The Past is a foreign country

As you know, I have a great love for vintage clothes and jewellery. My current obsession is all things Edwardian (thank you Downton Abbey) - not as frilly and fussy as the Victorian era but still very pretty. I have been looking at sewing patterns for Edwardian style blouses with a view to finally mastering my sewing machine as well as knitting patterns for Edwardian cardigans and sweaters with a view to...well, finally finishing a knitting project. The question is, though,

How do you wear vintage in everyday life?

I know this topic has been covered elsewhere many times before but I have never found it to be satisfactorily answered. In my own case, I want to wear something a little different, but I don't want to look like I am a fully-fledged member of a re-enactment society on my way to an event. Neither, and there is no nice way to say this, do I want to look...barmy.

So, what do you think? Do you wear vintage? How do you do it?

Image from http://www.vintagevixen.com

Image from http://www.wearinghistory.com

Image from http://www.vintagefashionlibrary.com

Image from http://www.pastpatterns.com

 Image from http://www.erasofelegance.com

Image from http://www.becomegorgeous.com

Looking up at the stars, and seeing the clouds pass over them in their wild flight

Charles Dickens would have been 200 years old today. His novels are so dense, so intricate, but I am growing to love them. You might remember the BBC's latest adaptation of Little Dorrit. I thoroughly enjoyed it and as much as people often complain about adaptations, I credit it with bringing me back to Dickens after some torturous experiences when I was studying Victorian literature as an undergrad many moons ago.



For some reason, whenever I think of Dickens, I think of knitting. In fact, whenever I think of the Victorians generally, I think of knitting. There are all sorts of lovely Victorian knitting patterns floating around on the Internet so if you are so inclined, I highly recommend this site - http://historicneedlecrafts.blogspot.com.au/ I bought a gorgeous pattern for a cape shawl first designed in Edwardian Scotland from Debby's Etsy shop (http://www.etsy.com/shop/KnittyDebby) a couple of weeks ago.

Roasted Squirrel?

Some of the famous Mrs Beeton's desserts.

Still hooked on all things Victorian as I make my way through George Eliot's Middlemarch and Henry James' The Turn of the Screw. Once again though, having last night watched The Supersizers Go Victorian, I am very glad I didn't actually have to live in this era. I am astounded that people who lived - at the latter end of the era - only 109 years ago ate as differently from what we do today.

The programme focussed mainly on a fairly affluent diet but still! Enormous pies made of eight different meats. Roasted squirrel. Calves' heads (with calves' ear fritters). Roasted snipe (a snipe is a bird. The trick was to suck the brains out of its head with your mouth, eat the brains and then pick your teeth with its beak). Enormous wobbling jellies and blancmanges. It would seem that the extent to which human behaviour was repressed in the Victorian era found a way of bursting out in extravagant food. The poor, on the other hand, were served a soup composed mainly of water and flour. No wonder there were not long life expectancies!

Victoriana

Image from www.divinecaroline.com

I am currently enamoured with all things Victorian. I especially like the twist the Steampunk trend puts on it - Victorian but with a modern edge. Not quite so serious as the original Victorian look, in other words.

This is an original illustration from Dickens' Little Dorrit. Image from www.victorianweb.org

Tying in neatly with that, I am currently watching with considerable joy the BBC adaptation of Charles Dickens' Little Dorrit. Has anyone else seen it? It is beautifully done with an appealling delicacy of touch and just the right tinge of melancholy. It may even persuade me to try Dickens again after my unsuccessful attempts to read Dombey and Son as an English Lit undergrad many years ago.

Would I have wanted to live in the Victorian Age? Probably not, as Little Dorrit very clearly illustrates as the title character lives out in her life in a 'Debtor's Prison' - social decline and disgrace meant far more than having to send the TV to a pawn shop. But I do find this very precise and symbolically rich look very interesting.