VIRTUAL LECTURE (LIVE) | Conceal, Constrict or Reveal? 200 Years of Maternity Fashion with Catriona Fisk

Join Catriona Fisk as she presents her lecture CONCEAL, CONSTRICT OR REVEAL? 200 Years of Maternity Fashion
 via Zoom. Please ensure you have downloaded Zoom before the lecture begins https://zoom.us/

The lecture will begin promptly at 10:30am. Please ensure you are online before the start to allow admittance to the lecture. Lectures are not recorded and can only be viewed at the time listed on your ticket. Ticket sales will close at 9.00 am on day of lecture, unless sold out prior.

**Zoom meeting details and link are on your ticket. If you have any concerns please email Kathleen at admin@johnstoncollection.org**

Presented as part of the Melbourne Fashion Week Independent program. 

The end of the 19th century saw the first ‘official’ maternity styles made available for expectant woman to purchase. This is often seen as the point when pregnant women were first considered as a separate category or problem for fashion. Yet, 18 and 19th century dress, and particularly surviving garments, reveal the strategies used by pregnant and nursing women long before that point.

This lecture explores those strategies, looking at stories and myths of invisibility, restriction, and the desirable female body over two hundred years of maternity and fashion.  It will touch on issues like maternity dressing for royal or aristocratic women, and the challenge of managing a changing body shape when new clothes aren’t an option. Attend to hear examples of the clothes women wore while pregnant, how they managed breastfeeding, and the curious features of the maternity corset. The lecture will conclude with a reflection on the absence of pregnant women from some aspects of history, and how exhibitions and publications over the next few years are seeking to change that.

CATRIONA FISK is a dress historian and material culture specialist, with a particular focus on 18^th and 19^th century maternity fashion. Her recently completed doctorate examined the surviving record of maternal dress in museums in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia from 1750-1900. She is also a freelance curator, having worked on several museum exhibition and publication projects including 2016’s Connecting Threads: Tracing Fashion, Fabric and Everyday Life at Newstead House at a historic house museum in Brisbane.

The Johnston Collection is an independent, non-for-profit museum which received no government support. As this is a free event we ask that you consider adding a donation at the check out to help us care for our Collection and continue to provide public programs.

Image credit: Alexander Roslin (Swedish, 1718 – 1793) Portrait of Grand Duchess Natalia Alexeievna, 1776, oil on canvas | 825 x 620 mm, collection of the Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
Image source: Wikimedia Commons