Category: Victoria Hinshaw

Fashion Museums in Britain

Red Silk Robe a l’Anglaise, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1760’s

Victoria here, taking some time off of Pinterest for a change…and ruminating on the wonderful fashion museums which have so carefully preserved the clothing and accessories of bygone eras.  The U.K. is replete with wonderful museums, almost all of which have some fashions, in even the smallest of local collections. The grandaddy of them all is, of course, The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, which modestly calls itself, “The world’s greatest museum of art and design.” The website is here.

I suppose no one who has visited the sprawling site on Cromwell Road would quarrel with the designation, for it is truly superhuman to cover its many displays even in multiple visits.I can hardly drag myself out of the fantastic gift shop when I get there!

Would you be disappointed if I did not include a link to that wonderful shop?  Be forewarned — they are excellent at shipping.  Click here — if you dare.

The Costume Collection has been recently redone and has re-opened with an exhibition of ball gowns from the 1950s to the present. It will be on display through January 2013, along with selections from the permanent collection of historic fashions.

I love the Georgian, Regency and Victorian gowns usually on view.  Due to their fragility, the items are frequently rotated from storage to display and back.

V and A: White Dress with scalloped hem, ca. 1830
British, cotton muslin with wool embroidery, silk, satin and wadded rouleaux

V and A: Evening Dress, 1807-11  British,
machine made silk net, embroidered with chenille thread, with silk ribbon, hand sewn; over red petticoat

Among the V and A’s fashion exhibits

Also in London, Kensington Palace stores, conserves and exhibits Historic Royal Fashions.  Recently, the collection of Royal Wedding Gowns was restored. Beginning this fall, some of the storage areas, formerly Princess Margaret’s Apartment 1A, will be renovated for Prince William, Duke of Cambridge, and his Duchess, the former Catherine Middleton.

Parts of Kensington Palace formerly housed Diana, Princess of Wales, and is the home in which Prince William grew up.  Other members of the extended royal family also have quarters there.

Here is an article that tells more about the Palace, the renovations and the Royals.  For more details, click here.

Parts of Kensington Palace include the State Rooms of William and Mary, the childhood rooms of Queen Victoria, and the Royal Fashions.   I have not seen an announcement of the final plans for the fashions, but one assumes that  Historic Royal Palaces, which administers Kensington Palace a well as other former Royal residences in the London area (e.g. Tower of London, Hampton Court Palace) will take advantage of sharing the complex with the popular young Royals to attract visitors to their displays.

Queen Victoria’s Wedding Gown, Kensington Palace
The Assembly Rooms, Ba
th

In Bath, The Fashion Museum is located in the Assembly Rooms, which are administered by the National Trust.  The Fashion Museum has more than 30,000 items from1600 to the present. The website is here.

a view of storage at the Fashion Museum
display at the Fashion Museum
Gown of plain-weave white cotton, ca. 1813, with striped wool shawl
 Bath Fashion Museum
Lilac cotton sateen corset lined with cream cotton
1880-85, Bath Fashion Museum
Shoes of many eras carefully preserved, Bath Fashion Museum
Another excellent Fashion Museum shows many items owned and preserved the the National Trust at Killerton House, a Regency-era country villa in Devon. The website is here.
Killerton, NT
Croquet Dress, 1863-65, silk taffeta with glass buttons
Killerton House Fashion Collection
Man’s Waistcoat, 1750, silk, satin, metal
Killerton House Fashion Collection

Also at Killerton are many attractive rooms and an extensive garden to explore.  As always, NT has a selection of tasty delights at the tea-room not to mention the temptations of the NT gift shop.

Manchester City Galleries

I have never visited Manchester (something I need to remedy), but the Manchester City Galleries website (here) has an extensive on-line fashion collection.  Here are a couple of examples of their holdings.

Man’s Court Suit, 1775-85
Tennis Dress, 1880’s

Bodice, 1650-1660, Dorset, UK

For a list of museums with fashion and costume collections, click here.  And if you are a resident of the US, there are many outstanding fashion collections here too.  Do you have any recommendations for good fashion collections on either side of the pond?

The Kyoto Fashion Institute seems to be an amazing place, or at least its website and publications are excellent.  They organize many exhibitions, some of which are shown in venues outside Japan.    Click here.

London 2012: Olympic Equestrians

Victoria here, writing about two of my favorite subjects: London (or, rather, make that Greenwich) and horses.

I’m hoping that, like 2008, I will be able to watch some of the Olympic Equestrian events between July 27 and August 12.  Six sets of medals will be awarded, for individual and team accomplishments in three categories: Eventing, Dressage, and Show Jumping.  All three call for the very highest talents, training, and cooperation among horses and riders, and with the Pentathlon, they are the only Olympic sports that involves human-animal collaboration.

The venue for the Equestrian events is Greenwich Park
 on the grounds between the Queen’s House and the Greenwich Observatory, a spectacular setting just downriver from London.  This newly laid out — and temporary — facility was home to an Olympic Test Event last summer. 
2011

An even better view (below) shows rider Karin Donckers of Belgium in the dressage competition in 2011. Does it get any more spectacular than this, London lovers?  There were some protesters, but the powers-that-be promise to return the site to its usual lawn and tree-studded parkland.

In 2008, the Olympic Equestrian  events were held far from Beijing in Hong Kong, so the competitors are pleased to be more centrally located this year.  In 2012, as in 2008, medals will be awarded in six categories, as below, listing the winners in 2008:

In Eventing, Germany won gold, Australia won silver and Great Britain bronze. For the individual medals in Eventing, riders from Germany, the USA, and Great Britain won the gold, silver and bronze medals respectively.

Zara Phillips, 2012 Team GB in Eventing
In Dressage, the team winners were Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark, while the winning individual riders were from the Netherlands, Germany for both silver and bronze.
Nicola Wilson, 2012 Team GB in Dressage
The 2008 winners in Show (or Stadium) Jumping were USA, Canada, and Norway; in the individual events, winning riders were from Canada, Sweden, and the USA. Below, Team USA with their 2008 gold medals. 
2008 Beijing (Hong Kong venue) Olympics

The Equestrian events are clustered as follows:

Eventing: Saturday 28 – Tuesday 31 July
Dressage: Thursday 2 – Thursday 9 August
Jumping: Saturday 4 – Wednesday 8 August

Eventing competitions — often called Horse Trials —  are three-day series of activities which include dressage, stadium jumping and a 5.7 kilometre cross-country course.  All three phases with the same horse and rider require a very high level of training and partnership.  2012 Team  GB members in Eventing are: William Fox-Pitt, Nicola Wilson, Mary King, Zara Phillips, and Kristina Cook. Cook won the 2008 individual bronze medal in Eventing.

Tina Cook 2012 Team GB in Eventing
William Fox-Pitt, 2012 Team GB in Eventing
Dressage movements are based on refined versions of abilities needed by war horses in combat situations.  Like the preliminary rounds of figure ska
ting or gymnastic competitions, a series of prescribed movements are performed and scored, followed by a free-style, though formal, sequence choreographed carefully and set to music. Such refined natural movements as the piaffe, passage and pirouette must be executed.  Both horse and rider need intense concentration, intimate control, and perfect harmony.
Carl Hester, 2012 Team GB in Dressage
Laura Bechtolsheimer, 2012 Team GB in Dressage
Charlotte Dujardin, 2012 Team GB in Dressage

Olympic Factoid:  At the 2012 Olympics, watch for the dressage appearance of Japan’s team member Hiroshi Hoketsu who is competing at age 71, oldest  team member in the London games.  This is, however, not the all-time oldest of Olympic competitors. Several competitors in the past in shooting competitions have been older. 
Hiroshi Hoketsu, 2012 Team Japan in Dressage

Olympic Factoid:  In the long-term medal race in Equestrian events, Germany leads with 28 gold medals, Sweden has 17 golds, France 12, USA 11, and Great Britain 6.
Olympic Factoid:  Ian Millar of Team Canada is expected to compete in a record 10th Olympics in Show Jumping.  In 2008, when he won the silver medal in Show Jumping, at 61, he was the oldest medal winner of the Beijing Olympics.

Alan Millar, 2012 Team Canada in Show Jumping

Olympic Factoid: Elizabeth “Beezie” Madden of Team USA was born in Milwaukee, WI, where I live.  You needed to know that, right???  Beezie won a bronze medal in individual Show Jumping in 2008 and was a member of both gold-medal Teams USA in 2004 and 2008.

The main website for the 2012 Olympics in London is:
For more information on the Equestrian Team GB:
NBC claims that all 32 sports, all 302 events will be shown on line and most on television, via NBC and its associated networks: MSNBC, CNBC and more.
Full details at:

http://www.nbcolympics.com/index.html

Specific Equestrian coverage at:

England in Song

A few weeks ago, on May 30, 2012, we posted a story The Milwaukee Symphony Goes British in a concert Victoria attended.  Here’s another musical blog (though without a note) about British song.

“There’ll Always Be an England” is the title of an article in Opera News magazine, a publication of the Metropolitan Opera Guild.  Hilary Finch, Music Critic of The Times of London writes about the enduring delights of British song. The article is here.

Janet Baker, acclaimed British mezzo
Ms. Finch asks, “So what is it about the English soul, as expressed in English song, that has such a powerful pull worldwide, and generation after generation?”  For her answers, I direct you to the article, which I guarantee you will enjoy.
Music is always synonymous with Britain to me, whether it be the folk songs or the country dances we learned in school, many of which were transferred across the Atlantic almost unchanged, or the modern classics of Benjamin Britten or Ralph Vaughan Williams.  Jane Austen lovers know the music well, from the copies of songs Jane herself wrote out, now to be seen at the Jane Austen Museum at Chawton Cottage…

…to the lively soundtracks of the many versions of her stories.  There are also many CDs of music from her time for the fortepiano and other instruments.

For a selection of Austen-related books on and CDs of  her music, try the JaneAusten Books website, here.

The Sunday New York Times Arts Section on July 8, 2012, carried an article (here) about the centennial of the birth of Kathleen Ferrier, an acclaimed contralto from Lancashire, who died in 1953 at the early age of 41, but left an enduring legacy in her recordings. There are several YouTube versions of Ferrier singing. She often sang English folk music as well as Bach, Handel, and Mahler.

Kathleen Ferrier  (1912-1953)

One amusing tidbit from the Hilary Finch article is her nod to the British penchant for nonsense verse.  I could not agree more.  The lines of Edward Lear (The Owl and the Pussycat) and Lewis Carroll (Alice’s Adventures) are every bit as deserving of a tune as the dialect-laden lines of Robert Burns or the elegant works of Shakespeare or Byron.

Piano on Display at Jane Austen House Museum
 (not hers, but very similar)
And dare I write of English music without mentioning everyone’s favorites, the Boys from Liverpool?  British pop music is famous worldwide.
And starting this month in London, another season of The Proms; their website is here.
So, sing out, everyone!

Keep Calm and Carry On: Words for Posterity

This famous poster, put out by the British government in 1939 to encourage the traditional stuff upper lip of the British people in the face of Nazi aggression, has had multiple second lives as the inspiration for many new designs.  Regular readers of this blog know we sometimes post versions in the sidebars.  And if you follow either of us on Pinterest — or just about anybody else there — you will see many versions.  Here are a few of our favorites.

Many of the signs reflect a real philosophy of life — or not!  There are many collages of the images too.

And lots of products carry a version of the logo.

And finally a few “farther-out” faves”:

Napoleon Invades Russia, June 24, 1812

Napoleon in His Study, 1812
Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825)
National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.

Another bicentenary is here, though its connection to Britain is not quite direct.  However, the failure of Napoleon’s Russian invasion and the destruction of a large part of his army contributed to his ultimate defeat(s) by the allied nations led by Great Britain.

With the benefit of hindsight, historians have spent two hundred years pointing out the deficiencies in Napoleon’s goals, strategies and execution.  I have to admit most of my knowledge about Napoleon’s  Russian campaign was learned in Tolstoy’s War and Peace, published in 1869.

And since it is incredibly long (though also brilliant), I skimmed (or skipped) large sections.  So my limited knowledge is, perhaps,  more attributible to the 1956 film of War and Peace.  I love that movie, starring Audrey Hepburn as Natasha, Mel Ferrar as Prince Andrei, and Henry Fonda as Count Pierre Bezukhov.

War and Peace, directed by King Vidor
There have been other non-novel versions of Tolstoy’s sprawling masterpiece, including an opera by Sergei Prokofiev, composed during World War II.  I remember the 1956 film with great affection.  In order to cover most of the story, however, it lasts about three and a half hours.

War and Peace, Metropolitan Opera production 2002

As everyone knows, Napoleon’s campaign in Russia was a total disaster.  Numbers vary but about half a million soldiers of the Grand Armee marched into Russia and only a fraction returned by the end of 1812. Well before the Russian campaign, Arthur Wellesley, later named first Duke of Wellington, began to turn the tide in the Peninsular War, invading Spain from Portugal in January, 1812.  Wellington and the allies won the Battle of Salamanca, June 17-22, 1812.  French Marshall Soult and his defeated troops fought on but slowly withdrew into France.

Battle of Salamanca, June 17-22, 1812

On June 24th, having heard nothing about the British and Allied victory in Spain, Napoleon’s troops crossed the river Niemen into what is now Lithuania, then Russian Poland.  The Russians, greatly outnumbered, usually retreated or conducted brief skirmishes instead of standing and fighting as Napoleon’s enemies usually did.  In doing so, the Russians drew the French deeper and deeper into their sparsely populated regions, completely fouling up supply lines for the rapidly moving French.  By mid-October, the French encircled Moscow, the capital.  The Russians evacuated the city — and it burned, whether set afire by the fleeing citizens or by the invading troops no one can know.  Probably both.

Napoleon’s Retreat from Russia
by Alfred Northen (1828-1876)
On the long retreat in the frigid weather through land already stripped of all provisions, constantly harrassed by Russian troops and Cossack raiders, the French troops simply starved or froze.  Supplies and artillery were abandoned. The horses also died or were consumed. By mid-December, when the last of the French left Russia, up to 380,000 men had been lost with almost 100,000 captured.  It had been a national disaster for France and a personal catastrophe for Napoleon.