Open Access“Would You Like Some Victorian Dressing with That?”
Author(s) -
Margaret D. Stetz
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
romanticism and victorianism on the net
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1916-1441
DOI - 10.7202/039557ar
Subject(s) - clothing , victorian era , media studies , sociology , history , visual arts , art , political science , literature , law
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