Jane Austen's Wardrobe, an interview with Dr. Hilary Davidson (Dressed Classic)

Summary

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Dressed: The History of Fashion

Episode: Jane Austen's Wardrobe, an Interview with Dr. Hilary Davidson

Air Date: March 20, 2026
Host(s): Cassidy Zachary & April Calahan
Guest: Dr. Hilary Davidson

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Episode Overview

This episode is a deep exploration into the clothing and textile culture of the Regency era as viewed through the life, letters, and novels of Jane Austen. Hosts Cassidy Zachary and April Calahan interview Dr. Hilary Davidson, a leading expert on Regency fashion and author of two influential books: Dress in the Age of Jane Austen and Jane Austen's Wardrobe. Through lively discussion, the episode examines Jane Austen's personal relationship with dress, how her writings inform our understanding of period clothing, material literacy in the 19th century, and the detective work of reconstructing Austen's actual wardrobe.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Why Jane Austen and Fashion? [02:27–08:52]

• Jane Austen as a Lens for Regency Dress:
  Dr. Davidson describes how Austen's life and work are ideally placed for examining the fashion of the period: "She sort of really sits in the middle of the middle classes in this period... an incredibly observant writer... social realism to a certain degree" [07:14].
• Genesis of Dr. Davidson’s Research:
  The first book, Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, began with researching a rare surviving garment, Austen’s silk pelisse, and expanded into a comprehensive study of Regency fashion due to a surprising lack of dedicated sources:

  “I kept reaching for the big book of Regency fashion, you know, the one that someone else had already written, and it wasn’t there.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson [06:23].

• Second Book - A Pandemic Project:
  Jane Austen’s Wardrobe emerged by systematically examining all clothing references in Austen’s letters:

  "This idea just appeared in my head and it went, I wonder why nobody's done a study of what we can know Jane Austen wore just based on the letters." —Dr. Davidson [09:19].

2. Jane Austen’s Life and Correspondence [11:00–14:49]

• Brief Biographical Sketch:
  Austen grew up in an educated, creative, but modestly secure clerical family. Never married, she lived most of her productive career with her sister Cassandra.
• The Importance of Letters:
  Only 161 of Austen’s letters survive (out of an estimated 3,000), largely due to Cassandra burning most after Jane’s death, censoring especially “the juicy bits” [14:52–15:44].
• Significance for Fashion History:
  The letters provide candid insights into daily clothing, textile purchases, and personal preferences, often dismissed by earlier generations but now seen as invaluable:

  “The many nothings of Jane Austen can often be incredibly illuminating.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson [16:56].

3. Austen’s Portraits and Mythologizing [18:10–23:00]

• Lack of Authentic Likenesses:
  Only two portraits—both informal sketches by Cassandra—are verified. Later versions have been increasingly romanticized and altered by successive copyists:

  "It's a copy of a copy of a copy... not much at all to do with what Jane Austen really looked like." —Dr. Davidson [19:48].

• Fashion as Identification:
  Because the author’s image remains elusive, Dr. Davidson sees reconstructing her wardrobe as a way to ground Austen’s reality:

  "Through the references to clothing in the letters, I'm trying to kind of pull it back to what it is we can know Austen wore and what she might have looked like." —Dr. Davidson [22:43].

4. What Survives of Jane Austen’s Wardrobe? [23:00–24:29]

• Existing Garments and Objects:
  • Silk pelisse (coat-dress)
  • Muslin scarf embroidered by Austen
  • Personal jewellery: turquoise ring, turquoise beaded bracelet, topaz crosses (a fraternal gift, fictionalized in Mansfield Park)
• Austen’s Skill as a Needleworker:

  “She was an excellent needlewoman, especially at satin stitch, which is very hard to do.” —Dr. Davidson [23:36]

5. Structure and Contents of a Regency Woman’s Wardrobe [27:23–32:35]

• Book Structure—By Storage Location:
  Chapters reflect where items would be kept: closet, dressing table, jewelry box, drawers, etc.
• Daily Dressing Rituals:
  • Begin with a linen shift (“to absorb sweat and oils... to protect clothing” [27:59])
  • Stays or corset, stockings
  • Gown (chosen depending on activity)
  • Layering of petticoats
  • Accessories: caps, bonnets, gloves, shawls, parasols
  • Outerwear: pelisse or cloak for outdoors
• Layering and Textile Function:
  Clothes provided modesty, warmth, cleanliness, and practicality. Evening attire showed more skin for comfort due to heat from bodies and candles.

  “People had less clothing and they looked after it longer. It was kind of inherently sustainable.” —Dr. Davidson [31:26]

6. Material Literacy: Textiles & Fabric Choices [32:35–37:07]

• Austen’s Letters Are Rich in Fabric Terminology:
  Muslin, poplin, bombazine, “Irish,” crepe, sarzanet, Persian—many now unfamiliar terms.
• Importance of Textile Knowledge:
  At the time, knowing fabric quality was an essential skill for value, durability, and suitability.

  “The way Regency consumers understood textiles and fabric was so different to how we understand it now... material qualities... were so important.” —Dr. Davidson [33:38]

• Shopping as a Social Network:
  Families shopped for one another, requiring trust in their "material understanding."

7. Mourning Dress in Austen’s Era [37:07–40:16]

• Practices and Social Etiquette:
  The Regency period had strict mourning attire conventions, with entire wardrobes turning black to honor family or public figures. Acquiring, adapting, and rotating mourning dress was a practical concern:

  "...having a certain amount of black clothing was an important part of Austen's wardrobe. Not for any, you know, chic black reasons, but just as a practical and necessary social convention." —Dr. Davidson [39:33]

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Highlighted Segments, Quotes, & Memorable Moments

The Detective Work of Fashion History

On tracking down cloud fabric references:
[41:44]

“First of all, it took me a while to track down what was meant by ‘cloud’ at this point. Turns out to be a dyed-in-the-yarn technique... more familiar as some of the ikat techniques... they called it cloud or clouded silks.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson

Discovery of List Shoes

[46:09–48:57]
A thrilling research breakthrough:

“Liszt is, it turns out, the most fantastic example of Regency upcycling... Liszt is the fabric woven from these offcut tapes on the side of wool... they're soundless shoes and they keep your feet warm... and I had a perfect example of Liszt slippers already with me, but I didn't know that’s what they were.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson

Connection Between Fiction & Material Reality

[24:14]

"...She wrote about them [the topaz crosses] in Mansfield Park and kind of gave this beautiful fraternal gift to her heroine, Fanny Price. So you can see some of the emotion that she had about these particular crosses. And I think that's a particularly lovely insight into not just what these things were, but what they meant to her." —Dr. Hilary Davidson

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro to Jane Austen & Fashion, Regency Context: [01:39–04:53]
• Dr. Hilary Davidson’s Background & Research Origins: [05:02–10:44]
• Austen’s Biography Overview: [11:00–12:55]
• On Austen’s Letters & Their Significance: [14:52–17:41]
• Portrayals of Austen’s Appearance: [18:10–23:00]
• What Survives of Austen’s Wardrobe: [23:10–24:29]
• Wardrobe Structure & Dressing Ritual: [27:23–32:35]
• Textile Terminology & Material Literacy: [32:35–37:07]
• Mourning Dress Customs in Regency England: [37:07–40:16]
• Fashion Plates, Visual Evidence, and 'Cloud' Gown Hunt: [41:44–45:16]
• List Shoes Mystery Solved: [46:09–48:57]

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Notable Quotes

• "Dress was her passion." —Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey [02:04]
• “I kept reaching for the big book of Regency fashion... it wasn't there.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson [06:23]
• "The many nothings of Jane Austen can often be incredibly illuminating." —Dr. Hilary Davidson [16:56]
• "It's a copy of a copy of a copy... often the images that are most used now have really got not much at all to do with what Jane Austen really looked like." —Dr. Hilary Davidson [19:48]
• “The way Regency consumers understood textiles and fabric was so different to how we understand it now.” —Dr. Hilary Davidson [33:38]
• “Liszt is the most fantastic example of Regency upcycling... they're soundless shoes...” —Dr. Hilary Davidson [47:20]

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Conclusion

This episode delivers a rich, multi-layered insight into both the culture and material reality of Regency dress, using Jane Austen’s world as its axis. Through Dr. Davidson’s detective-style research and her engaging storytelling, listeners discover the pivotal role of clothing, fabric knowledge, and social custom in Austen’s life—illuminating both the minutiae of her daily existence and the broader social meanings of fashion in her era. The episode is a treasure for fans of Austen, fashion history enthusiasts, and anyone interested in how everyday objects and habits shape, and are shaped by, literary heritage.

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Transcript

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[Cassidy]

Maybelline Please enjoy one of our favorite episodes from the Dressed archive of over 500 plus shows.

[April Callahan]

The history of Fashion is a production of dress media.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

With over 8 billion people in the

[April Callahan]

world, we all have one thing in common. Every day, we all get dressed.

[Cassidy]

Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what,

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

when of why we wear.

[Cassidy]

We are fashion historians and your hosts

[April Callahan]

Cassidy Zachary and April Callahan Cass. I think that we can both agree that we probably share this sentiment, which was put to the page in 1803 by our subject today who wrote dress was her passion. Oh yeah, I read that and I

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

was like, oh well, I feel seen.

[April Callahan]

And these words of course are by Jane Austen, who continues on in her novel Northanger Abbey. Quote, she had a most harmless delight in being fine and our heroine's entree into life could not take place till after three or four days had been spent in learning what was mostly worn and her chaperone was provided with a dress of the newest fashion.

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

Yes, well, it sounds like our heroine was into doing a little bit of research too, so A girl after our own heart April and listeners, today's episode is probably long overdue in the pantheon of dressed subjects. We will delve into the feminine realm of the Regency period, which I'm sure many of you first came to know through the words of Jane Austen. Her novels like Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and Emma have been made into countless films, adaptations and course TV shows over the last two centuries. More than 30 million copies of her novels have been sold, which is incredible. She is one of the most beloved authors in the history of English literature. And Austen's face even graces the British ten pound note.

[April Callahan]

And I mean, the fashions of this period, Cass, are so distinctive. The Regency period followed on the heels of the French Revolution, so we're kind of talking about that diaphanous empire waist gown that were kind of neoclassical in their inspiration. Gone were the wide panniers of the 18th century. This regency style was very sleek and columnar and comparatively simple compared to 18th century fashions. And the simplicity of the lines of the silhouette made the perfect backdrop for the additional adornment by way of shawls, bonnets, gloves, hats, fans, parasols, and a fashion history first here, friends. Handbags actually make a very early appearance as a fashion accessory during this period as well.

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

And who better to take us into the delights of the Regency world than one of the period's experts, Dr. Hilary Davidson, who joins us to speak about her latest book, Jane Austen's Wardrobe, which can be thought of as the companion to her definitive book on the Regency fashion era, Dress in the Age of Jane Austen. Hillary is the former curator of fashion and decorative arts at the Museum of London and has taught and lectured on fashion history at top institutions in Sydney, London, Paris and New York, where she currently serves as an associate professor and the chairperson of the Fashion and Textile Studies MA program at fit, which by

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

now all of you know that Cass and I are alumsa and we are

[April Callahan]

actually so, so lucky to have Hilary shepherding the next generation of fashion historians

[Cassidy]

into the world and all of us

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

today into the world of Jane Austen. Dr. Davidson, welcome to Dressed Hill, welcome to Dressed.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Thank you very much. Thank you for having me.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yes. This is your first time joining us. It is, but I'm predicting it will certainly not be your last.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

I'm sure. I will love to come back, without a doubt.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

I just want to say that you're going to make plenty of Dressed listeners super happy with today's episode. I think that there is quite a lot of crossover between the Dressed audience and Jane Austen fans. You know, I devoured the books as a teenager, so it's been a few years for me. But you have written not one, but two books on the fashions of the Regency era and also the fashion in the worlds of Jane Austen that she not only created, but the world that she inhabited herself. So would you tell us a little bit about these two publications, how they came into being? Because I think it was really one book that Kind of sparked the second one.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Definitely. I would never have written the second book on its own. So the first book is called Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, Regency Fashion. And this is my labor of love. It basically came about because I started researching Jane Austen herself, what she looked like and what her body was like in the 2000s, when I was asked to make a replica of the silk pelisse, or coat dress, that's the only known body garment that we have surviving that has a provenance of having belonged to Jane Austen. So I got into researching Regency dress through Jane Austen and her physicality. And what I noticed was I kept reaching for the big book of Regency fashion, you know, the one that someone else had already written, and it wasn't there. And I realized that dress of this period, which I sort of. I ended up working with a definition of like a long regency of about 1795-1825, this incredible period when European dress changes really rapidly and everybody talks around it, but nobody had ever written a book directly just about this period. So as I did more and more things around Jane Austen, it occurred to me that she was such a great vehicle to write about this period through, because for, you know, so many people worldwide, Jane Austen is synonymous with the Regency period. And so many of us come to an understanding of dress of this period through adaptations of her works, which then feed into our imaginings when we read the books. And since she was such, you know, she sort of really sits in the middle of the middle classes in this period. She is, you know, lower gentry. She's an incredibly observant writer. She's. She's writing about this new period as she sees it happening. It's kind of social realism to a certain degree. So I just thought that using Jane Austen as the starting point for looking at Regency dress would just be like a really natural way in. And it's also the way I got into Regency dress. So the first book is a study of the whole of kind of Regency middle class dress for men and women through the lens of Jane Austen's writing and then her personal life, because she's so hugely studied, as her family is too. So there's all of this incredible biographical material to draw in and see, you know, what are her cousins doing? What are her brothers in the Navy doing, and really use her as a way to kind of explore how dress and textiles and fashion are used from. I sort of rippled outward if. If Jane Austen is the. The drop in the ocean that I started. Exactly. She's the foundation or the Anchor. I start with the body and the self and I move all the way outwards to kind of the, the ends of the earth to the globe. So that took me, oh, six years to write. It's, you know, quite, quite a lot.

[April Callahan]

People are always like, when are you gonna write another book? I'm like, I don't think you realize

[Cassidy]

how long it takes.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

It's. Yeah, it was five years in the writing and then a year in the production. Just getting all of the images together, making sure they fit on a page, making sure that, you know, all the bits go where they need to do be. And it's, it's huge amount of work from that. I was like, great. So now I've written the big book of Regency dress so that other people, when they're looking at this, can take this off the shelf and have something to start with. And then. So I published that at the end of 2019 and then in 2020, pandemic. So for reasons, I ended up getting stuck in Britain and from. On a trip from Australia and I was in a rather idyllic cottage in rural Wales and, you know, teaching long distance and puttering around. And this one day, so it must have been about May 2020, this thought just dropped into my head. I'd been picking up the book of Jane Austen's letters, which are an incredible resource for anybody who works on her for this period. And this idea just appeared in my head and it went, I wonder why nobody's done a study of what we can know Jane Austen wore just based on the letters. And it really did sort of take a couple of beats before the follow up thought came to me that actually probably I would be the person to do that. Yeah, I've just spent years researching Jane Austen and fashion, so, you know, I could do it. And I thought, well, okay, I'd call it Jane Austen's Wardrobe. And what I'd do would be to take a quote from the letters and explain it in text on one page and then just have images of what this kind of thing looked like on the other page. And that's how the second book came about. And it got published this year in September 2023 in exactly that format. And it's called Jane Austen's Wardrobe.

[April Callahan]

Yes, and it is brilliant.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

We're going to delve into it a

[April Callahan]

little bit in more detail here in a second.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

I think we might need to backtrack

[April Callahan]

just a teeny tiny bit in case

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

any of our listeners might not necessarily be familiar with Jane Austen.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Do you mean everybody doesn't have Jane Austen's biography etched into their head. I don't know, April, what's the world coming to?

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Perhaps you could tell us a little bit about her origins and how she became a very successful writer in the early 19th century.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

So Jane Austen was the seventh of eight children. Oh, wow. Big family of her parents, George and Cassandra, and she was only the second girl, so she had six brothers and one very beloved sister, Cassandra. They were best friends as well as very close sisters. She was born in 1775 in. Her father was a reverend, so sort of middle class, landed gentry. Her mother was descended on one side from minor nobility, which she was always very proud about. So she grew up in Hampshire in southern England in a very kind of comfortable but not overly prosperous family. Very literate, very creative. Her brothers went to university, they went to various professions. Two of them went into the navy, one became a banker and then eventually went to the church. Another went to the church as well. So Cassandra and Jane were the girls of the family, but they were always writing. And Jane Austen's Juvenilia is an absolute. It's hilarious. Highly recommend to read the stuff she wrote when she was a teenager and in her 20s. So in the late 1790s, she started writing novels and she drafted first Impressions, which would become Pride and Prejudice, Eleanor and Marianne, which would become Sense and Sensibility, and Susan, which would become Northanger Abbey. Then her father took the. Move the family to Bath, which she didn't like in the. In the very early 19th century, about 1801. And then he died unexpectedly in 1805. And she and Cassandra and their mother moved around between various family members, really dependent on the men in their family for a couple of years, which was

[April Callahan]

quite normal at the.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

The time. Very normal at the time. Had small amounts of income. Cassandra had some money from. Left to her by her fiance, who unfortunately died. Neither sister ever married. And finally they found a permanent home in Chorton Cottage, also in Hampshire, in a house owned by her brother Edward, who had got adopted by a wealthy branch of the family and become Edward Knight. And very well to do, indeed. So once they moved into Chawton Cottage and they had a settled home and Jane Austen really became productive. So she produced six finished novels there in from Chawton Cottage. So the ones that she'd already begun and she revised them completely and then she wrote new ones as well, Mansfield Park, Persuasion and Emma. Unfortunately, she started getting quite ill in her late 30s and she died at the age of only 41 of an illness that we. We still don't quite know what it is. Her last two novels were published posthumously, and she never published under her own name in her lifetime. It was only after she died that her name was revealed. So Austen got great reviews in her lifetime, but she was never wildly popular. I mean, I worked out the other day. I've made more money from Austen than she ever did in her life. But her fame started to really. It grew. Her books remained popular, but they really took off at the sort of the. The late 19th century, and it's certainly the early 20th century. And from there on, you know, she became genius, was recognized as one of the English language's great authors. But she died. She died young. And, you know, there's a lot of speculation about what she might have produced had she lived.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, she probably had dozens more novels

[April Callahan]

in her, for sure.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

So let's talk about some of her other writings, the letters that you referred to, obviously, already. Can you tell us a little bit about the letters that you were referring to? Specifically her correspondence overall, but also her relationship with her sister, Cassandra?

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

We only have a 161 letters that Jane Austen wrote, which is more than many authors, but it's been estimated that she wrote about 3,000 in her lifetime. So this is not very much at all. Austen had a large family, and they corresponded when they were apart. The sisters would often go and visit their various brothers in other parts of England. Two naval brothers. So their letters are whizzing around the world, but because Austen and Cassandra were so close, they wrote quite intimately to each other. And it's actually Cassandra who is responsible for us not having more of Austen's letters, because she burnt a lot before her own death in the mid 19th century. And even the letters that survive are sometimes censored. And it seems to be things about bodily illness or being mean about members of the family. So she's taking out all the juicy bits. Bit. She's definitely taking out the juicy bits. So we might have lost the really juicy bit letters. And when Memoirs of Jane Austen first started being published by her family in the sort of the 1860s, they really dismissed the letters. There was a kind of a. Oh, they must have been of interest to the person who received them. But, you know, they're no record of her mind and they're not really interesting to other people. And, I mean, we have a very different opinion of that now because what we have is Jane Austen being herself. One of the joys of her authorial voice is the kind of the detached irony of its narrator. And this Is Austen being her? She's, I mean, she's still a very witty correspondent, but she gets exasperated and happy and makes very catty comments. And she's, she's letting herself go with her, with her sister and being sort of joyful and personable. So the kind of bits of, as she said, you know. Which of my many nothings? Shall I tell you first? The many nothings of Jane Austen can often be incredibly illuminating. So what I did was to go through the letters and mine them for any kind of reference I could find about her own dress, what she was doing with a cap, how she might be shopping for fabric when she was in London and buying for herself and Cassandra and all of these kind of domesticities, these daily things that, that were dismissed as trivial in the 19th century really build up to give us an image of the life of a woman, you know, not necessarily this incredible monumental author, but as a person who is living in her time and having to deal with, how do I get clothes? What do I feel about clothes? What am I wearing? And so I used that intimate, non structured, formal voice to just, you know, really rummage around in what Jane Austen's wardrobe might be.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, well, I mean, the letters and

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

the quotes that you pull out paint a very quotidian picture of her life.

[April Callahan]

It's her life lived day to day.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Exactly. And so, you know, so sometimes the criticisms of the novels are that they're, you know, they're too bound up in the small things and they're, they too concentrate on niceties. But that was the scope of a middle class woman's life at the time. And these things mattered, and they still matter to us. You know, we, we might be more concerned about brands or quality, but they had to make the same sort of decisions. So that quotidianness is the background against which she is writing these incredible immortal novels.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Well, you know, I attended a book talk that you gave very recently and I was super surprised to learn that there are only 2, 2 confirmed portraits of Jane Austen known to exist. How can this be possible? I would like to ask that first. You might not have the answer, but it just seems so besides bizarre. But I'm hoping that you could speak a little bit about, about these two portraits of her and also the current iterations of Austen's likeness that abound in contemporary culture.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

It's basically because Austen was female. There's some lovely pictures of her brothers, oil paintings, just beautifully done. But she was, she was a girl and she was a second girl as well. So the only two Absolutely guaranteed, verified, undeniable pictures that we have of Austen are one small watercolor and pencil sketch that Cassandra did of her in probably about the 1810s, early 1810s, that's held in the National Portrait Gallery in London. And it's quite small and it's not particularly well done. And then, unfortunately, the other sketch, which is also done by Cassandra, is sitting down, facing away from the viewer.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

So it's great.

[Venmo Advertiser]

You can't even see her face.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Can't even see her face. You can see the details of her dress, which is, you know, great for me. But that's a very particular approach to it. And that's just. It's sort of the. The way the historical cookie crumbled. You know, if only we knew she was going to be so famous, maybe could have.

[April Callahan]

I mean, maybe part of that has

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

to do with the fact that she was never directly publishing under her own name in her lifetime, otherwise the artist might have come a calling.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Exactly. And maybe if she had lived longer, we would have had more likenesses of her. But this one portrait that Cassandra did has really become the basis for all of our ideas of what Jane Austen looked like. But they've gone through a metamorphosis. That means that often the images that are most used now have really got not much at all to do with what Jane Austen really looked like. So it's like a copy of a copy of a copy. So this portrait, which is painted in say, say 1810, in the early 1860s, when the family were writing their memoir, they commissioned a watercolor artist to do a copy of this picture and basically improve it a bit. You can really see that this is a later 19th century portrait. She's a slightly more chocolate boxy.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, yeah. And we do see that in the history of art quite frequently. We know that artists applied their liberal generosity to portraits sometimes.

[Venmo Advertiser]

Exactly.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

It's, you know, early forms of filters, Photoshop. So once this portrait was done in watercolour, it was then, you know, a second copy of this copy was done as a lithograph, so a kind of line drawing. And that artist interpreted details of dress and her face that the first the watercolor artist had taken some liberties with and moved them even further along. And then a third artist made a copy of that copy and really shifted things a lot, and her face changed and they made all sorts of decisions about her clothing. And this is the image that I think a lot of readers will be familiar with. It's often also seen on, online. This third artist did the version that might be Familiar to listeners that they've seen online. It's often got a sort of tinted blue dress, and she sort of had a coat of foundation put onto her. But when you compare it with the original portrait, which I do in the second book, Jane Austen's Wardrobe, and I've done a line drawing of the original portrait because the lines are so faint, you can see just how far it's drifted from what was originally painted and just how prettified and I suppose, Victorianized this image of Jane Austen has become. And yet that's the one that has kind of gone out into the world. And I think it's. It's interesting that you know, someone who. Who can be quite elusive in her personal life and elusive as an authorial voice. You know, she is. She is ironic. So we never quite know whether she's sincere about what she says as a narrator. And so we have this kind of elusiveness of a personal appearance as well. And I suppose what I'm. Part of what I'm doing in Jane Austen's wardrobe is through the clothing and through the references to clothing in the letters, I'm trying to kind of pull it back to what it is we can know Austen wore and what she might have looked like to kind of counteract the. A lot of the mythologizing that happens around Jane Austen and go, hey, here is maybe how she encountered herself as herself. Here are the things that she did wear. Here are the bits of jewelry that we know were hers. And just to kind of give a different, but I think equally or even more interesting approach to an understanding of this monumental author.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, well, you know, I mean, if we know so little about what Austen looked like herself, how much do we know about extant examples from her wardrobe?

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

There's only slightly more of that as well. The best piece is definitely the silk police that I mentioned earlier, which I've done. I've reconstructed a few times now. So I've made patterns from. And I've re. Sewn it. So I really understand that from the inside out. Then there's also a muslin scarf, which was thought to have been embroidered by her. Jane Austen was actually. She was a really good needle woman. She was excellent at satin stitch, which is very hard to do.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Oh, yeah. Especially if you're trying to keep it within, like, a vertical line and keep

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

a pattern on, you know, a thin, difficult fabric like muslin as well. I really respect her as a needle woman, which is, you know, not something that people say that often. And then there's bits of jewelry. So there's one turquoise ring in a gold band, there is a turquoise beaded bracelet, and there is a pair of topaz crosses that her brother Charles, who is one of the naval brothers, gave to both Cassandra and Jane after he won some money taking a prize. And she wrote about them in Mansfield park and kind of gave this beautiful kind of fraternal gift to her heroine, Fanny Price. So you can see some of the emotion that she had about these particular crosses. And I think that's a particularly lovely insight into not just what these things were, but what they meant to her.

[Cassidy]

Yeah.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

And they are of course featured in the book. They're lovely.

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[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

So you have already kind of touched on this very briefly. You have structured the book incredibly cleverly by sorting the items that she refers to in her references and her letters as to where they might have lived in their day. For example, there's one little chapter that's structured around the closet. There's another that's structured around the dressing table, the jewelry box, etc. Which is of course where the topaz crosses reside. But I'm hoping that you could give us a little bit of a primer into some of the most common or crucial elements in the Regency woman's wardrobe

[April Callahan]

that might might say, live in the

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

closet versus the dressing table.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

I put the drawers at the end of the book. That's kind of where the practical things go. But for the Regency dresser, that's where you'd be starting. You'd be putting on a linen shift next to the body to it's washable, it absorbs sweat and oils all the, the things that the body does that you want to protect clothing from. And over that, you'd be putting a pair of stays which are evolving into. There's a newfangled word that comes in at this time which is corsets starts to become very popular indeed. I'm sure some of your listeners will have heard of this garment. And so you put on your shift first and then your corset or stays and then knee high stockings underneath. But I put all the kind of those, those undergarmenty bits at the end.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yes. And they live in drawers, then.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

They live in drawers. Exactly. And then depending on what you were doing, you would select a gown and it was generally called a gown at this point. Dress was generally more reserved for kind of a whole ensemble. You are in walking dress, and you would get that from the clothes press. So your gowns would be kind of lying down rather than. There's no coat hangers at this point. Anything that's in the closet, like your cloaks and things, are hanging on hooks, but your gowns are lying down. And you take one of those and put it on, and you might have a petticoat or two that goes on underneath that as well, a thicker one in winter, lighter ones here in summer. And, you know, it is one of the great myths about Regency dress that women went without petticoats. But alas, it is a myth they did wear them. So you'd put on a gown that might be, you know, a cotton one if you're staying at home, or something grander if you're going out, visiting, and then you add on the elements on top of it. Your hair would always be up as an adult woman, Jane Austen, one of her nieces recalled, had hair that reached the back of her knees. It was that long. But she liked caps. She wore caps indoors most of the time. They kept your head warm, and as she said, they save a great deal of trouble. As to hairdressing, I put the caps with other headwear in the Bandbox chapter, because that's where they stored headwear. And so if you wearing a cap around the house, then you might put a bonnet, which didn't necessarily have a brim. It could just be a soft cap at this point, or other hat on. And if you're going out, you're definitely wearing gloves, which are stored on the shelves. I think that's where I put them. And you would add a pair of shoes, which are also in the shelves. And then you might take a shawl or a fish you. Or something from your shelves or your closet and wrap it around your chest, and then put on an outer garment, which is definitely in your closet, a police or a cloak or something similar, and go about your day.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

We have a lot of layering happening here. I mean, it would not be uncommon for a woman to leave the house wearing, like, six or seven different layers of clothing.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Absolutely. And this clothing was kind of doing a number of things. One, it was covering up their body for modesty's sake. I mean, although there's a lot of chest and often shoulder blades on display, there's a lot of writers at the time who complain about women's evening dress and just how much of their back and arms that you can see. But women are. They're wearing less at Night, but that's often because they're even in indoors, in events where you're going to get very hot if you're dancing in a room full of bodies and a room where all the light is coming from candles which give off heat, it gets incredibly hot. And I speak from experience here, kind of have. Have less clothing on at night is not one of those you're going to catch pneumonia things. It's actually not falling over from heat exhaustion.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

But on the other side, especially in Britain, which is. Can be damp at all kinds of year, they're very concerned about catching cold or getting ill because it could kill you. So just protecting your body from the elements and also protecting your clothing from the elements was important as well. People had less clothing and they looked after it longer. It was kind of inherently sustainable. So you don't want to get mud on your outer gown. For example, that scene in Pride and Prejudice where Lizzie Bennet's petticoat is 6 inches deep, deep in mud, is because she's pulled her nice gown up as she's walking through the field so that petticoat can catch all the mud, and then she's going to put her gown over the top. It's a really practical decision. So a lot of the layering is just to kind of. To keep warm and to keep you away from the elements and make sure that you're not going to get sick and your clothing is not going to get destroyed by what you're doing. You know, if you're at home and you have to catch chickens in the yard, you don't want to be wearing a nice dress for that. So there's a real sort of sense of care and appropriateness to time of day and activity in all of these layers as well.

[April Callahan]

Right. And all the layers implies layers of textiles.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Reading your book in and of itself is kind of a primer in textile history. So many of the references in Austen's letters to her sister Cassandra are about specific types of textiles. And, you know, there are mentions of, like, things like muslin and poplin, which we are. Are largely familiar with today. But then there are a ton of

[April Callahan]

specialty terms that most of us aren't familiar with today. You know, there's bombazine, there's crepe versus China crepe, there's sarzanet versus Persian.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Some terms that I had never even heard of before.

[April Callahan]

Kersey.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

I was not familiar with that one. Irish, not the people.

[April Callahan]

A fabric.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

You know, as I said, a lot

[April Callahan]

of these names are lost to US today.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

But I guess what I'd like to

[April Callahan]

know is what was the relationship with

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

education about fabrics and textiles and the making of textiles that people had at this time? Because it seems just to roll off the tip of her tongue, it really is fabric.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

The way Regency consumers understood textiles and fabric was so different to how we understand it now, because the material qualities, the haptic qualities, what scholars are kind of calling the material literacy of it was so important to understanding if you were getting a bargain, if you were getting value, if something would last, how it was made and what it was made of, and the quality told you what you were investing in, how long your clothing was going to last. And everyone else, because everyone else could read it as well, it is the kind of the equivalent of, you know, knowing when something is like genuine designer or a. Its knockoff, is it a real Indian muslin or is it a bad knockoff? And so that kind of understanding of the particular qualities. Is this a cheap muslin? Is this a nice muslin? Is this a pretty muslin? As Henry Tilney says in Northanger Abbey, will it wash? Will it fray? This was really important because people are investing a lot into their clothing. They spent more on them. So it's exactly the same kind of thing of, you know, if you're going to buy, let's say, 10 dresses in a year, and that's all you can buy, but you can afford to go designer, you want to know you're getting exactly the right thing, because there's no margin for error here. Jane Austen wasn't wealthy, she had a limited income. So to know, as Mrs. Bennet says in Pride and Prejudice, she's not at all concerned about Lydia running off with Mr. Wickham for, you know, moral reasons. She's concerned that. That Lydia won't know the best warehouses to get her trousseau at. And she won't get this kind of. Mrs. Bennet has the material education, she knows fabrics, and she needs to kind of train Lydia into picking the good stuff so that it will be value valuable to her. So this dimension of shopping, especially since women's dresses weren't ready made, you had to go and pick out the fabric. Knowing how to pick the good textile picked you a good dress.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, yeah. And it was you who picked out the fabric and then took it to the dressmaker, or you took it to the tailor, depending on what kind of garments were being commissioned to be made to measure for you. So it is a very intense, intimate relationship that people had with textiles that we simply do not have today.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Think about, you know, if someone said to you now, all right, you have to go and pick out the fabric for a raincoat, right? Something that's got a really particular purpose. You're going to really want to start to research. And, you know, this is. This is the only raincoat you can have. This is the only coat that's going to keep the rain definitely off you for hiking. And, you know, you're not just going to a store and they're saying, yeah, this is guaranteed waterproof. You start researching the fabrics. What does this nylon do? And this one says it's shower proof, but this one says it's waterproof. What. How does that really function? Because it's going to make a difference to how your clothing works. So it's exactly the same kind of thing they were doing, only they had to do it all the time. And men were really good at it as well. They often proxy shopped. If you went someone was going into a city, you would send a shopping list with them going, I want a this and this and this and a pair of shoes and some fabric like this. And this is how Cassandra and Jane often shopped as well. They shopped for each other because family's good. They know your taste. They know what everybody means by a quality mozzarella. And so this kind of relying on other people's material understanding was also a great way to, like, get nice things when you couldn't be where the nice things were.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Well, I thought that's especially interesting. There's at one point, Jane's mother buys a significant yardage of black bombazine, I think it was, which is, of course, intended for mourning dress. And so many of the references to clothing and dress that you pulled out and are in the book actually speak about morning dress. Could you tell us a little bit about the importance of this and also the practice of it at this kind of earlier portion in the 19th century?

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

So mourning dress. And you know, just to clarify as well, we are talking about the kind of the dark clothing that you put on when someone has died in the family, not just, you know, the things you wear in the morning. It becomes the kind of one of the great narratives of dress in the later 19th century, all of those kind of dark Victorians that we think of. But the practice is really there in the Regency as well. And the etiquette was that when someone in your family, and that could be immediate family or, you know, a distant cousin or also members of the royal family, which caused people a lot of headache when Someone died. You marked this out in dark clothing, preferably black. Perhaps the most significant death that we see affect Austen's wardrobe is that of her sister in law, Elizabeth Knight, the brother of Edward, who died soon after the childbirth of her 11th child. Heroic woman. And no one was expecting it, that the child was saved. She thought she was fine, and then unfortunately, she suddenly passes on. And so the whole family has to flurry to get into mourning for to as a mark of respect. And this meant that for at least six weeks, the wardrobe went fully black. And sometimes you might have black clothing already. So black stockings, black shoes. But what we see a lot of is Cassandra and Jane talking about, what are we going to do about our morning? What have we got that we can adapt? How can we work it in? If we new trim this, I'm going to get a new bonnet, someone else is going to make me a dress here. It's kind of like an emergency, having to get new clothes. And what we also see is that sometimes if you were away and you were in a house where somebody died and you weren't, you had to send for your mourning to wear as a mark of respect. And then also if a member of the royal family died, most notably Princess Charlotte in 1817, whose death eventually becomes the reason why Queen Victoria takes the throne, the whole nation was plunged into royal court mourning. And. But then there's also kind of niceties about the degrees to which you wear black. At one point, Austin. Austin asks, you know, do we have to wear. Do we have to go into mourning for the Duke of Gloucester, or will ribbons do? Given the state of medicine and the uncertainty of, of life and how large families were, people would often be in mourning for family members according to the etiquette of how close they were, how closely they were related to them, and which dictated sort of how long you wore that dress for. So having a certain amount of black clothing was an important part of Austen's wardrobe. Not for any, you know, chic black reasons, but just as a practical and necessary social convention.

[April Callahan]

Yeah, preparation, exactly.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

We have touched on morning dress in the past on the show, but it's been a few years. I think we're probably wildly overdue for an entire episode devoted to the topic, because we've never done one. We've done an episode on Victorian hair jewelry, which was an integral part of morning dress in certain decades, but not an entire overarching history. So we'll get to that one day.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Well, if you ever want to know what people wore in the grave. Oh, that's something else I work on. I can tell you what you know, not what the people who left behind wore, but the people who passed on were.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Well, there we go. Dress listeners, I told you that Hillary would be back maybe for next year's Halloween episode.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Good thinking.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

As our regular listeners will know, Cassidy and I are both obsessed with fashion plates. And your book contains copious fashion plates. And a lot of them are used to really magical effects because so few of Austen's garments exist. You are illustrating the quotes with the fashion plates or different various forms of illustrations or artwork. And some of these pairings are really, really delightful and give a peep into the styles or practice of styling garments that has kind of been lost over time. So do you have a couple of pairings that you might like to talk about specifically that are your favorites? And I am hoping that you will talk about the list shoes, because this was something that was new to me.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

So I think one of the. One of the kind of references in Austen's letters that I'm most pleased with, with the objects that I found to illustrate it is in 1801, she had a yellow and white cloud gown. And first of all, it took me a while to track down what was meant by cloud at this point. And it turns out to be a dyed in the yarn technique that's probably more familiar to listeners as some of the icat techniques. Yes. And they called it cloud at the time or clouded silks. So I was looking for something, you know, she's talking about wanting new coloured gowns for the summer, one of which is to be a very pretty yellow and white cloud. And that's in January 1801. So I love this idea of her kind of writing in the middle of winter, just dreaming of her summer dresses. So I was really looking for items that were made out of cloud or something similar, but also showed what a yellow dress might look like at this time. And so this particular entry is paired with a really beautiful peignoir in the V and a collection from about 1812-14, which has got. It's actually an Indian Ikat with this kind of yarn dyeing in it. And then also in the V and A collection, I found this fabulous pattern book that had textile samples that are actually called Clouds and a few satin flounces from 1792. And one of them is in yellow, black and white.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

How thrilled were you when you found that?

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

It just. I really enjoyed that kind of detective aspect of looking, hunting down really particular aspects for this, you know, particular references. But then to Kind of move outwards and go, all right, so what, what might this look like? Around 1801, the wonderful gallery of fashion was great because it's got fashion plates that are dated to the month and were ostensibly taken from real Life. So in June 1801, there is in fact a, what's called a round dress of yellow muslin trimmed with narrow blue ribbon around the neck and sleeves. And that is exactly the kind of, that's the month that Austen was looking towards. So it gives us an idea of what kind of hot yellow fashion might look like at that time. But then I also found a yellow dress in one of my favorite artwork series that I discovered for this, this book, which is a series of watercolours in the Yale Centre for British Art collection by the artist Louis Vaslet called the Spoiled Child, which is this long series of very detailed pictures of this terrible girl who elopes and does awful things. And it's really quite funny, but at one point she's attacking someone with a butter knife at the breakfast table wearing what's clearly a nice yellow muslin gown. And it was painted in 1804. Plus it's got this gorgeous detail of her tucking the g. The hem of her gown through her pocket slip so you can see her nice petticoat underneath. And it's just the most. It's a really kind of enchanting image that gives, you know, we've got some, we've got some fabric, we've got a real object, we've got a fashion plate. And then we've got this slightly satirical but beautifully observed picture to give us a kind of a, a three step, 60 degree view of what a gown like this might look like for Austin.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, and, and I'm so glad you picked that example because it is so, so multifaceted in terms of the primary sources that you found. And this just kind of paints a picture. The entire book is like this dress listeners. So I know that many of our Jane Austen fans are going to want to get their hands on it immediately.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

I really dug. I think I ended up with about 5,000 images in the research for the first book. So I dug and dug to find things that were as close as I could find to the references that are being used. But there are also images here that have never been published before. So, you know, we live in an image rich world. And I'm happy to say that I have found new things for you to look at and have things photographed that have just never been in print before. So I love being able to give readers new experiences in the world of Regency dress, where there's, you know, there's lots of kind of old favorites. And so I hope we've got some new favorites here.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Yeah, well, I mean, I had that thrilling experience when I encountered the list shoes that she referred to. I have been doing this for 15 years now and had no idea what list was. And I'm sure our listeners feel the same. So you'll tell us about those.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

This is probably my proudest moment of research for the whole book. There's two things. One is discovering where the real Grafton street in soho is. Grafton House, where Jane Austen shopped a lot. And the other is working out what her list shoes were like. Now, I, like you, had never heard of List. The only reference I'd ever come across was Jane Austen's list shoes. And I trained as a shoemaker, so I was sort of like, oh, I really, I should know about this. And so I dug and dug and dug and dug. I contacted curators at shoe museums. I looked up lots of, you know, things that people had written about list and this particular reference before. And people would write really helpful things like list shoes are shoes that are made of list.

[April Callahan]

Thank you.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

So illuminating. And anyway, eventually I tracked down thank you to Al Seguto. Thank you. Al, who was a shoemaker at Colonial Williamsburg. And he did this fantastic annotated volume on the art of the Shoemaker, the 18th century text. And he had tracked down a pair of Liszt boots in a museum in Switzerland, as well as some textual references. And I'd read all these, read all these bits about Liszt being like, made from tapes or made from wool. And I didn't understand it. And suddenly it all became clear. And Liszt is, it turns out, the most fantastic example of Regency upcycling. So if you have a bolt of wool fabric that you are using to tailor something, people who sew, who listen will know that the selvedges have a lot of tension in them. And especially on wool, you cut the selvages off, off. And so what you would be left with is long woolen tapes. And because they're so heavily full, it works like felt, they're not going to fray. And list is the fabric that is woven from these off cut tapes on the side of wool. So that whole kind of Bottega venator aesthetic, that's the kind of look that we're looking at, but it's like woolly slippers. And then you put you, you weave them into shape and then you add a sole on them and you have list shoes or list slippers, which are basically soft indoor shoes that don't make a sound and they keep your feet warm in carriages or after a dance, which is exactly where Jane Austen is using them. And they were used for all sorts of things. So once I understood the material qualities and I understood what Liszt was and how it was used, then a lot of the other references in literature and journalism at the time made sense about spies wearing them, for example, or ladies of the house using them to sneak up on their servants and watch what they were doing.

[April Callahan]

Because they were quiet.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Because they were quiet. They're soundless shoes. And so I was just delighted to find out what Liszt was, but also the. To realize that I had a perfect example of Liszt slippers already with me, but I didn't know that that's what they were. The archaeological work that I mentioned earlier, one of the things that came up out of a massive site that I've been working on from the early 19th century graves in London, was a pair of slippers made of this weird tape that I didn't understand that looked like it was wool and it was kind of in a basket weave. And I suddenly realized that this object that had been confusing me and this text reference that are confusing me were one and the same things. And I had the. This fabulous pair of list slippers. And it was just. It was a complete aha moment. That was really my favourite research breakthrough of the whole book.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Fashion history Mystery solved.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

Exactly.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

And also in. In your featuring it in the book, there is a lovely illustration of a woman at a ball and her. Her lady's maid is actually helping her so slip off her very, very delicate, very, very precious dance slippers. And she's putting on her list slippers to return home, which is incredibly charming because that is also the same reference that Jane talks about in her letter. She was at a ball and then apparently her slippers arrived, so she knew it was time to go and she

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

didn't want to keep them waiting.

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

Hillary, thank you so much for joining us today on dress. Both of your books are incredibly detailed and explorations of this Regency period in fashion, which is, of course, much depicted

[April Callahan]

in movies and films. But here we have the actual primary sources, the real deal. So thank you for writing these and we hope that you will return from the grave.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

I would love to. I would love to. Hillary. Part Two, the Return Back from the Grave. Thank you so much for having me.

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

Hilary, thank you so much for joining us today to share your extensive work on the Regency period and the works of Jane Austen. And I mean, I mean what a fun project to work on uncovering the history of Austen's own wardrobe. I mean, this is a fashion history researcher's dream project and both of the

[April Callahan]

books Dress in the Age of Jane Austen and also Jane Austen's Wardrobe are full of tons, tons of primary source imagery. You know, Hillary put in so, so much research into these two books and there are so many beautiful images. So, so I'm mentioning this because if any of our listeners are looking for holiday gifts for a Bridgerton fan on their list, well, you can be done shopping now. Hilary's books are the solution to your gift giving dilemma, trust me. You can of course find them on our Dressed bookshelf if you head over to bookshop.org shop dressed. We will also put a link to both of Hilary's books and our show

[Cassidy]

notes, tips and dress listeners.

[Co-host (possibly Zachary)]

That does it for us today. May you consider what your clothes communicate about you. Next time you get dressed,

[Co-host (possibly Cassidy or April)]

please head

[April Callahan]

over to Dressed Underscore podcast on Instagram or Podcast without the Underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.

[Cassidy]

Remember, we love hearing from you Dressed listeners, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do [e-mail] DressHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And there you can also check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.

[Dr. Hilary Davidson]

We get so many questions from you

[April Callahan]

all about our recommendations for fashion history books, so if you're interested you can always find a link in our show notes to our bookshop.org bookshelf so that address is bookshop.org shop dressed and there you will find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles.

[Cassidy]

Do you love dressed but want to skip the ads? We are so excited to now be a part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus and this is available on Apple Podcasts and the subscription brings you our podcast as well as 27 other popular history podcasts. Ad free for $5.99 per month. More information is available at the link in our bio.

[April Callahan]

Thank you as always for tuning in and more Dressed coming your way soon. The History of Fashion is a production of Dressed Media.

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[Sophia Wilson]

Hey, it's Sophia Wilson, athlete and gold medalist. And this summer, my wardrobe is being perfected with Abercrombie's newest drop. I'm a girl who loves jeans, and Abercrombie's new linen blend denim has changed the game for me. They have that lightweight feel for summer, but the outfits I live in all summer are matching sets. They always look good, and they give your wardrobe options. Spend the summer in Abercrombie, shop in the app, online and in stores.