01movements
The Aesthetic Movement: How Art-for-Art's-Sake Killed the Corset
A loose dress, a sunflower in a buttonhole, an Oscar Wilde quotation. The 1860s rebellion that invented bohemian style and broke the cage crinoline forever.
The Era
Victorian
An age of whalebone, crinolines, and rigid propriety, yet also of radical industrialization that transformed how clothing was made and worn.
Dispatches
Essays from the Victorian Era
02cultural context
The Sari Across Centuries
Six yards of unstitched cloth, worn continuously on the subcontinent for three millennia. A history of the longest-lived garment in the world.
03iconic garments
The Birth of Denim: From Workwear to Wardrobe
A single-indigo twill, first woven for dockworkers in Genoa, crossed the Atlantic and rode out with the miners. A hundred and fifty years later, it is the closest thing humanity has to a common uniform.
04iconic garments
The Corset Question, 1850–1900
For half a century, a single undergarment tethered womanhood to whalebone. The arguments against it were medical, moral, and, finally, modern.
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Travel Onward