You never quite know what's going to catch people's interest about costume history.
After a year's immersion in WW1 research and an hour's frantic dressing of mannequins for a display of vintage WW1 fashions and uniforms, I stepped onto the stage at Cheltenham Festival to begin my first ever presentation on Great War Fashion, entirely uncertain what would make the (sell-out) audience laugh, sigh or nod-in-agreement.
I was rather excited. Mostly because Ian Hislop had been in the Writer's Room (serious crush on him.) I wish he could have seen me in my gorgeous (original) brown silk dress, lace-up field boots and green ladies trench coat. At least I recognised him. One year at Cheltenham I shared a taxi with Dan Snow and didn't even know who he was (though I thought he was a nice looking lad).
So - how to win my audience over? Underwear always gets a twinkle from the audience, particularly the one-size-fits-everybody drawers. Then there's a predictable gasp at the sprung steels of the wartime corset. A glimpse of rustling rust-red petticoats also caused a few people to sit up straight and smile.
However, what really gives me a thrill, and what really resonates with any audience, is that sense of clothes being a link with the past. The First World War is passing out of living memory and into history books. For most of us it's just too late to ask relatives about the very real details of their experiences. In many cases, clothes and photographs are the only surviving evidence of lost lives.
Clothes are at once immensely intimate and very, very public. For some outfits on show at Cheltenham I know the name of their owner, such as nurse Winifred Ingram's blue uniform dress, white apron and starched collar & cuffs. For most garments we'll never know either the names or histories of their owners. The flame-retardant factory worker's tunic merely has the pretty embroidered initials "V. B."
By the end of the hour's presentation I felt I had only dipped my well-shod toes into the subject of wartime fashion, so how wonderful to know I can now share so much more of my passion for the subject in a beautifully designed book.
In 1915, one fashionista gushed about the glamorous pair of silk pyjamas she'd just purchased. She said she wished there'd be a Zeppelin raid so she could rush out into the street wearing them. Thankfully, the threat of Zepp raids has long gone, but I do own the most bewitching pair of peach silk pjs from the war years. And – who’d’ve thought it - these were the item most women in the audience scrambled to view when the talk was done.
Lucy Adlington runs the delightful History Wardrobe series of costume-in-context presentations which span 200 years of women’s history through fashion and the author of Great War Fashion: Tales from the History Wardrobe. More from Lucy Adlington can be seen at www.historywardrobe.com, www.greatwarfashion.com and on Facebook and Twitter.