Contributions From Members Tracy Mahl, Cassandra Chambers Wagner, Bonnie Britz, and Sara Tavela
We’ve had quite a few folks express interest in buying or creating their own Regency wear lately, and several of our members were kind enough to compile a variety of resources for us.
Gowns and Accessories
From romance author Susanne Dietze, the articles Fashion for the Regency Lady and Fashion for the Regency Gentleman offer nice overviews of day wear, formal wear, accessories and more.
Jane Austen’s World has numerous articles on fashion as well as other Jane-related topics.
For ideas and accuracy, see the excellent examples of Regency dress from Ackerman’s Fashion Plates via Lasell University.
In “‘An Agreeable Tyrant’ and Me,” the Modern Mantua-Maker offers a detailed look at replicating an entire lady’s ensemble from an original on display at a museum.
HistoricalSewing.com gets into the nitty gritty details of dress sewing.
To ensure the pattern you wish to purchase works as you hope, see the Greater Bay Area Costumers Guild‘s Great Pattern Review too cross-check your pattern against. Our member Bonnie raves about this feature on GBACG’s website, though she also reports that with the move to a new website, the Pattern Review is under construction and hopes to be back up sometime in 2022. Until the Pattern Review is back up, enjoy the Finery Blog, where you can see all kinds of wonderful ideas and inspiration.
The Sense & Sensibility website offers patterns to sew any type of Regency design, including undergarments. Additionally, the proprietor provides many helpful sewing tips. She also answers email questions, and you can buy the online tutorial for her patterns.
Need corsets? Sense & Sensibility has a pattern for underpinnings, which includes a pattern for short stays/corset. Or visit Redthreaded for custom-made corsets.
Dames a la Mode offers jewelry for serious reenactors.
Visit Austentation for ready-made bonnets with ribbons or blank straw bonnets to decorate yourself.
Don’t overlook Etsy for reasonably priced bonnets and ready-made and bespoke gowns. Search on “regency dress,” “regency bonnet,” and so on.
For shawls, try googling pashminas in the color needed for your dress. Choosing a matching color pashmina/shawl with paisley is also period appropriate. The longer the shawl, the better to drape over your arms.
For period fabrics, our member Tracy has had good luck with ReproductionFabrics.com.
Our member Cassandra recommends Burnley & Trowbridge for fabrics and notions. While they are not the cheapest out there and don’t have a huge selection, what they have tends to be good quality and features lovely materials. They mostly focus on the 18th century (since they’re located in Williamsburg), but they offer supplies for a lot of different eras. They also have some great how-to or sew-along videos on their YouTube page.
Patterns for a variety of Georgian and Regency fashions are available via Laughing Moon Mercantile.
Breeches and Waistcoats
If you’re looking for a gentleman’s ready-made ensemble, try the Historical Emporium.
Top hats can be found, appropriately, at top-hats.com.
And if you need some gentlemanly inspiration, check out Pinsent Tailoring and Zack Pinsent’s Instagram or Twitter for some gorgeous photos of bespoke clothing.
Laughing Moon Mercantile also provides patterns for Regency pieces, such as a greatcoat, tailcoat, and vest.
Academic Resources
For a good introduction to and overview of fashion in the Georgian and Regency periods, check out Sarah Jane Downing’s Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen.
For an in-depth exploration of the ins and outs of fashion in Austen’s lifetime coupled with beautiful color illustrations, see Hilary Davidson’s Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion.
Cassidy Percoco explores the techniques of making clothing in the Regency era, providing patterns and details of changing modes in Regency Women’s Dress Techniques: 1800-1830.
The School of Historical Dress offers books of historical patterns for the experienced sewist who can grade patterns.
For an exploration of the world of actresses and their fashions that influenced Austen herself, see Laura Engel’s Austen, Actresses, and Accessories: Much Ado About Muffs.
Tutorials and fashion history
YouTube features an array of channels led by fashion historians, historical costumers, and sewists extraordinaire. Whether you are new to historical costuming or a pro, there are still tips and tricks that you can pick up from some of these YouTubers below. Here are some channels that offer some Regency-era fashion content:
Bernadette Banner primarily specializes in Victorian fashion, but she also offers excellent tip and ideas for Regency and Georgian era sewing. Her tutorials on hand sewing are really helpful, and her reconstructions of period dress from portraiture are divine.
Burnley & Trowbridge Co., noted above for fabric and notions, features a YouTube channel filled with historical sewing tutorials and ideas.
Abby Cox gained her reputation as a fashion historian partially through her work for American Duchess, focusing largely on eighteenth-century fashion. On her YouTube channel, she covers sewing topics ranging from vlogs on sewing projects, historical dress research tips, and historical era fashion overviews, among others.
Karolina Żebrowska offers commentary, often amusing and comic in tone, on a wide range of vintage and fashion history topics on her YouTube channel. She is noted for not only showing close to historically accurate ‘get ready with me’ videos, but also for her videos showing off her fashion recreations in contemporary settings. She, like Bernadette Banner, also offers commentary on period dramas and their costuming efforts.
Angela Clayton is a younger historical costumer, enthusiastic about vintage and historical patterns and pattern making. She frequently offers sewing vlogs that cover a wide range of sewing projects and provides helpful commentary on where she needed to make adaptations or changes in the process.
Dr. Christine Millar, an anesthesiologist and eighteenth-century fashion enthusiast, runs her YouTube channel Sewstine to document her sewing projects that tend towards eighteenth century projects, but her recreation of a V&A dress from c.1810, featured in the 2020 Emma film, is an enjoyable and inspirational watch.
Micarah Tewers is a comedic delight on YouTube, noted for her recreations of contemporary and historical fashion pieces. Her make a Regency gown in a day tutorial was noted at our January 2022 meeting as being quite accessible and actually close enough to accurate to try out for those newer to sewing. Our member Sara can attest to the tutorial being doable, as she used it for her first attempts at Regency gowns before tackling a Sense & Sensibility pattern.
For a fully Jane Austen-themed watch, check out Crow’s Eye Productions’ video Getting Dressed: Jane Austen and her sister Cassandra (1810).