Mary Jo Putney

Mary Jo Putney

Patricia Rice

Patricia Rice

Susan Fraser King

Susan Fraser King

Anne Gracie

Anne Gracie

Nicola Cornick

Nicola Cornick

Andrea Penrose

Andrea Penrose

Christina Courtenay

Christina Courtenay

fashion

An 18th Century Style Icon

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Portrait by Drouais

Christina here. A couple of weeks ago I was talking about poignant stories and one that really fits that description is the sad tale of the 18th century French queen Marie Antoinette. Most of us have probably heard her described as “ill-fated”, and the revolutionaries called her “scandalous” and “frivolous”, but that’s not a true portrayal of her as I found out last week. Ill-fated, yes, but the rest was mostly propaganda. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London currently has an exhibition titled Marie Antoinette Style and it shows her as one of the first ever style icons, rather than just a tragic victim of the French Revolution. And no more of an extravagant spendthrift than any other royal, just misrepresented by her enemies and detractors.

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The Power of Pockets!

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Nicola here, and today I’m blogging about pockets. Until recently I hadn’t realised quite what a contentious topic pockets are (is?) Then, I read that the autumn fashion shows featured lots of clothes for women with capacious pockets because girls had been complaining about pocket inequality with boys. Apparently, this is a longstanding problem so I decided to investigate.

Way back in history, pockets were not a gender issue. Everyone carried a bag. Ötzi the Iceman, who lived around 3350BC was found with a pouch attached to his belt that contained various useful items including a scraper, a drill, a flint flake, a bone awl and some dried fungus. This style of pouch-type pocket remained in use for centuries and in fact the word “pocket” derives from the French word “poke” or “pouque”, which means pouch. In the picture a 15th century peasant is out working in the fields with his little pouch hanging from his belt. It looks rather precarious.

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Buttoned Up!

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Andrea here. I am a total history nerd  . . . so much so that the arcane and whimsical little details that I stumble over often delight me just as the bigger discoveries. Falling down rabbit holes is my preferred method of research, for one never knows what tiny fact will end up tying all the dangling plots threads together.

And sometimes the discoveries are just plain fun because they are so quirky. I happen to get a daily newsletter called HistoryFacts. and a recent topic pressed all those hot buttons (ha, ha—you’ll see why that phrase is funny in a moment!) So, I thought I would share with you both the question it posed—and the possible answers!

Why Are Men’s and Women’s Buttons on Opposite Sides?

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Who Wears the Pants?

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Anne here, and today I’m talking about “Rational Dress.” These days it seems the majority of woman in western society wear pants or trousers. When I was a kid it used to drive me bonkers when my grandfather spotted a long haired person in jeans and say scornfully, “Is that a boy or a girl? I can’t tell.” Because of course I could tell, and I was sure he was just being provocative (and annoying).

 Man or woman?

But as I grew older, and started reading romance I could see that to people to whom a female in trousers was utterly unthinkable, the ‘chick-in-pants’ romance trope became more easily believed. (The wenches discussed this back in 2015 if you’re interested. There is part 1 and part 2, so it seems we had a lot to say.

But to men (and women) of Pop’s generation women wearing trousers was still rather shocking. Even one of the older teachers at my school used to occasionally give us a rave about how females were entirely the wrong shape to wear pants. We, of course, ignored him, and on casual dress days (when we didn’t have to wear our uniforms) he would openly shudder at those of us in jeans. But those attitudes have more or less passed, along with those generations, apart from certain religious groups and ethnicities.

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