Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration

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Sir John Tenniel, The White Rabbit from Alices Adventures in Wonderland, 1865, by Lewis Carroll, courtesy of the Norman M. Fox Collection, Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College

The phrase “clothes make the man” was a truth universally acknowledged in Victorian Britain. Dress expressed one’s place in a hierarchical society with limited opportunity for social mobility. Fashion defined social class, gender, and occupation and “made” a gentleman or a lady.

Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration includes nineteenth-century novels, periodicals, and memoirs that illustrate how dress transformed those who wore it and beheld it. Men and women socially embraced strict fashion etiquette, while caricaturists such as George Cruikshank openly mocked them. The exhibition showcases many Victorian illustrators who both idealized and satirized clothing of the period. Works in the exhibition come from the Norman M. Fox Collection, Lucy Scribner Library, Skidmore College, and the Historical Society of Saratoga Springs.

Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration is curated by Catherine Golden, Professor of English at Skidmore College, and students from her LS2-101H class, The Victorian Book Illustrated.