Intro to Plattsburgh Austen-Visualizing

The artist painting portraits is at liberty to alter the clothing worn by the sitter to support artistic aims (or the demands of the person who commissioned the portrait). But one thing that is lost is knowledge of what that clothing actually was—the fabric, the construction, the details. Filmmakers also have a complicated task as they must recreate historic clothing made with modern textiles that will actually be worn on real bodies—and they, too, have to concede to demands to make the actors and actresses “look good” to a modern audience. As many have said, it’s not the job of artists to give us a detailed history lesson on clothing. 

As clothing historians we can also examine actual garments, though the percentage of garments available to the number of garments that were in existence guarantees that we cannot make too many sweeping generalizations. Recreating and wearing that clothing provides additional insight. For example, stays or corsets  or other supporting garments.

For writers, the choice must be whether to write about clothing at all, and if so, how to speak of it. Describe it in detail? Use it to further delineate characters?

Jane Austen provides a wonderful opportunity to apply multiple lenses to the clothing of her time. First, her lifetime spans one of the most tumultuous and rapid evolutions of fashion in Europe and the US. As a witness, she wrote about fashion details in her letters. As an author, her references to fashion were, like her writing in general, pointed.