Hilary Davidson | |
---|---|
Nationality | Australian |
Occupation | historian |
Known for | expertise in analyzing the historical accuracy of costumes |
Hilary Davidson is an Australian historian, who has specialized on the dress and textiles of the Georgian period. [1] In 2019 she published Dress in the Age of Jane Austen . [2]
Early in her career Davidson traveled widely, and became an artisanal expert in recreating vintage clothing.
In 2012 Austrian archeologists published a report on their discovery of medieval bras. [3] [4] Davidson's opinion on this discovery was widely quoted. She called the bras an amazing find, said one was very similar to a modern bra, and compared them to a missing link. [5]
In 2018 a team of archeologists found a skeleton that was still wearing thigh high leather boots, in mud in the Thames River. [6] Science Alert quoted Davidson, to provide context of the discovery, for its readers. She clarified that while thigh-high boots are a fashion item today, these boots seem to be designed for a working man, whose job required him to be wading in the shallows of the Thames.
The Bill and Ted Test @BillAndTedTest This is @fourredshoes Regency screen costume benchmark: the Beethoven scene from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If a production's main costumes are less well done than those of the extras in a minor part of a 1980s teen comedy movie, we have a problem.
March 27, 2020 [7]
Slate magazine credits Davidson for a Bill & Ted test for period costume accuracy. [8] In an interview with Slate Davidson described spending six years working on Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, which required a great deal of meticulous checking of modern works. She described having the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure playing in the background, when the heroes capture Beethoven. Davidson described being impressed at the authenticity of the costuming of the scenes set in Beethoven's time. [8] Even the background characters in those scenes were wearing quite authentic costumes. Surprisingly, the costume designers had achieved much more authentic costumes than more serious films with larger budgets.
Slate reported that Davidson created new twitter ID @BillAndTedTest specifically to publish analysis of the costume design of period movies. Slate quoted the tweet where Davidson gave the test its name.
Davidson was one of the Australians stranded in Europe by the Covid 19 virus profiled by 7News , on January 8, 2021. [9] She described traveling to the United Kingdom, for just two weeks of consulting, in March 2020, arriving just in time for the travel ban. She thought that her job as a teacher in a government-run institution would have classified her as an "essential worker", however she still had not been able to get a high enough travel priority to return to Australia.
She had been able to teach online, in 2020. [9] But she described her frustration following the sixth cancellation of her travel plans, when Australia tightened travel restrictions from the UK, following the discovery of a mutated virus there.
Georgette Heyer was an English novelist and short-story writer, in both the Regency romance and detective fiction genres. Her writing career began in 1921, when she turned a story conceived for her ailing younger brother into the novel The Black Moth. In 1925 Heyer married George Ronald Rougier, a mining engineer. The couple spent several years living in Tanganyika Territory and Macedonia before returning to England in 1929. After her novel These Old Shades became popular despite its release during the General Strike, Heyer determined that publicity was not necessary for good sales. For the rest of her life she refused to grant interviews, telling a friend: "My private life concerns no one but myself and my family."
Gothic fashion is a clothing style marked by dark, mysterious, antiquated, homogenous, and often genderless features. It is worn by members of the Goth subculture. Dress, typical gothic fashion includes dyed black hair, exotic hairstyles, dark lipstick and dark clothing. Both male and female goths can wear dark eyeliner, dark nail polish and lipstick for a dramatic effect. Male goths use cosmetics at a higher rate than other men. Styles are often borrowed from the punk fashion and can also draw influence from Victorians and Elizabethan fashion. Goth fashion is sometimes confused with heavy metal fashion and emo fashion.
Punk fashion is the clothing, hairstyles, cosmetics, jewellery, and body modifications of the punk counterculture. Punk fashion varies widely, ranging from Vivienne Westwood designs to styles modeled on bands like The Exploited to the dressed-down look of North American hardcore. The distinct social dress of other subcultures and art movements, including glam rock, skinheads, greasers, and mods have influenced punk fashion. Punk fashion has likewise influenced the styles of these groups, as well as those of popular culture. Many punks use clothing as a way of making a statement.
A miniskirt is a skirt with its hemline well above the knees, generally at mid-thigh level, normally no longer than 10 cm (4 in) below the buttocks; and a dress with such a hemline is called a minidress or a miniskirt dress. A micro-miniskirt or microskirt is a miniskirt with its hemline at the upper thigh, at or just below crotch or underwear level.
Pride and Prejudice is a six-episode 1995 British television drama, adapted by Andrew Davies from Jane Austen's 1813 novel of the same name. Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth starred as Elizabeth Bennet and Fitzwilliam Darcy, respectively. Produced by Sue Birtwistle and directed by Simon Langton, the serial was a BBC production with additional funding from the American A&E Network. BBC1 originally broadcast the 55-minute episodes from 24 September to 29 October 1995. The A&E Network aired the series in double episodes on three consecutive nights beginning 14 January 1996.
Pride & Prejudice is a 2005 romantic drama film directed by Joe Wright, in his feature directorial debut, and based on Jane Austen's 1813 novel of the same name. The film features five sisters from an English family of landed gentry as they deal with issues of marriage, morality and misconceptions. Keira Knightley stars in the lead role of Elizabeth Bennet, while Matthew Macfadyen plays her romantic interest Mr. Darcy.
Emma is a 1996 period comedy film based on the 1815 novel of the same name by Jane Austen. Written and directed by Douglas McGrath, the film stars Gwyneth Paltrow, Alan Cumming, Toni Collette, Ewan McGregor, and Jeremy Northam.
Pride and Prejudice is a 1940 American film adaptation of Jane Austen's 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice, starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier. Directed by Robert Z. Leonard, the screenplay was written by Aldous Huxley and Jane Murfin, adapted specifically from the stage adaptation by Helen Jerome, in addition to Jane Austen's novel. The story is about five sisters from an English family of landed gentry who must deal with issues of marriage, morality and misconceptions. The film was released on July 26, 1940 in the United States by MGM and was critically well received. The New York Times film critic praised the film as "the most deliciously pert comedy of old manners, the most crisp and crackling satire in costume that we in this corner can remember ever having seen on the screen."
Becoming Jane is a 2007 biographical romantic drama film directed by Julian Jarrold. It depicts the early life of the British author Jane Austen and her lasting love for Thomas Langlois Lefroy. American actress Anne Hathaway stars as the title character, while her romantic interest is played by Scottish actor James McAvoy. Also appearing in the film are Julie Walters, James Cromwell and Maggie Smith. This was Ian Richardson's final film performance before his death in the same year as the film's release. The film was produced in cooperation with several companies, including Ecosse Films and Blueprint Pictures. It also received funding from the Irish Film Board and the UK Film Council Premiere Fund.
Fashion in the years 1750–1775 in European countries and the colonial Americas was characterised by greater abundance, elaboration and intricacy in clothing designs, loved by the Rococo artistic trends of the period. The French and English styles of fashion were very different from one another. French style was defined by elaborate court dress, colourful and rich in decoration, worn by such iconic fashion figures as Marie Antoinette.
During the 1820s in European and European-influenced countries, fashionable women's clothing styles transitioned away from the classically influenced "Empire"/"Regency" styles of c. 1795–1820 and re-adopted elements that had been characteristic of most of the 18th century, such as full skirts and clearly visible corseting of the natural waist.
A pelisse was originally a short fur-trimmed jacket which hussar light-cavalry soldiers from the 17th century onwards usually wore hanging loose over the left shoulder, ostensibly to prevent sword cuts. The name also came to refer to a fashionable style of woman's coat-like garment worn in the early-19th century.
Fashion in the period 1795–1820 in European and European-influenced countries saw the final triumph of undress or informal styles over the brocades, lace, periwigs and powder of the earlier 18th century. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, no one wanted to appear to be a member of the French aristocracy, and people began using clothing more as a form of individual expression of the true self than as a pure indication of social status. As a result, the shifts that occurred in fashion at the turn of the 19th century granted the opportunity to present new public identities that also provided insights into their private selves. Katherine Aaslestad indicates how "fashion, embodying new social values, emerged as a key site of confrontation between tradition and change."
Fashion of the 1960s featured a number of diverse trends, as part of a decade that broke many fashion traditions, adopted new cultures, and launched a new age of social movements. Around the middle of the decade, fashions arising from small pockets of young people in a few urban centers received large amounts of media publicity, and began to heavily influence both the haute couture of elite designers and the mass-market manufacturers. Examples include the mini skirt, culottes, go-go boots, and more experimental fashions, less often seen on the street, such as curved PVC dresses and other PVC clothes.
Cavalier boots are a style of boot that were popular in Europe between approximately 1500 and 1700. They are soft knee-high leather boots typically made of brown calfskin.
Regency reenactment is historical reenactment of the British Regency period. Groups portray the period from 1811 to 1820 through costume, manners, food, and social gatherings that celebrate the spirit of the era.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is a 1989 American science fiction comedy film directed by Stephen Herek and written by Chris Matheson and Ed Solomon. The first installment of the Bill & Ted franchise, it stars Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter and George Carlin. It follows Bill (Winter) and Ted (Reeves), who travel through time to assemble historical figures for their high school history presentation.
Andrea Galer is a British costume designer who works in film and television. She began her first project with the film Don't Look Now (1973), and has spent much of her career since then working in the genre of period film. These include three films related to Jane Austen, and other productions set in the 19th-century including Firelight (1997), Eroica (2003), and The Way We Live Now (2001).
Emma is a 2020 period romantic comedy film directed by Autumn de Wilde, from a screenplay by Eleanor Catton, based on Jane Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. It stars Anya Taylor-Joy as Miss Emma Woodhouse, a wealthy and elegant young woman living with her father in Regency-era England who amuses herself with matchmaking and meddles in the romantic lives of those closest to her. The film also stars Johnny Flynn, Josh O'Connor, Callum Turner, Mia Goth, Miranda Hart, and Bill Nighy.
While this book is a serious study of fashion during the Regency period, I appreciate that the author has taken the witty tone that Austen is famous for and presented the material with some humor.
New in the Jane Austen Online Gift Shop is Dress in the Age of Jane Austen – a fantastic large format hardback book by Hilary Davidson.
While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.
The discovery was first reported in an article in this month's BBC History Magazine. Davidson said the medieval garments serve as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.
This lifestyle is supported by the style of the boot, which, according to Davidson, was not high fashion of the time, but close to the everyday shoes of the working class seen in paintings in the 14th and 15th centuries.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is many things: a time-traveling buddy comedy, an early Keanu Reeves vehicle, and—according to at least one expert—the standard for Regency period costuming on film. Fashion historian Hilary Davidson created the Bill & Ted test after noticing that a scene in which the two slackers kidnap Ludwig van Beethoven features surprisingly well-executed costumes for the era.
The announcement of incoming passenger caps being halved, coincided with Hilary's sixth flight cancellation. 'I'm despairing. I feel abandoned by the Australian Government, that they're not doing anything to support and get home the thousands of people like me, who just want to go home,' she said.