A theatrical talk by actor and historian Jane Glennie exploring the dangers of Victorian clothing and the campaign for rational dress.
Jane Glennie is coming to Tudor House & Garden on Monday 8 March for Victims of Fashion, a theatrical talk that falls on International Women's Day. It's part of Weekday Wonderings, the Southampton City Council Cultural Services series that runs throughout the week and changes every time — one session might be a talk, the next a tour, and the one after that something else entirely.
Glennie works as both an actor and a historian, and she's using that double life here. The talk is set inside Tudor House, and she spends it unpicking the hidden dangers of Victorian clothing. She goes through the perils of tight corsets and heavy skirts, and the poisons used to dye fabrics or make hats, and then traces the creation of the Rational Dress Society, which campaigned for practical and comfortable clothing. It's a look at the physical cost of the era's fashion and the women who pushed back against it.
There's a particular quote from Lady Harberton, one of the Society's co-founders, that the talk draws on. She wrote that short skirts for walking-wear would be 'a boon that ought to be easily attained, and once attained, cherished like Magna Carta in the British Constitution'. It's a good line to hold onto — the idea of a shorter skirt being treated with the same reverence as one of the most famous documents in British history.
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It runs from 11am to 12.30pm in the Georgian Room at Tudor House & Garden, Bugle Street, Southampton SO14 2AD. Tickets are £10, and that includes admission to the museum on the day of the talk, so you can have a wander around before or after.
