Style and Fashion
An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Jane Austen
Well-known to collectors and Jane Austen enthusiasts, Irish artist Adam Buck (1759–1833) was one of Regency England's most sought-after portrait painters. He worked in Ireland for twenty years, becoming an accomplished miniaturist; but moved to London in 1795 and immediately gained a roster of star clients including the Duke of York and his scandalous mistress, Mary Anne Clarke. more »
The So-called Mirror Image Has Become Oddly Suspect
Joan L. Cannon writes: The ubiquitous cameras of our daily lives may is some ways replace some of the older functions of the looking glass, but they don't give rise to the emotional resonances stirred by passing a household fixture or treasure that has seen most of one's years of consciousness. The missing image of a loved one who saw the same reflected surroundings we can still see becomes a nearly visible ghost. There's a forbidding precision in a photograph, precious as it may be. A shared home, visible in reflection behind the viewer is like an echoing chord of familiar music or the faint scent that memory never erases. more »
Utterly Unsuitable
Julia Sneden writes and rhymes about bathing suit shopping: It's an annual chore for most people, this business of buying a bathing suit. For me, it comes around every six months or so. With older women and men doing water aerobics and swimming laps, wouldn't you think the bathing suit manufacturers would twig to the idea that there’s a huge market out here? We buy suits more often than teenagers do, because we're harder on them more »
The Decoration of Men's Fashion in Eighteenth-Century France at The Met Museum: Embroidery, Buttons, Braids, and Sequins
In the eighteenth century, promenading among the shops along the rue St. Honoré became a fashionable leisure activity for men and women alike. This street was home to Paris's marchands merciers, a class of merchants who dealt in all manner of luxury goods, including textiles for furnishing and clothing. The mercers' exclusive right to finishing work — arranging for the addition of embroidery, buttons, braids, and sequins through a network of specialized workers — allowed their customers to choose the exact colors and patterns they wanted at the point of sale. more »