Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration

Installation view, Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration, Tang Teaching Museum,

Installation view, Dressed to Express: Costume in Victorian Illustration, Tang Teaching Museum, 2002

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.”

Exhibition Name

Dressed to Express:
Costume in Victorian Illustration

Exhibition Type

Student Curated

Faculty Curated

Place

Winter Gallery

Dates

Mar 19, 2002 - Apr 14, 2002

Curators

Dressed to Express is organized by Catherine Golden, Professor of English, Skidmore College with students in “The Victorian Illustrated Book” (LS2 101H).

Artists

George Cruikshank, John Leech, Marcus Stone, Sir John Tenniel

Past Exhibitions 2002

Dressed to Express:Costume in Victorian Illustration