The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes

by Kate Strasdin

£22.00

Art

Hardback

9781784743819

Published by Vintage Publishing

Published February 2023

Books > Art

Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe

The hidden fabric of a Victorian woman’s life – from family and friends to industry and Empire – told through her unique textile scrapbook.

In 1838, a young woman was given a diary on her wedding day. Collecting snippets of fabric from a range of garments she carefully annotated each one, creating a unique record of her life and times. Her name was Mrs Anne Sykes. Nearly two hundred years later, the diary fell into the hands of Kate Strasdin, a fashion historian and museum curator. Strasdin spent the next six years unravelling the secrets contained within the album’s pages.

Piece by piece, she charts Anne’s journey from the mills of Lancashire to the port of Singapore before tracing her return to England in later years. Fragments of cloth become windows into Victorian life: pirates in Borneo, the complicated etiquette of mourning, poisonous dyes, the British Empire in full swing, rioting over working conditions and the terrible human cost of Britain’s cotton industry.

This is life writing that celebrates ordinary people: the hidden figures, the participants in everyday life. Through the evidence of waistcoats, ball gowns and mourning outfits, Strasdin lays bare the whole of human experience in the most intimate of mediums: the clothes we choose to wear.

Noble Ambitions by Adrian Tinniswood | 9781529111439

Noble Ambitions

Adrian Tinniswood

£12.99

The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries. by Elisabeth Sladek & Georg Ruppelt | 9783836593816

The World’s Most Beautiful Libraries.

Elisabeth Sladek & Georg Ruppelt

£25.00

Cabin by Will Jones | 9780500024959

Cabin

Will Jones

£20.00

The Bad Day Book by Swan Huntley | 9780241653739

The Bad Day Book

Swan Huntley

£12.99

Hockney by Simon Elliott | 9780711288423

Hockney

Simon Elliott

£16.99

A Way of Life by Jim Ede | 9780907074571

A Way of Life

Jim Ede

£49.95