Liberating Fashion: Aesthetic Dress in Victorian Portraits

Sumptuous  exhibition at the Watts Gallery looking at the Aesthetic Dress Movement and using portraits of the time to help tell the story.

The top gallery set the scene for the movement with photographs of some of the Pre-Raphaelite women in this looser rather mediaeval style clothing and a wonderful picture by Frith of the Royal Academy which showed women in aesthetic dress alongside the fashion of the time for tight corsets and bustles. It also looked at the contemporary criticism of the style including by Gilbert and Sullivan in “Patience”.

The lower gallery was a wonderful collection of portraits by artists like Watts, Alma Tadema, Burne Jones and others of women wearing  these type of dresses. The colours were amazing and the work also gave glimpse of aesthetic interiors. I loved the touch that the pictures were shown where possible alongside Liberty adverts for similar styles to point out these were clothes you could buy.

I came away wanting to dress in dark turquoise velvet and wave a peacock feather around!

Review
Telegraph

 

 

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