Episode 10: Dressing the Part – the influence of literature on fancy dress

Nov 29, 2018

Dressing the Part – the influence of literature on fancy dress. Episode 8 looked at how fancy dress shapes fictional stories, usually for the worse. This week’s show considers the fictional stories that shape fancy dress in real-life. From Alice lost her in Wonderland, to Hamlet lost in his mental anguish, via nursery rhymes and poetry, Lucy and Ben discuss the motivations and meanings behind our perennial desire to dress up as fictional and non-fictional characters. 

 

Sources

• Lewis Carroll, Adventures in Wonderland (1865); Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871).
• Margaret Atwood, The Hand Maid’s Tale (1985)
• William Shakespeare, Hamlet (c.1599-1601)

 

Analysis

• Kiera Vaclavik, ‘Of Bands, Bows, and Brows: Hair, the Alice Books, and the Emergence of a Style Icon’, in Colleen Hill, Fairy Tale Fashion (2016), 253-268. 
• D.J. Taylor, Bright Young People: The Rise and Fall of a Generation: 1918-1940 (2007)
• Benjamin Wild, A Life in Fashion: The Wardrobe of Cecil Beaton (2016)
• The story of Louisa Passavant and her Leeds Daily Papers costume: https://secretlivesofobjects.blog/2018/08/14/the-children-of-the-1891-fancy-dress-ball-the-passavant-women/