All you ever wanted to know about what great great grandmother wore to work... “Victorian dress of the middle and working classes”

Now I have often wondered about the clothes of my great great grandparents and I rather think this talk at the Chorlton History Group today will provide answers.

“Margo Singer is the author of “Textile Arts: Multicultural Traditions and Textile Surface Decoration”. Her talk covers the development of fashion and textiles in the mid 19th century during the time of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels.

The talk covers the mid Victorian tyranny of fashion by examining the origins of corsets and the crinolines and will go on to look at the fabrics and dress of the urban classes in Manchester, both millworkers and seamstresses. 

She will also examine the textiles and fashions of middle class dress, including lots of references to contemporary dress as found in Mrs Gaskell’s novels as well as a wide range of slides, illustrations, contemporary items of clothing and textiles and reconstructed dress."  Bernard Leach

So today at 1.30pm in St Ninians Church on Wilbraham Road

Picture; detail from a photograph in the collection of Alan Brown