The Rest Is History - 238. The Regency Revolution

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

How were the bonnets, corsets, and empire line dresses of the Regency period expressive of a revolutionary era? In this episode, Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are joined by Hilary Davidson to discuss fashion in early 19th century Britain. Diving into the world of Jane Austen, they look to understand how the unprecedented changes in style were driven by the social, cultural, and political changes of the time. Join The Rest Is History Club (www.restishistorypod.com) for ad-free listening to the full archive, weekly bonus episodes, live streamed shows and access to an exclusive chatroom community. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. In former times, Greece was considered the first country in the world where the fair sex had acquired a superior taste in their vestments,

and every person of taste has admired the elegant simplicity of their dresses. In our memory, France has given her dresses to other nations, but it was reserved for the graces of Great Britain to take the lead in fashion and to show that if they do not surpass, they certainly equal the elegance of the most celebrated Grecian dresses. In short, beauty, shape and taste are nowhere more general nor anywhere better united than in England. So, Tom Holland, those were the words of Nikolaus von Heidloff, the Bruno of the 18th century, top fashion writer. A German engraver from Stuttgart who worked in paris then went to london and did a a gallery of fashion in the 1790s and early 1800s and um i mean that's pretty much the case now isn't it tom i mean in all seriousness you'll very rarely meet a foreigner who's who's better

dressed than an englishman that's true i think that's right and i think our beauty shape and taste remain the envy of the world absolutely trampled yeah the envy of the world. And Dominic, I mean, I like to think that we're a patriotic podcast, aren't we? Very much. And it strikes me listening to that that we don't begin our episodes with enough patriotic reflections on how great... And I know that we have a lot of overseas listeners from the

United States, Australia and so on, and I think they'll probably agree with us. I'm sure they'll agree with us. They won't in any way be disagreeing with anything we've said so far so so this is so dominic this the the period that that um that von heidloff is referring to is it's the regency period yeah and i would say the regency period is i mean it's famed for its dress isn't it uh so whether it's colin firth emerging from a lake in a southern lake or like you know so or bridgerton with all the kind of the froth and the fantasy of that the regency look is something really really distinctive um and you know it's it's it's

it's always been kind of uh interesting people have been aware when they look at Jane Austen that the seeming kind of tranquility of the world that she's portraying is illusory. Because in the background, you have the Industrial Revolution, you have revolutionary wars, Napoleonic wars, you have Britain's globalizing role for good and definitely for bad as well. And that was why I was, I was really, really fascinated to come across a book by Hilary Davidson, who is a fashion historian and curator called dress in the age of Jane Austin. And it is, it's a fantastic book because basically it,

it answers the question of what is going on in the world of fashion. And there is something really, really distinctive and unique. It's not just about the look. It's about the pace and the process of change that marks it out, I think, as properly revolutionary. And I'm delighted to say that we actually have Hilary with us. Hello, Hilary. Hello. And Hilary, you're Australian, aren't you? I am, yes. So how do you feel about Dominic's patriotism? Obviously, I can't disagree with anything he says. It's all true.

I think we should probably end the podcast right there, Tom. So Hilary, in your book, basically, you were saying that the Regency period, the bonnets, the Empire Line dresses, the Mr. Darcy shirt and all that kind of stuff, that these are the expressions of a revolutionary age and that this is something radically new. So in what way? It's like during the Regency period, which I think of as sort of starting about the mid 1790s, it's like people start transforming all the ways they've thought about clothing before. And it's just a fantastic kind of middle period that gets us from into the modern age. And so many of the elements of dress of this period, this very distinctive dress, as you say,

they're building in the years before, but then it catalyzes. And it's things like the silhouette of women's dress just changes completely from kind of triangles and breadth into this column shape. And men's dress takes on the silhouettes that we're still familiar with from kind of a three-piece suit today. And it's clothing transformation at a speed that we've never seen before, but it's all rooted in social, cultural, industrial and political change. So by and large, if you're in the mid 18th century, so the age before what we're going to be talking about today, the Regency period, are you wearing the same things, let's say in 1770 or 1780? Are you roughly dressed like your parents were before you roughly the principles of

clothing and how you put it together and the sort of the the basic shapes are very similar uh you know with fashions changing at pace there's details about volume and silhouette but the the template is the same yes right so a bloke is wearing stockings um and britches and britches yeah exactly yeah and a sort of and a sort of a shirt i guess and a and a and a coat and a waistcoat and then a coat on top of that but the coat doesn't have an emphasis on the shoulders and a lot of the bulk is kind of around the hips and thighs and powdered hair or wig and high heels and high heels at this point. So we should say about class rather than about gender. And we should also say that essentially in this episode, we're talking about people with enough money to invest in

fashion, which is presumably quite a minority. The sort of the middling gentry professional classes and above, which at this point is about 20, 25% of Britain's population. Right. So it's striking that it's the 1790s where everything really starts to change. To what extent is that influenced by the French Revolution, which of course is also kicking in at that time? Well, I think this is one of the great questions and it's discussed a lot in fashion history, but to my way of thinking, the revolution itself is assigned a lot of driver for the change rather than being a kind of a marker of the change that's happening. I feel like the continent shaking events of the French Revolution, they're part of wider revolutions that are going on. And dress, what happens to dress, where particularly the marker is that women's waistlines go up,

they move from the natural waistline to right under the bust in about a three to four year period, which is incredibly fast. And that was building anyway. And so clothing at this time is partaking of many revolutions. And it just happens to kind of fit neatly with many of the democratic ideals that are being uh you know promoted or made more vocal by the revolutionary period so how is i mean we can go into things other revolutions like the industrial revolution or indeed the enlightenment more generally in a second but just to pick up on that why is a higher

waistline more democratic well it's it's not just the higher waistline, it's the whole way gowns are constructed. So one of the big revolutions in dress is a shift from a silk regime to a cotton regime. And muslin becomes an acceptable, the white kind of thin translucent fabric, it becomes an acceptable fashionable textile. And this has been building since the late 1780s when Marie Antoinette scandalized the French court by appearing in a portrait dressed in a very simple dress made of muslin that was seen to be like a chemise or kind of women's underwear. But by the 1790s, this kind of light, simple clothing that draped around the body instead of requiring

structures underneath to give it shape, it was seen to hark back to the ancient world, to classical Greece and Rome, and to make women look like statues and to be part of new ideals of thinking about philosophical underpinnings of the world to be connecting life and art. That's kind of a lot of the ideas that are brewing in that. So to go back a second, we talked about how men dressed in the mid-18th century. So a woman, a woman of the sort of middling sort upwards in the mid-18th century is not dressed in that sort of classical way.

She's dressed in very, very elaborate, sort of rigid, with all – I don't really understand what stays are. What are stays? I'm glad you brought that up because it's really important. The changes in stays is, again, one of the key markers of the change into Regency dress. So stays are what are sometimes called corsets, but they weren't in the 18th century. And they are a stiffened supportive torso garment that women wear.

So, it runs kind of from the bust down to the waist, generally with a sort of pointed front, and it provides support for the bosom, and it gives shape to the outer garment. So, it's kind of like an inverted triangle. That's the shape they're going for. And then on the bottom of that is a skirt of varying sort of degrees of volume and width according to where you are in time and what you're doing. But it's all around this kind of very soft, rigid, unnatural body shape. So if you'll forgive me, why are the stays not a corset? Because they become a corset in the Regency period. Okay.

Yeah. But they're not a corset. Because what you described sounds very much like a corset to me, but this is me. I'm not familiar with women's, 18th century women's underwear as much as I should be. No, look, this is a really, really common mistake. The thing is that because we have lived through the great 19th century period of corsets, which is what people think of when they think of corsets the kind of the waist shaping the hourglass figure we tom thinks about corsets all the time millery remaining very quiet there tom i i have no comment

but what i would just to introduce you you quote a guy called william buckham who in 1811 is saying it is indeed impossible to think of the old straight waistcoat of whalebone and of tight lacing without astonishment and some degree of horror. And presumably he might be talking about men as well as women then, because you say about how the Prince Regent and his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, are so fat that they have to wear stays as well to compress their stomachs but just just sticking on on the the way in which um this kind of the the the decline of the stays as it were coincides with the french revolution there is there is a sense isn't there that by casting off corsetry you are embracing in france certainly you're embracing a kind of political liberalism, a kind of political freedom. I mean, would that be too excessive to say that? And if it is, then why is it happening in Britain as well? Because presumably Britain is defining itself against revolutionary France, against these kind of relaxations of traditional dress. The relationship between sort of French and

British fashion and who influences whom is is difficult and multi-layered and you're certainly in france kind of conceptually that casting off of previous shackles i mean as i say this has been building in art and court circles throughout the 1780s um so the french revolution kind of um crystallizes this manifestation. But in Britain as well, I think there's that sense of liberty and democracy because for many in France, the British parliamentary model where you do not have an absolute monarch, which is, of course, what the French Revolution is disposing of, has often been influential, which we see in menswear when we talk about that.

So there is, I mean, there are also sort of the general tides of fashion. As things happen, people embrace them. But there's a new naturalism that is also supposedly very commensurate with the British character, that the British are easy, they are natural, they are simple, they're not affected and fussy like the French, obviously. So there's a slight element of romanticism in that, isn't't there that there's sort of a turn away from the sort of the the rational and the ordered to a freer is that am i am i over egging that or is that no i

think that's a very valid point and for all that the adoption of kind of classical influence in dress is supposedly you know looking into that kind of clean, pure, philosophical ancient world. It is absolutely a romanticism. And the 1790s is also the period where in continental philosophy, the romantic philosophers is building. So it's looking back at the past and kind of, you know, using it as an influence for what's slightly costumey in fashion. So an emblematic example of that would be Emma Hamilton, would it? Yes. So tell us about Emma Hamilton, who marries the British ambassador to Naples, but is most famous for

having a relationship with Admiral Nelson, but who is kind of a celebrity, isn't she, for her kind of attitudinizing in wispy classical dress, but is a very, very romantic figure in every sense of the word. She absolutely is. And one of the things that, you know, people of good standing and connections did when they went to Naples was to go and see Emma Hamilton's attitudes. And she would kind of do these tableaus where just using basically drapery and scarves. And again, in that very simple tradition, she would kind of take attitudes and form like still lives that were inspired by the classical world and much by the sort of antiquarian objects that her husband collected. And there was people who saw it kind

of had trouble describing the particular quality of it, but it seemed to sort of, it was magical almost. She seemed to kind of step out of the past. And she was doing so with all of her magnificent chestnut hair unbound to her knees, you know, just wrapped in very simple clothing. And there's a lot of evidence to suggest that her fame and beauty and popularity was also very influential on travellers then returning home from Britain, people like Lady Charlotte Campbell, who then started kind of imitating not so much classical dress, but Emma Hamilton's version of classical dress. So that raises the interesting question about fashion more generally, which is,

this is an age where fashion, the idea of fashion exists. The word fashion? Very much so. And how much does that depend on, first of all, how much does that depend on individual trendsetters? So, you know, Emma Hamilton is the classic example, I suppose, or Marie Antoinette. And secondly, how is that disseminated? So is it all through print culture? Is it through pamphlets and, well, I guess, newspapers? I mean, how does it, how does it, yeah, how does it travel? For me, this has been one of the most interesting things in really researching the Regency period

and trying to determine how fashion does travel. And as far as I can tell, it's really through people. The influence of visual print media is not nearly as strong as we think it is at the time. We are left with thousands of Regency fashion plates, but that's kind of not how people were really getting their influence. We also have to remember that British society is much smaller at the time. So if you're in London, it's very likely you could see Lady Charlotte Campbell on the street or in Hyde Park. You can actually go and watch the fashion makers, the tastemakers in London. And then if you're

going to your milliner, your dressmaker, they're going to tell you what other people are buying. And even if you're further out into the country, your cousin, your friend who's in London can say, I saw a lady so-and-so wearing such and such, or, you know, I noticed that these veils or this kind of thing is in fashion, which Jane Austen does a lot in her letters. So there's a sense of kind of people transmitting through their own experience. And then also people watching what other people are wearing and taking that on board. And I think that that's actually still the strongest transmitter of fashion in this period. But presumably for that to work, you need a certain

degree of infrastructure for people to see a fashionable woman, what she's wearing, and then to have it copied. So you'd need the shops, you'd need the milliners, you'd need the fabrics, you'd need the industrial infrastructure that would be capable of doing it. And this is the age when Napoleon famously dismisses the British as a nation of shopkeepers. Is the fact that you have this infrastructure, is that, do you think, how important a role is that playing in kind of expediting this creation of a fashion industry? It's absolutely huge. You know, at this sort of period in the late 18th century, along the strand that are along Oxford Street, it's basically four miles of shops. And then, you know, further into sort of the more fashionable areas in Mayfair and along

Bond Street. So, London is absolutely full of retailers and wholesalers and warehouses and not only are people going to London to shop, as in Pride and Prejudice when Mrs. Bennett is panicking because Lydia won't know the best warehouses to go to in London. Smaller retailers outside the capital are also buying from London. They will go up to town and then bring their stock in and also see what people are wearing and doing there. So there is a robust network of transmission. And you could also do it by mail. So people would send you fabric samples. There was a lot of proxy shopping where if a friend of yours is going to a major urban center, it could be London or Bath, but even Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh,

they will go and shop on your behalf. And you say, please get me the most fashionable muslin, or I want a very nice yellow cane brick. And then they will go and see what other people are wearing and kind of get the intelligence and come back and go, this is what looked nice, or this is what I could get, or this is what they say is the most appropriate. So it really is relying on networks of acquaintance and that social infrastructure that so holds up the middle classes and above and that, you know, Austen's novels in a sense really demonstrate how those connections and acquaintance work. And fashion is running exactly along those lines as well. And then what's the speed of transmission beyond what you would consider the most fashionable

kind of metropolitan places so in other words if you think about a different era like you know the joke that's always made about the 1960s say is that everybody is wearing a mini skirt in carnaby street but in hull people aren't wearing miniskirts until 2012. How soon are people in Hull wearing the new fashions that are inspired by the sort of the Emma Hamiltons of this world? Basically as soon as information and income will allow them to. So if you've got the wherewithal and you're waiting eagerly for news from London about what the latest fashions are, and you go into your local shop and go, all right, I'm going to buy a muzzle and try and imitate this, you can do it kind of fairly quickly.

There is a school of thought that says that when, because one of the reasons I also like the Regency period is Australia has a history, colonised white history at this point. But the settlers in England, in Australia, who had a six-month wait for goods from Britain, actually, that wasn't much longer than if you're in the Welsh Hills or maybe the Scottish Highlands. So it could be relatively fast. And, in fact, there's a wonderful quote from the Irish author, Maria Edgeworth, who says that, you know, with the post and the roads that we have now, it's almost like everyone can know what everyone's doing at the same time

and it's like magical fairies, which, you know, in our day and age seems very slow. But she was impressed by how soon people could know what was happening and what was in fashion but dominic dominic compared this to the 60s um where the the sense of a kind of generational divide and and um is very strong and also the kind of the pleasure that the fashionable take in shocking um people with more old-fashioned takes on on what you should be wearing and i was really struck you quote you quote a magazine that that describes shocked old ladies and snorting old gentlemen bewailing modern tendencies the total lack of respect the boldness of behavior of the

girl of today and in particular the extreme indelicacy of her clothing i mean that could be describing i mean that could be describing the 60s, couldn't it? I mean, and really, really strike. So, again, is basically all the kind of revolutions of fashion, say the 60s, punk, everything, all the kind of stuff that we're familiar with in modern Britain. Do you think, is it anachronistic to think of something similar to that happening in the Regency? The Regency is the first great fashion revolution never had before has fashion changed so radically and so quickly and it's it kind of everything that comes afterwards is just basically a slightly quicker version of what happened then and it's interesting that the girl that i mean to use that i'm quoting the girl of today that that that that figure is at the center of both but as a sort of

um as almost a figure to be feared is it that there's a sort of fear of unbridled sexual excess and display and so on I mean that's certainly true in the 60s with the mini skirt and whatnot is that true am I right in thinking that's pretty much true in the 1790s as well? It absolutely is. And as the fashion starts to change in the 1790s and into the 1800s, one of the particular characteristics of it is it's using lighter fabrics and the cut shows off more of the body. And to go back to the sort of the difference between stays and corsets, corsets were lighter versions of stays that were just made of fabric. In fact, it's French for kind of little body. And the major significant change here is that stays kind of squished the bosom into sort of, you know, one round shape like the prow of a ship. And the new corsets gave us two breasts. And on a purely technical level, you have to cut

things completely differently when you've got sort level, you have to cut things completely differently when you've got sort of, you know, two oranges sitting up the front there to be draped. And the visibility just through silhouette of the female breast was, it was shocking. If you're used to seeing kind of this smooth triangular shape up the top with, you know, a little bit of rising bread at the top of it, to see the clear outline of the female figure, it's very confronting. Not only that, you get lower back lines of gowns, so you see sort of shoulder blades and necks. The sleeves get shorter, so you're seeing more of the arm and the columnar shape of the gowns. They do kind of cling a bit over the hips and legs.

So by comparison, this is naked. This is it's far less structured. The fabric is more transparent. You don't have that covering. And you can kind of see that, you know, women have two arms and two legs and join them all together. It's quite a shock. But equally, this isn't the 60s. This is still a society

very much governed by kind of religious morality, standards of behavior and so on. And so I'm guessing that what you wear, I mean, in a period of rapid change where fashions are changing and where the fashions reflect, you know, tend to be generated by the upper classes and they ripple outwards into the provinces.

This presumably is why jane austen's novels are so concerned with behavior people doing the wrong things people committing the tiny little mistake that gets them kind of cast out into social oblivion and presumably then dress is absolutely key to this to jane austen's world in that sense. It absolutely is because all of those nuances of enough but not too much that so rule the middle classes apply to clothing as well. And there's lots of examples, which I give a few in the book, of people saying basically, all right, you have to know what's in fashion because you can't be too behind the times. But it's not seemly to be too much in fashion because you can't be too behind the times, but it's kind of, it's not seemly to be too much in fashion.

You have to occupy a quite particular narrow ground of, you know, being like everyone else, you know, not being too old fashioned, but you don't want to go too radical. You don't want to go too extreme because it's not respectable. And how to kind of balance that is it spends, the middle class has spent a lot of time thinking about how to express that in their clothing. Yeah. And that's such a theme, isn't it? All the way through all her novels. I think we should take a break at this point. And when we come back, perhaps we could look at the specifics of how female and male clothing, because I thought one of the most eye-opening things in your book was the way in which actually male clothing, the revolution in male clothing,

is perhaps the most enduring. In a sense, we're still living with it now. This is the answer, Tom, to a question that I have long pondered, which I've discussed with you before. When did people start wearing trousers? Well, we will answer that question. So we will see you back in a few minutes. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews,

splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes, and early access to live tickets, head to rest is entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com the result of the finest toilet should be an elegant woman not an elegantly dressed woman. That, of course, was Mr. Darcy. Timeless words, timeless ruling. And we are with Hilary Davidson, who is taking us in the first part through an

absolutely brilliant tour de raison of Regency fashion. And Hilary, now we've discussed how this is a kind of revolutionary process, the first great age of fashion. Could we look specifically at how women's clothing changes over the course of the 30 years of the, let's call it the Regency period, the 1790s and the first two decades of the 19th century? What is it exactly that is so radical about the process of change? Well, as I say, the silhouette and the concept of what the body that you're dressing on changes fundamentally. Every period has its kind of ideal body. And from the kind of structured, formal mannered 18th century body, we suddenly have a new appreciation of quote unquote, the natural body. And to see the body in the shape that it was. This is a really fundamental change that then underpins so much of the change that happens

with dress. The change from very stiff stays to the softer corsets that then will emerge into the 19th century corsets with kind of less boning made of cotton and reflecting the shape of the body. That is coming from the kind of the changes in the body. That also then changes how you cut a dress because you have to do it differently if you've got a different supporting structure underneath. The biggest change and the one that most defines Regency women's dress is that the waistline goes up to underneath the bust and it stays there for about 20 years. So that also changes the styles that you can put onto that.

You can't kind of have a huge skirt coming out from underneath your bust because it looks ridiculous as any pictures of Regency court dress will show. So it then changes what you can do with the rest of the fabric. The move to short sleeves also changes the decorative possibilities there because you've got a new structure of clothing on which to play. And then a lot of the industrial revolution that's happening is to do with textiles. So you've got new fabrics, especially in the realm of lace and knitting. And once you have new things, people want to play with it. So you've got all of these kind of new ideas like transparency and multi-layering of clothing coming into Regency dress that just wasn't physically possible before, except in limited ways with things like silk gauze. And then you have new headwear like the bonnet coming in.

Right, which is absolutely the marker of a Jane Austen, isn't it? So they're always going on about their bloody bonnets and jane austen books aren't they i mean they care about nothing more than their bonnets would you would you say that um the the saliency of bonnets in jane austen adaptations is reflective of the reality or is is it a period a kind of costume drama uh fantasy it's women wore some kind of headwear all the time. A bonnet was one of multiple options for that. And also what we think of now is that classic, you know, deep brimmed thing. For Regency dresses, a bonnet could also mean a soft cap like a scotch bonnet.

So the kind of the brimmed item, it was one, convention, and two, it kept the sun off your face, which was important for their notions of beauty about not being tanned. One of the criticisms of Lizzie Bennet in Pride and Prejudice is that she's become brown with the sun. And obviously there's all sorts of implications in that as well. So headwear was important, but it wasn't necessarily always a bonnet. But you always have your hair long, presumably. Yes. Well, not actually. No. In this period, we have some interesting things. It's another radical thing that happens. Women can have their hair cropped and quite short, like a pixie cut. And there is-

Paranightly, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And it's thought that a lot of this does actually, this one comes from the French Revolution, where aristocrats who had had relatives who had been executed would actually go to parties à la victime, and they would crop their hair in imitation of those who had their hair cut off before they went to the guillotine. That's a bit weird. Yeah, that is quite.

But yeah, for the first time, women could actually have short hair, and it was sort of part of this radical newness men cut theirs off as well but in general it was long and if it was long it was never out never this kind of you know half up hair flowing romantical style that's beloved on screen just doesn't exist in the regency period it was always always up, basically. Always up. Right. And one of the, I mean, again, anyone who has particularly watched film TV adaptations of Jane Austen, I guess particularly Pride and Prejudice, where Lizzie Bennet is always walking, isn't she?

Presumably, it's more difficult for women to ride than it is for men. So in a sense, they're obliged to walk. And to what extent does that influence the direction of fashion for women? Well, one of the things I really want to explore in the book and to challenge was this idea of kind of women as sort of, you know, helpless, languorous beasts kind of stuck on their sofa. And, you know, one of the joys about that adaptation is that it really showed the physicality of daily life. And there's lots of records of the joys about that adaptation is that it really showed the physicality of daily life.

And there's lots of records of Regency women doing 20-mile walks. And in a sense, the fact that shoes lose their heels for women, they become completely flat. This really encouraged especially middle-class women to be able to walk more. And there's lots of walking shoes with kind of studded soles that give you grip on muddy surfaces. But it's also kind of a matter of economics because a horse was expensive to maintain and it was often kind of a working thing. So, if there was a horse in the household, it's likely that the men would have to use it for their business. So, walking was very practical and it's also a way of reinforcing social interactions. You know. You walk to the village

and back, but you also have a whole lot of outer clothing that supports this walking, things like cloaks and palaces and patterns, which are a kind of a high raised clog that keep you out of, on unpaved roads, it's dusty in summer, it's muddy in winter. So there is lots of clothing that supports this physical activity as well in this period. And you say that of Jane Austen's actual dress, the only known survivals are a pelisse and a shawl and then various items of jewellery. That's right.

But would Jane Austen have worn high heels? No, they weren't in fashion. So people had worn heels 50 years, certainly 100 years earlier, but now they've gone out and they've gone out for women and for men? Yes. Except for Nicolas Sarkozy later in life. So we, on the podcast, we've been very anxious about the fact that the Kaiser, when he went to cows, yachting, wore the wrong shoes.

And essentially this was the cause of the First World War. Tom yachting, wore the wrong shoes. And essentially, this was the cause of the First World War. Tom, you also wore the wrong shoes on a yachting holiday. I did. You may be honest. I did. But I wondered, just on the topic of shoes, could you turn up at a ball at Pemberley and be wearing the wrong shoes? Would that bring shame on you? It would, absolutely. Unfortunately those it's one of those glitches of some historical productions that they've had male characters turn up to balls in boots no no oh dear i would have definitely worn boots to a ball well you'd have you'd have been flung out then wouldn't you shame on the name of sandbrook but i would have been in full military uniform people

would have welcomed me as a returning hero oh that, that's all right. If it's military uniform, that's fine. Yes. We will be coming to that in a minute. But just one last thing on what women are wearing. I said that by and large, men are likely to be riding horses than women, but you do say riding habits were Britain's most successful female dress export. So that's good to know. It is. Riding habits were basically the nearest imitation to men's dress that you could get in women's wardrobe. And it's a quite practical, usually a bodice and a skirt made out of wool, usually tailored like men's clothing and made by tailors who are making for men. And it was just kind of a hard wearing practical gown for riding but also for traveling and sort of sort of casual wear in a sense women are usually riding side saddle at this point so

it also has quite voluminous skirts to hide the legs uh which shift slightly and so when when say um 1850 after the battle of waterloo british women go to Paris. Do they look completely odd to the French? I mean, do they look really, they say yes, you know, anglaise? It's quite interesting. You can trace a definite shift in British fashion from about 1814. Because, of course, in 1814, we've got the first peace. And there is a kind of tour of European leaders that comes to Britain. So, you know, the Emperor of Russia is there.

And his sister, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, who has a very influential bonnet, the very high-crowned Oldenburg bonnet sweeps Europe. And that's when you start to sort of get, I mean, there's been interaction between France and Britain for fashion during the whole Napoleonic War period. But that's when you start to get people going, oh, look at what the French are doing. And when the English go to Paris, the French think they look slightly dowdy and old-fashioned and they're too interested in historicalness.

I know, right? Who'd have thought? It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. Nobody ever says that about the English. I mean, that's shocking. And the French looked, they still had kind of higher waists, but their skirts were starting to get a bit broader.

And there's all these slight changes that happen in British fashion between about 1814, 15, where it kind of comes more into line with French fashion. And you start getting people sort of talking about the things they brought back from Paris, and also how customs is confiscating some of the things they brought back from Paris. And, you know, they're not very happy about that. So hold on, just to recap, Nikolaus von Heidloff, when he said the English were absolute top dogs in the sartorial arena, are you saying that this view was not, in fact, universally held?

That some people thought the English were a bit boring and fusty and reactionary in their dress? Is that right? Well, they did, but it was the French who thought that. So is that, yeah. Yeah yeah they would wouldn't they but also hillary i mean i mean isn't it isn't it the case that that perhaps female fashion is seen as being less cutting edge less less kind of must have very much on the continent but male fashion is i gather from your book absolutely the bee's knees anglomania it is anglomania and you know it's remarkable how appropriate it becomes there's there's quotes saying that you

know if you are if you are dressed in the english style you are well dressed anywhere on the continent for me i mean that is that hasn't changed has it that's very true today um so so what what so what is it about well two questions first of all what changes about male dress in britain over the 1790s and the first two decades of the 19th century and what is it about those changes that that strikes people on the continent as as so appealing this is kind of a it's a it's a twofold answer because like much of the changes, this has also been building during the 1770s and 80s. And what distinguishes English men's dress from the French is, in a sense, it's casualness, it's comfort. The notion of the English country gentleman who is in good solid leather breeches, he's wearing riding boots,

and he's got a well-tailored but plain coat that sort of suits him, that he can jump on a horse, he can stride around with the hounds in. It's kind of emblematic of more ease and freedom, but also his kind of more democratic abilities as kind of master of it. He doesn't have to wear the kind of court Versailles. The peruke and the buckles. Yeah, and all of the embroidery and the silk.

So it's quite a distinct figure from that. So sort of the country squire has always been held up like that, and Anglomania really starts to kind of take off in probably the 1780s. So as these kind of new changes come in, it's seen that this style that is there in England, it becomes even more embraced. And within England, there's an increasing kind of, I suppose, trickle up. You get a lot of men being made fun of for dressing like they're

grooms or dressing like jockeys, like working men who have kind of practical, comfortable clothing. So it's like Prince Harry or somebody wearing a baseball cap. Yes, exactly. Exactly. But there's a sort of emphasis on sobriety. Is that fair? So you're not dressing in a flamboyant way. You're not trying to look like a sort of fop. You're trying to look serious and you wear dark colours.

And that's new, right? Because previously men had dressed in very, very bold, dramatic, sort of bright colours. And in a way, I suppose you could say, this is one of those elements of this revolution that has endured. I mean, men do, by and large, dress much less brightly than women, don't they? They absolutely do.

And what we also get from this period, and again, this is still where the English reputation maintains, is good tailoring. Yes, Savile Row. Yeah, Savile Row. Savile Row's greatness begins during this period because previously, the kind of the quality of the fabric and the embroidery and to a sense, the decoration was more important. But suddenly, you start to get more of an emphasis on kind of quite subdued or austere fabric, but cut beautifully. So it makes you look better and it enhances the body and it enhances the shoulder.

And you get this new kind of emphasis on this kind of still what is the template male figure of like broad shoulders, strong neck, narrow waist, strong hips, which is also coming from classical statues and the classical ideal. So it's all working in together. But the sense of that the quality of the fabric is not immediately visible, but it's how it's tailored and shaped that's important springs from this period. Well, Hilary, I have a bespoke suit from Sao Paulo. And it does make me look like a Greek god. It's amazing.

Which one? Hephaestus.'s amazing Hephaestus yeah Hephaestus exactly the band a friend of mine who was fabulously rich said I think I can get you a special deal with my tailor I was so excited about it

and he did get me a special deal but it was still so expensive it was eye-wateringly expensive I'm sure Tom that will I'm sure, Tom, that will, I'm sure the listeners will love hearing this detail. It makes you really relatable. Well, I might post a photo of myself in my Savile Racing. Oh, that will really endear you to the public.

Yeah, do. But still, you, I mean, say, you know, if you're really a Regency gentleman, you'd actually be going to different tailors for your coat and for your waistcoat and your trousers and obviously obviously the role model for a well-dressed man about town like myself as as he has always been is beau brummel who yes cuts a tremendous dash in your book um so if people who don't know about beau brell, who is basically the model of fine English tailoring and dressing, isn't he? Just tell us about him and how cool he is.

So Beau Brummell is very interesting because he was not aristocratic. This is a key point about him. He was a middle class fellow. I mean, he still went to Eton, but he was in... So he's not Alexander McQueen. But that kind of thing, in Regency terms. So he's not Alexander McQueen. But that kind of thing in Regency terms. Yeah, exactly. And he was just incredibly well-dressed and attentive to clothing himself,

but not in a showy way, in a subdued way. So he was about having the best of things, but not being ostentatious. Beautifully laundered shirts, beautifully cut jackets, you know, perfect trousers. But his ideal was always that the man in the street should not turn and look at you. You should be so perfectly dressed, you are invisible. And his ideas and way of dressing was kind of like a breath of fresh air. But I mean, I should also say it's very much encapsulating what is already happening in clothing. And he's like the best, he's the apotheosis of what this is. And he ended up becoming friends with the Prince Regent

and kind of really influencing his clothing and had much more powerful reach about ideas about dress that weren't necessarily about showiness. They were about quality and understanding and connoisseurship in clothing that have become incredibly influential. And as I say, he's the figure who best started doing that and wasn't an aristocrat.

And so he looms large over dress history. Well, perhaps through Beau Brummel, we can come to the absolutely key question, which is about trousers. So Beau Brummel wears trousers. You have always wondered about this. Well, I said to you in an earlier podcast ages ago. I know, I remember.

That years and years ago, Tom, when I was doing my PhD, I went for a drink with Ted Vallance, who's been on our podcast to talk about Magna Carta and about the execution of Charles I. And I said to him, Ted, when did people start wearing trousers? And despite the fact that he was doing a PhD at the same time on early modern history, he couldn't give me a definitive date. Because it's not his period, as he would have known it had he read Hilary's book.

Clearly, clearly. Tell us about trousers. Yeah, if I'm a man about town in 1770, I'm not wearing trousers. In 1820, I am wearing trousers. So when's that tipping point? It, again, begins to pick up speed in the 1790s for a couple of reasons. So when we talk about breeches, they are always knee length. They finish just underneath the knee.

And the only, this is sort of standard, you know, middle class and upper wear and working wear as well. And the only people who are wearing lower garments, the only men who are wearing lower garments that run from the waist all the way down to the ankle are sailors. And they're wearing kind of loose, comfortable trousers on board ship, some working men as well. And this in a sense is also what they mean by the sans culotte in the French Revolution. They mean they're not wearing breeches, they're wearing trousers. So in another one of these trickle up moments we get a new popularity for ankle reaching legwear in the 1790s thanks to war because men in the army are wearing pantaloons which are kind of

in between breeches and trousers that they're completely tight fitting to the leg but they run all the way down so they're tight like breeches, but they're long like trousers. Hold on. I'm just trying to get my head around pantaloon. A pantaloon is like a legging. Yeah. So what's Nelson wear? Does he wear trousers or pantaloons? He's wearing, for full dress, he's wearing breeches. And then I think if he's just hanging around the cabin,

he's wearing white dog trousers with the lads. So military men and naval men are wearing these ankle-length garments. And as the Napoleonic Wars increase and the respect and admiration of the nation increases for these men as well, trousers start to become fashionable. So, again, it's a kind of a casualization because, first of all, pantaloons are easier to get into boots, which you're wearing for riding. So as riding boots become more popular, pantaloons work with them. And they start to creep into fashion. So I think it's in 18, oh, gosh, early on, the Duke of Wellington was actually refused admission to Ulmax,

the most exclusive social club, because he was wearing trousers. I think it's about sort of the 1810s. He wore the wrong trousers. He wore the wrong trousers. Wow, history could have been changed there as well. Yeah. Didn't matter how famous you were, it was still not considered acceptable. But by about 1820, the use of these trousers, whether tight like pantaloons or just sort of long as trousers that we have now, had just become normalised. Right.

And this is further compounded by the appearance of Russian Cossacks in London in 1814 who were wearing trousers that are pleated at the top and are quite full. And imitations of these became popular and were called Cossacks. Right. So I think Lord Liverpool, I think, was the first prime minister to have ever worn trousers. Because I think there's a famous portrait of Lord Liverpool where he's clearly wearing trousers. So that's my contribution to the old trousers.

Well, my contribution is that the most fashionable, the kind of, maybe the person who makes them really fashionable is Byron, because he has a club foot. And so wearing trousers enables him to disguise his club foot which I learned from your book yeah he's um he's he definitely finds them more comfortable and also he you know spends a lot of time in hotter areas they're sort of they're looser they're easier but Byron loved trousers because the length meant that he could hide his his little foot how much he actually popularised them may be sort of, you know, self-mythologising because he's not averse to that.

But the, I mean, you touched on this, the idea that men in red coats and you, I mean, the Navy as well, you have a picture of a guy called Captain Gilbert Heathcote who, I mean, sensational. He's gorgeous. Yeah, I mean, he's... Yeah, you love this bloke, Tom, don't you? Well, I don't normally feel homoerotic slurrings, but... But you do.

He's quite something. He's splendid. He's splendid. So basically, you say that looking at soldiers is a rare example of Regency women frankly appraising the physique of the opposite sex. And of course, as Mrs. Bennett, isn't that who famously says that there was a time when she liked a red coat. So we've talked about how, you know, with Beau Brummel and everything, men's tailoring is becoming sober and respectable. But presumably having all these kind of guys in bright red coats.

With very tight trousers on. Well, yes. Okay. So this was my favorite sentence in your entire book. Anxieties about male evening dress involved tightness. So red coats and tightness. Talk us through that. Well, as women's waistline rose on dresses, the fronts of men's waistcoats were also rising.

So where in the 1770s or 80s they largely covered the groin, by the sort of about 1800, you suddenly had the entire area from the waist right down to the ankle visible. And so in men's dress, you also have coats that are cut away at the origin of our modern tailcoats with a slightly higher front and nothing to cover at the front. So there's a lot more of the male loins, shall we say, on display and in focus than there has previously been. And when you combine that with the appeal of the uniform on top, whether that's red for the army or kind of blue for the Navy, there's a lot to look at. Right. Okay. So would it be fair to say that, I mean, just elaborate what we touched on at the

start of this section, that what happens with male dress, there is a continuity from this period that is still with us to this day. So whether it's people wearing, men wearing very tight jeans, whether it's a suit that has become a kind of global uniform, the origin point for those kind of trends are this period in Britain. Absolutely. And the way that men's dress transforms in the 1790s and 1800s sets the template for essentially Western men's dress that is still with us today. But can I ask about two things that's not with us today? One of them is wigs. So at what point do people drop wigs? Well, one of the interesting things I came across in my research is that it actually takes a while for people to drop wigs. They're just not so obvious. So the kind of the white powdered wig that is so emblematic of the 18th century, people still wear wigs.

They just do it with natural coloured hair. So, you know, you're wearing a wig, but it's, you know. It's a toupee. Brown. It could be your hair. It could be your hair. And so that's kind of it encompasses that change from artificial hair to natural hair. But we've got a really good example of when it starts to become a bit passé,

which is, unsurprisingly, the Prince Regent. By the time he becomes George IV, he's wearing a flaxen wig that is obviously just inappropriate for him, and it's commented upon because it looks so awkward and, you know, obviously bad. So he's wearing the wrong hair. Yeah. It's commented on by Bo Brummel, isn't it?

Who's your fat friend? Because they have a kind of falling out. They do. Yeah. So allied to wigs, I mean, you couldn't wear a wig and this thing, are hats. So am I, forgive my ignorance, but basically do hats replace wigs? Because you can't wear both, can you? Oh, absolutely.

Yes, you can wear both. You can wear both. You can wear a tricorn hat. Yeah. I suppose you can, can't you? Yeah, of course you can't wear both can you oh absolutely yes you you can wear both you can wear a tricorn hat yeah i suppose you can can't you yeah of course you can stupid question so but people are still wearing hats that is to have the hats change as well because people obviously stop wearing tricorn hats they do and again you know so many things change in this period so we get top hats which we're you know we're so used to now. But you're absolutely right in identifying the tricorn hat. That's the kind of the typical hat of the 18th century, which is, you know, you take a round hat and you turn the brim up in three points, or you get the bicorn where you turn it up front and back,

which is the very naval style. But we have these kind of higher crowned beaver hats, you know, made of beaver fur in the 1790s that have sort of a slightly angled in crown. And those crowns start to get straighter. So, this kind of stovepipe-y looking prototype of the top hat, it becomes more and more popular during all of this period that we're talking about until by 1820, which is when all of these changes seem to have kind of coalesced. We stopped getting the period of transition and people are like, okay, this is what clothing is now. Yep, yep.

Okay, good. Let's go. The top hat has become normal men's headwear. Right. That has completely replaced the tricorn. That looks archaic and rustic by this point. Tom, let me ask you this question. Would you prefer to have worn a top hat and trousers, very tight trousers,

or would you prefer to have worn a tricorn hat and breeches and stockings? I would definitely, I would go for Beau Brummel. Would you? Yeah. I think everyone who knows me would say that I'm clearly a disciple of Beau Brummel. I would love to have worn a tricorn hat.

Well, you'd look splendid. You would look like a kind of country squire, wouldn't you? Yeah, or a sort of corrupt excise man yes yeah absolutely like a sort of a cruel and rapacious excise man on the coast yes dealing with smugglers on a daily basis you need to have a slightly redder nose i think you drink a lot who's that bloke that i was likened to on the podcast squire all worthy is it squire all worthy or were you Squire Allworthy Squire Weston Squire Weston in Tom Jones yeah

but I mean I like to think of myself as Mr Darcy so that's the difference between us so well I think you should

I think when you know we should reenact these scenes shouldn't we we should I mean I'd pay good money

to see you coming out of a lake when the freezing cold I really love Regency Male Fashions it's actually one of the reasons why i want to do this podcast why i read henry's book um they are very elegant they really

are and they they make me look great and hillary you're very much you're very much team 1815 not team 1780 am i right i mean i am i am i really i start to get interested in the 1790s lots of people love 18th century fashion i do lots of work on it, but it kind of, it leaves me cold until the 1790s. And then I'm just like, oh, look at all this stuff that's happening. Hilary, I am with Lady Elizabeth Whitbread, who you quote, who comes across a man dressed in the kind of things that Dominic would have been wearing. Are you not ashamed of yourself? You a man and an Englishman?

Because he's wearing, he's wearing the wrong the wrong clothes too too fancy too too yeah colors are too bright uh and all that kind of stuff anyway um hillary thanks so much that was that was such fun and your book is so good uh so dress in the age of jane austen um all about regency fashion and it's not just brilliantly written but it has amazing illustrations as well it's a beautiful beautiful book. So if you have any interest in this subject, rush out and buy it. Thanks very much for listening and impeccably dressed as ever. We will be back for more podcasts very soon. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye bye. Bye bye. thanks for listening to the rest is history for bonus episodes early access ad-free listening

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