Byron: The Clothing of a Regency Poet

[kestrell]

I'm currently attempting to answer the question of whether Byron always walked with a cane and, in the process, came across this amazing article which not only includes detailed descriptions of the corrective boot Byron wore, but detailed descriptions of various clothing he wore during different periods of his life. The article also includes various fascinating resources on men's Regency clothing, which is definitely one of my obsessions (am I the only one who thinks waistcoats are sexy? And did anyone else read the K. J. Charles queer Regency romance involving the valet, and all the descriptions of clothing?)
https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/cost.2021.0200

Comments

[cvirtue]

Agree that waistcoats are sexy, if they have interesting woven patterns!

Or embroidery, I suppose - I remember seeing a large piece of fabric on a stretcher (like for a canvas for painting) at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was the front of a waistcoat and also the embroidered flaps for the pockets for the waistcoat. The waistcoat edges along the front and following through the hem/curve to the side seam, were matched by the pocket flaps. I suppose keeping them all on one piece of fabric meant that each new bit of embroidery (leaf, stamen, etc - it was floral) could be finished on all the pieces at once so they would be identical, and they wouldn't get lost one from each other.

[kestrell]

Did you read the article? It mentions Byron's wedding waistcoat (since I have my screen reader program and my Alexa set to UK English they actually pronounce that word "westcot"), which was supposedly a secondhand one of one of the King George's, and the floral embroidered skirts were cut off and used to decorate the vest, although the sewing did not seem to be of the finest. Good to know not everyone from a previous centurey was automatically an amazing seamstress.

[cvirtue]

I did not read the article; I am a bad person. :)

[kestrell]

You are not a bad person for not reading an article that is full of my red kryptonite: I only asked because I wanted to point out teh nifty secondhand clothing bit.

Oh wow

[jesse_the_k]

David Wilcox is a serious scholar of "material culture"!

Waistcoats are indeed sexy but I've never found one that conformed to my body type. I like to imagine some extra-special drugs hiding in their tiny pocketses.

Avery Trufleman's Articles of Interest podcast focuses on clothing (and some home-adjacent stuff, like crockpots). Episode 10 explores the origins and meaning of men's suits. Articles began as a 99% invisible spinoff and now she's doing her own thing--most recently digging into how "Ivy League" clothing became the defacto standard world wide.

https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/p/american-ivy-chapter-1

[komadori]

Thanks for sharing! I am a huge fan of the Romantic poets.

That queer Regency romance sounds fun too.

[kestrell]

Apologies, I was conflating two different novels in K. J. Charles Society of Gentlemen series.

The one where a young man who newly inherits his wealth and position and is being tutored on how to dress is actually this book

A Fashionable Indulgence
https://kjcharles.fandom.com/wiki/A_Fashionable_Indulgence

and the romantic interest is a dandy. The book featuring the valet is the final book in the series, and he is a returning character who we have seen has a strong relationship with the man he works for/with all along. Politics plays a large part in this series, and one of the really unusual parings is a book in the middle of the series--I forget the title, except that it has the word "Seditious" in it--and it features an older couple, one of whom is a lod, and the other is a printer of radical pamphlets, and it is *really* hot.