Family history books with Helen Tovey, Paul Chiddicks & Jackie Tench

The Dress Diary of Mrs Anne Sykes: Secrets from a Victorian Woman’s Wardrobe

by Dr Kate Strasdin

We all love an old book, or a junk-shop treasure. And when the groaning covers of a Victorian scrapbook were placed in dress historian Kate Strasdin’s hands, she knew she had come upon something special.

The scrapbook contained more than 2,000 snippets of fabric, that had been carefully collected and stored from 1838, for several decades into the 1870s. Protected from the light, the snippets show the kaleidoscope of colours that our more comfortably off Victorian ancestors would have worn.

Yet the story goes beyond this. Weaving together the detective story, Kate Strasdin scours the scrapbook for clues to identify who it was who had created the collection, and also places the book in its time – reflecting on the many ways in which this single scrapbook provides a record of the industry, empire and drastically changing fashion scene of so much of the Victorian era.

Of the 2,000 snippets, just 70 pertain to the clothing of men, so this book very much reflects the story of women through the period. It is a treasure to read, particularly for anyone interested in women’s history, material culture, and textile history (images of a selection of the snippets are included in the book).