time. Hence she starts from the inside out: George III’s soft linen undershirt is here, along with a finely made pair of linen stays. Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians will bring together over 200 works from the Royal Collection, including paintings, prints and drawings by artists such as Gainsborough, Zoffany and Hogarth, as well as rare surviving examples of clothing and accessories. The exhibition will build up a layer-by-layer picture of what the Georgians wore – from the practical dress of laundry maids to the glittering gowns worn at court – and chart the transformation of clothing and silhouettes from the accession of George I in 1714 to the death of George IV in 1830. The painting St James’s Park and the Mall (British School, c.1745) brings to life the hustle and bustle of 18th-century London’s most fashionable meeting place and provides a fascinating snapshot of Georgian society.