On the last weekend in August I was with my choir, the Lewes Singers, in Bath, singing services at the Abbey. Bath! What a great place to get inspired about Regency costume. We visited the Pump Room, the Assembly Rooms and the regency house at 1 Royal Crescent, which was wonderful.
Unfortunately I was the only one in our party who wanted to visit the Jane Austen Centre (!) but then again I couldn’t expect the others to understand how I needed to get into the Regency thang! The Museum was a strange experience – the way it’s organised is that you are given a short presentation which takes place every half hour or so, then you are taken downstairs into the museum proper, and left to wander round in your own time. Because entry is timed, it means you don’t get those awful crushes you get in some National Trust houses in the summer.
But the strange thing was, although about 20 of us all trooped in together, within a few minutes I appeared to be alone. I don’t know if the others had rushed through, or decided they wanted to get to the tearoom, but I found I was able to stop and spend time looking at the exhibits in a really relaxed way. There were a number of costumes on display, and I had a good look at the fabrics and construction, where I could. The problem with dresses on dummies/mannequins is that they are pinned and so they don’t really fit properly, or look like they would on a person.
Anyway, I came back from Bath with renewed enthusiasm for the Regency dress project. And I knew I only had 2 months until Bonfire night!
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