AFTERNOON TEA AND LECTURE | JANE AUSTEN'S WARDROBE with Hilary Davidson

This event is currently at capacity. If you wish to be added to the waitlist, please email visitorservices@johnstoncollection.org or call The Johnston Collection on (03) 9416 2515 and we will contact you if places become available.

Your ticket includes a lecture by our special guest Hilary Davidson, and an afternoon tea of petit fours and tea or Market Lane coffee, served on our delightful Wedgwood fine bone china.

In Hilary Davidson’s new book, Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, the wardrobe of one of the world’s most celebrated authors is revealed for the first time. Despite her acknowledged brilliance on the page, Jane Austen has all too often been accused of dowdiness in her appearance. Drawing on Austen’s 161 known letters, as well as her own surviving garments and accessories, Hilary Davidson, acclaimed dress historian and Austen expert, has assembled examples of the variety of clothes Jane Austen would have possessed—from gowns and coats to shoes and undergarments—to tell a very different story. It is discovered that Jane Austen is alert to fashion trends, but thrifty and eager to reuse and repurpose clothing. Her renowned irony and wit peppers her letters, describing clothes, shopping, and taste. In Jane Austen’s Wardrobe, Hilary Davidson offers us the rare pleasure of a glimpse inside the closet of a stylish dresser and perpetually fascinating writer.

With Afternoon Tea served prior to the presentation, join Hilary Davidson, with The Friends, to learn more about Jane Austen and her wardrobe.

HILARY DAVIDSON is Chair of the MA Fashion and Textile Studies at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York and an honorary associate at the University of Sydney. She was curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London and has lectured, broadcast and taught across a very wide range of dress and textile history expertise. Her extensive study of British Regency dress is published as Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion (2019) and Jane Austen’s Wardrobe 2023; both Yale University Press. 

This lecture is presented on-site at TJC. Please see your ticket for details. NOTE: Tickets for this event do not include access to our exhibition-house, Fairhall. Guided tours of the current exhibition 'A Home of One's Own' can be booked separately.

Images: 

‘Evening Dress… A round robe of blossom-coloured crape, with demi-train, worn over a white satin slip, gathered frock back, and stomacher front; the sleeve unusually short… The sleeves and neck of the robe ornamented with puckered white satin, and a fancy border round the bottom, composed of white satin and crape, the same as the dress’, The Repository of Arts, November 1813. New York Public Library

‘London Morning & Evening Dress’, January 1810, The Lady’s Magazine. Los Angeles Public Library

‘Costumes Parisiens’, ‘1 et 2, Capotes. 3.Turban à la Minerve. 4,5 et 6. Bonnets à la Titus 7 et 8, Bonnets à la folle.9. Casque. 10, Capote.11, fichu.12, Chapeau au Ballon.’ Journal des Dames et des Modes, 27 November 1798. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam/Purchased with the support of the F.G. Waller-Fonds