Dressing your Regency lady.

Jane Austen's World

Inquiring readers. My first JASNA AGM in Brooklyn started out with a bang. Not only did I room with the wonderful Deb Barnum (Jane Austen in Vermont), but the first workshop I attended was given by Lisa Brown, co-coordinator of the Rochester and Syracuse Regions of JASNA (and the official photographer at the AGM, it seems). She presented a fashion show and workshop demonstration of Regency fashions, including detailed instructions on how to rework 1970s and 1980s gowns into very creditable Regency costumes. A similar custom was studiously followed by Regency ladies, such as the Miss Bennets and Miss Austens, whose income precluded them from custom ordering as many handmade gowns as they liked. Two hundred years ago, cloth and trim were quite expensive, although changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution in weaving, dying cloth, and creating off the rack gowns would make clothes more affordable as…

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