1800 ca. Bicorn, Or Two Cornered, Black Silk Hat, Possibly Made In Great Britain or France. via Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. collections.vam.ac.uk.
Definition: Bicorn Or Bicorne: Two cornered, or pointed, hats often worn by military men because the rain would drain off either side of the hat and away from the body. They could also be easily flattened to carry under arm.



1806 Two Ladies in Jane Austen Style White Walking Dresses With Puffed Sleeves, French. #RegencyEra #JaneAusten #HistoricalFashion #hats
1806 Two Ladies In White Walking Dresses, French. Puffed sleeves, extra long gloves, bonnets tied under chins and decorated with flowers, walking boots, green cashmere shawl. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien. These fashionable ensembles with a variety of fashionable and practical accessories would have been worn by Jane Austen and her family and friends during the day when out walking in the park or visiting village shops. Hats were a necessity to protect fair skin from the sun and scarfs and shawls added color and warmth to an outfit.
Definition Empire Style Dress: Named after the First Empire in France. Empire dresses had a low neckline and skirts started directly under the bust and flowed into the classical relaxed wide styles of Greece and Rome. This style of dress is associated with Jane Austen and her contemporaries as a high-waisted dress was worn most days. Cotton, silk or taffeta were the popular fabrics. Only the very wealthy could afford white dress in this style as the cottons were imported from India and had to be carefully cleaned, usually by a lady’s maid.

1806 Two Ladies In White Walking Dresses With Puffed Sleeves, French. #RegencyEra #JaneAusten #HistoricalFashion #hats https://books2read.com/SuziLoveFashionWomen1805-1809
Tweet

Are you ‘Following’ me on Book Bub? Australian author of history and romance. #Bridgerton #JaneAusten #Romance #FashionHistory #Australia
Are you ‘Following’ me on Book Bub?? If you do, you’ll be the first to know about my new releases.


1810 ca. Empire Style, Or High-Waisted, Silk Dress, Probably French. Jane Austen fashion. #RegencyFashion #HistoricalFashion #JaneAusten
1810 ca. Silk Dress, Probably French. High-waisted, or Empire line, dress with long straight sleeves, back opening, embroidery on neck frill and multiple rows of embroidery on the hem. via Metropolitan Museum New York City, U.S.A. ~ metmuseum.org
Definition Empire Style Dress: Named after the First Empire in France. Empire dresses had a low neckline and skirts started directly under the bust and flowed into the classical relaxed wide styles of Greece and Rome. This style of dress is associated with Jane Austen and her contemporaries as a high-waisted dress was worn most days. Cotton, silk or taffeta were the popular fabrics. Only the very wealthy could afford white dress in this style as the cottons were imported from India and had to be carefully cleaned, usually by a lady’s maid.







Book Hooks: Petunia and the Pearl Diver. Petunia was too well spoken for a brothel worker. #Regencyromance #historicalromance #London #mfrw
Petunia and the Pearl Diver: A hot Regency romance. Petunia needs money to save her aristocratic family. The pearl diver needs a woman to save him, body and soul. Their night together at a London brothel could solve both problems. But can their relationship survive in the real world?Because walking away becomes impossible when one night leaves them craving more…and more.
Book Hook: Once again, the pearl diver wondered at Petunia’s diction. Too well spoken for a brothel worker. “Who are you?”
She scowled at him, again. “Petunia.” She raised a brow. “You?”
He grinned. “I imagine you’d rather call me slave.” At her blank look, he asked, “Or servant? Footman? Driver?” She shook her head, clearly bewildered. “Isn’t that why you’re here? To pretend you’re a grand lady enjoying a naughty tryst with one of her servants?”
A rush of color flooded her cheeks, turning them bright pink. Not a sight he expected to see in a brothel unless it was rouge lavishly applied to hide a street worker’s age and to make her appear prettier. Petunia was pretty enough without rouge, and her blush screamed innocence. He yanked at his restraints, suddenly worried that he’d walked into some sort of a nightmarish fantasy. “What the hell is going on here?”
Petunia didn’t look evil enough to have set up the sort of sadistic scene that some men fancied in these sorts of places. And he’d never heard of sadism being a sport particularly enjoyed by women, though he was in no position to know. He’d spent years taking the King’s shilling and fighting the little upstart Emperor all over the continent, and then, when he’d been wounded and shipped back to bonny England, he hadn’t been able to handle continual questions and false sympathy. Leaving for the South Seas had been the best decision he’d ever made.
The diving had strengthened his muscles, mended his weak leg, and allowed him to return to London a rich man. A very rich man. Pity that years of swimming and plenty of coin hadn’t also guaranteed that his sex drive would return. He’d give his entire fortune to reclaim the peace of mind and the virility of his much younger self.


1805 January Two Ladies In White Paris Dresses With Interesting Bodices, and Adorable Accessories, English. #JaneAusten #RegencyEra #HistoricalFashion
1805 January Two Ladies In White Paris Dresses, English. Two interesting bodices, long gloves, necklaces, shawl, fan and adorable hats. Fashion Plate via The Lady’s Magazine Or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, London. These are the types of outfits worn by Jane Austen and contemporaries and were seen in English magazines, where French fashions were obsessively copied despite the two countries being at war for many years.


Is Pink Necessary?
Anyone looking at my…..
Blog, Face Book & Twitter Gravatars, Clothing, Jewellery etc etc …
will recognise my love of anything PINK!
So this headline in the NY Times stopped me cold – IS PINK NECESSARY?
Answer- Of course it is!!! Screams every girl from 1- 101!!!
But according to this story MY obsession….oops…EVERY little girl’s obsession with PINK…. was caused by a Disney marketing push in 2000. Wrong! In my case it started much, much earlier. And was fed by my love of PINK in history.
Still, it’s fascinating to learn how today’s little Princesses in Pink are created via this story, actually a book review…
By ANNIE MURPHY PAUL at NYTimes.com…. The “princess phase.” So inevitable is this period in the maturation of girls today that it should qualify as an official developmental stage, worthy of an entry in Leach or Brazelton: first crawling, then walking, then the urgent desire to wear something pink and sparkly.
And onto her book review of – Book Review – Cinderella Ate My Daughter – By Peggy Orenstein – NYTimes.com.”>Cinderella Ate My Daughter – By Peggy Orenstein (harpercollins.com)
Excerpt: …..in 2000 a Disney executive named Andy Mooney went to check out a “Disney on Ice” show and found himself “surrounded by little girls in princess costumes. Princess costumes that were — horrors! — homemade. How had such a massive branding opportunity been overlooked? The very next day he called together his team and they began working on what would become known in-house as ‘Princess.’ ” Mooney’s revelation yielded a bonanza for the company. There are now more than 26,000 Disney Princess items on the market; in 2009, Princess products generated sales of $4 billion.
Orenstein describes a toy fair, held at the Javits Center in New York, at which the merchandise for girls seems to come in only one color: pink jewelry boxes, pink vanity mirrors, pink telephones, pink hair dryers, pink fur stoles.
“Is all this pink really necessary?” Orenstein finally asks a sales rep.
“Only if you want to make money,” he replies.
So what do you think? Is PINK necessary?
What Did An Older Gentleman Do In Early 1800s, or Jane Austen’s and the Bridgerton’s Regency Era. #bridgerton #Regencyfashion #JaneAusten #BritishHistory
Love Jane Austen? Love the Bridgertons? Reader or writer of early 1800s history? Try this light-hearted look at an older gentleman’s day in the early 1800s. #bridgertons #RegencyEra #nonfiction #JaneAusten books2read.com/suziloveOGD


1806 Jane Austen Style Lavender Morning Dress and Lorgnette or Looking Glass, French. #RegencyFashion #JaneAusten #FashionHistory
1806 Lavender Morning Dress, French. High-waisted dress with short puffed sleeves over a white spotted bodice, Lorgnette or Looking Glass and holding a straw hat. Jane Austen and her family and friends would have worn this style of dress. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien.
Definition Empire Style Dress: Named after the First Empire in France. Empire dresses had a low neckline and skirts started directly under the bust and flowed into the classical relaxed wide styles of Greece and Rome. This style of dress is associated with Jane Austen and her contemporaries as a high-waisted dress was worn most days. Cotton, silk or taffeta were the popular fabrics. Only the very wealthy could afford white dress in this style as the cottons were imported from India and had to be carefully cleaned, usually by a lady’s maid.


1809-1829 Magazine for the Bridgertons and Jane Austen: Rudolph Ackermann and ‘The Repository of Arts’, The Strand, London. #JaneAusten #Bridgerton #RegencyEra #London
A portrait from 1810-1814 of Rudolph Ackermann, shop owner and founder of ‘The Repository Of Arts’ magazine, The Strand, London. via National Portrait Gallery, London. Plus, an image of Ackermann’s premises in 1809. His ‘Repository of Arts, Literature, Fashion, Manufactures, etc.’ was published from 1809 to 1829 with images of Regency London, Regency furnishings and grand homes as well as beautiful fashion prints and descriptions every month. Ackermann originally supplied artists, amateur and professional, with supplies for watercolor painting. In 1799, he began manufacturing and selling his own watercolor paint blocks which were supplied by other colourmen, although at least three colors were his own mixture – Ackermann’s Green, White and Yellow. From 1817, his eldest son Rudolph Ackermann junior was responsible for the watercolor manufacturing. Ackermann also trained as a carriage designer. He began publishing prints and colour-plate books like ‘The Microcosm of London’ and ‘Doctor Syntax’ in the early 1800s.
The Repository of Arts was one the most popular magazines in Jane Austen’s time as it displayed everything ladies wanted to learn e.g. history, important country seats and houses in England, music, current events such as theatre plays, plus fashion plates and embroidery patterns. Ackermann’s shop in The Strand, London, was one of the fashionable places to shop during the Regency Era. The Repository also included poetry, travel reports, society reports and upcoming lectures. It also included serious subjects e.g. politics, legal matters, medicine and agriculture, a meteorological journal and details of the London markets. In 1817, the price of the magazine was 4 Shillings, so quite expensive for the time.
In the first issue, published for January 1809, Ackermann included an ‘introduction to the history of the useful and polite arts’ which said: “It is universally admitted, that to cultivate a taste for the arts, and an acquaintance with the sciences, is a pleasure of the most refined nature; but to do this without regard to its influence upon the passions and affections, is to ‘tear a tree for its blossoms, which is capable of yielding the richest and most valuable fruit.’ The cultivation of this taste may and ought to be subservient to higher and more important purposes: it should dignify and exalt our affections, and elevate them to the admiration and love of that Being who is the author of everything that is fair, sublime, and good in nature.”


