On Demand: THREAD TALKS: Alison Toplis: Embellishing Smocks in the 19th C
I can “make three in a day”: making and embellishing smocks in the 19th and 20th centuries. This talk will focus on Victorian needlewomen.
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Online
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About this event
In 1862, Caroline Child claimed that she could make three smocks in one day. This seemingly wild assertion by a working-class woman working in the smock trade contrasts with the now common view of the Victorian smock as an heirloom garment, made and embroidered with care, perhaps even reflecting the individuality of their male wearer through their needlework.
This talk will unravel how this discrepancy in the garment’s history has arisen, tracing a path from how smocks were manufactured during the heyday of their usage in the mid-nineteenth century, when they functioned as a working garment for men, through to their take-up as artistic and reform dress, concluding with the emergence of smocking as a specific craft by the twentieth century.
There will be a focus on the Victorian needlewomen who made the garments as well as the women who later promoted these skills as a craft through organisations such as the Women’s Institute. By disentangling the complex narratives around one garment, which include workwear, folk dress and craft, the fascinating history of smock frock is revealed.
Please note that this ticket is for the recording of the event that took place in April 2024.
The recording is not downloadable and will be available for viewing for at least one month after registration.
Alison Toplis is currently an honorary research fellow at the University of Wolverhampton. After completing her MA in the History of Dress at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, she worked for several years as a dress and textiles specialist at Christie’s Auctioneers before completing her doctorate in the area of nineteenth-century working-class dress.
She has since lectured and published widely, including her books The Clothing Trade in Provincial England 1800-1850 (2011), and The Hidden History of the Smock Frock, published by Bloomsbury in May 2021 which won the Association of Dress Historians Book of the Year in 2022.
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