Sarah Bendall
@sarahabendall
📜 Historian of Women, Material Culture & Fashion, 1500-1800 | 🧵 Recreation & Making | 📚 Author of Shaping Femininity & Women who Clothed the Stuart Queens (Bloomsbury)| ✍️ Editor of Embodied Experiences of Making (AUP)
Chapter 5 explores how, from dressing & hairstyling to laundering & storage, women played a vital role in maintaining the Stuart queens’ wardrobes. It reveals how the royal household’s care economy created opportunities for paid work, social mobility and long-term careers for women.
Chapter 4 traces the rise of women as specialist makers, particularly mantua-makers. The chapter shows how women competed for patronage with male tailors & highlights the crucial role of French couturières in training English dressmakers & shaping fashionable dress in England.
Chapter 3 explores the rise of female milliners & retailers. As demand for French fashions & East Indies goods grew, women built influential businesses, cultivated public identities, & forged powerful court connections that helped legitimize their place in London’s expanding consumer economy.
Chapter 2 explore the work of the Mistress of the Robes. Far from honorary positions, these women managed wardrobes, finances, staff, & tradespeople. Their patronage shaped fashion and supported women’s work. This position provided elite women with influence, authority, & professional identities.
Chapter 1 explores how the Stuart queens used dress to express identity, status, and political ambition, as well as their personal tastes and interests. It traces how royal wardrobes were shaped by dynastic display, changing politics, commercial interests and consumer culture.
Publication day today for The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens! See this 🧵 for a chapter breakdown. Discount code & links in my bio.
New article has just been published OA @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social ! Lots of archival work in here tracing the the women who ran “Indian houses” in #17thc London. Including one woman who may have helped plot the Glorious Revolution!! #earlymodern www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
I’m focusing on posting a lot of content about my upcoming book on my Instagram, as that platform lends itself more to visuals (like those below). If you’d like to follow along, please head over there! www.instagram.com/sarahbendall...
My article on Queen Anne’s wardrobe has just been published OA. I provide a qualitative & quantitative overview of her extensive wardrobe accounts (incl makers & suppliers) & show how fashion influenced her representation! #18thc #17thc #earlymodern onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
Bluesky would also be better to use if I didn’t constantly get these error messages when I’m trying to look at my feeds, which capture posts I’m actually interested in
Coming soon! My article on Queen Anne’s wardrobe has been accepted into the Journal for #18thC studies. In it I provide a qualitative & quantitative overview of her extensive wardrobe accounts (including makers & suppliers) & the ways that fashion influenced her representational strategies!
Truly honoured to receive these endorsements for my forthcoming book from historians who I so admire & whose work has inspired my research @lauragowing.bsky.social @juliehardwick.bsky.social @susannah-lw.bsky.social To read more & pre-order @bloomsburyfashion.bsky.social see the links in my bio!
My next book, The Women who Clothed the Stuart Queens, has a cover!!! And a preorder link!! Yippee! www.bloomsbury.com/au/women-who...
20-30% off Shaping Femininity and other great fashion history books until 20 July on the @bloomsburyfashion.bsky.social website! 📚 www.bloomsbury.com/au/shaping-f...
Lovely to hear papers by Erin Griffey and Caroline Paganussi on the theme of the Dark Renaissance symposium at Uni Melb today!
Come and make a 16th-century Spanish farthingale with me using historically accurate materials and methods, including hoops of bent!! 🧵 🪡 Click the link belie to book and find out more about what you’ll need to bring and what you’ll learn. linktr.ee/sarahabendall
Join me 17 Feb @ 7pm GMT for my online talk on: “The Queens’ Dressing Room: Caring for the Queens’ Body & Clothing at the Stuart Courts” I’ll be talking about the dressing rooms, wardrobe spaces & attendants that I discuss in my forthcoming book. Sign up: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sarah-bend...
@serenadyer.bsky.social & I are pleased to announce a #cfp for our new edited online collection of Reflective Recreations with @bloomsburyfashion.bsky.social We seek short pieces of 1k words around recreative practice in dress & fashion history, museum studies & more! See the call & deadline below: