The Dress Diary of Mrs. Anne Sykes

Out of more than 100 names and 2000 swatches of cloth:

Only seventy fragments were associated with male garments, and only seventeen of the names recorded were those of men. It seemed that at a time when so much of literature and the arts was focused on the endeavors of men, this was a book dedicated to the world of women. I decided to try to piece together the lives of some of these women through the clues that were left behind, scant though they often were. Using what felt like a forensic approach in its detail, I focused on fragments of cloth to illuminate the world these women inhabited, enabling a wider context to emerge. What began to appear were the tales of an era, placing these lives into the industrial maelstrom of the nineteenth century, with all its noise, color, and innovation.

The author of this forensic study of a rare kind of collection:

Dr. Kate Strasdin is a fashion historian, museum curator and lecturer at Falmouth University, where she teaches the history of fashion design, marketing, and photography.

What a fabulous window into the past and into the fashions of a bygone age.