Waistlines: Greek Revival in the English Regency (time travel)

Lady Selina Meade
Painted by Lawrence

Continuing thoughts on designing and sewing waistlines

Dramatic changes in society

An artful focus on music, poetry, and classic Greek lines

High-waisted frocks...

A little English Regency time travel is always in order.

What time travel method would carry us back to the days of Jane Austen, The Peninsular War,  Beau Brummell, and his well-fleshed friend The Prince Regent ?  A little fiddling with something neoclassical maybe... A bust of Socrates? An enameled snuffbox, perhaps? Or better yet,  a high perch phaeton, driven by a dashing female!

The Perfect Time Travel Method
back to the English Regency

Such changes in ladies fashion in this early part of the nineteenth century! One older dame complains, "I'd look fine with my skirt up under my armpits like you young gels!" 

No more immensely stiff, mid-waisted, Georgian skirts in weighty brocades. The Empress Josephine's doing it across the channel in France, so why not here? It's floaty, airy high waisted gowns these days. 

So drape your lightest muslins up just under the bust line and come along with me. 

Creating a fairy-like, neoclassic inspired frock for a time travel trip like this is the sort of thing that keeps me.... 

Enchanted by Sewing

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Regency Resources

Georgette Heyer was the spark that lit the craze for Regency Romance fiction and did that lady ever know her era! She had collections of the ladies journals that her heroines read, and her stories include every elaborate detail of the toilettes of the day. To step into a Georgette Heyer novel is to step into romantic adventure, complete to a shade (as one of her books denizens would have proclaimed) with the beautiful fashions of the day.