[September 21] London: Museum of London Museum (for class)

On Tuesday, my British Women's Social History class met at the Museum of London so we could spend a couple of hours looking around at the exhibits of England's social history for traces of women in history.

This pic has nothing to do with why we were there but it's a huge collection of twitter updates...

Yeah, right, dress. Why this was attractive, I have no idea, but then there are plenty of things we wear today that would have boggled the owner of this dress, I'm sure!

This dollhouse was marked c1760; it was given to Lady Blackett by her husband Sir Blackett after the birth of their first son. It is incredibly detailed and if I ever have a daughter one day, I want to make her a special dollhouse.

This Pleasure Garden was one of my favorite parts... The atmosphere of the dark room filled with fantastical displays was just great. I wish it were 'real'...

As usual, I was particularly interested in the fashion which I think I might do my paper on for the class. More specifically, I would like to concentrate on a certain era of fashion and how and why the manipulation of women's body shape took place. The dresses pictured below are some examples of what women wore in the 1920s, as I'm sure you can tell. Women's bodies are constantly being manipulated to fit into whatever is popular at the time. During the 1920s, women would even wrap their breasts so they could appear flat-chested and boyish and wear the bag-like dresses that were all the rage. The information below the display said that with the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, Egyptian-inspired clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, and hairstyles became very fashionable. I had never known that!


I LOVE these pastel drawings:


I now realize that WWI was a HUGE turning point for women because with so many men away at war, women had no choice but to take over the more 'masculine' positions the men once held. With the death of millions of men, many women would never have been able to marry and would have to find a way to take care of themselves. After this, there was no turning back...


And of course, 1960s & Beatlemania... I would love to own the black and white Beatles dress.


This is a sculpture that was randomly at the end of the exhibit and I know it's not a very good picture of it but I just really liked it—I don't know if you can tell but a bird is emerging form the top: