Tailoring the Past: the role of historical pattern cutting and reconstructive practice in shaping femininity in Britain, 1820 – 1860

This project investigates how bespoke tailoring techniques of cutting, shaping, and making British men’s coats influenced the cut, construction, and silhouette of women’s riding habits between 1820 and 1860. Central to this study is a practice-related methodological framework based on triangulation, combining historical research, material culture analysis, garment re-making, and embodied investigation to examine how tailoring practices shaped women’s clothing in early- to mid-nineteenth-century Britain. By re-making a man’s frock coat and a woman’s riding habit using historical tailoring, this research explores how women’s clothing adopted and adapted methods associated with male bespoke tailoring—a phenomenon I coined ‘crosstailoring’. In this thesis, cross-tailoring provides an analytical framework for examining the relationship between tailoring practice, gender, embodiment, and cultural expectation. Through this approach, my research demonstrates how pattern cutting and re-making of early nineteenth century tailoring generate knowledge about garment construction, bodily movement, and gendered dress. The embodied element of the study was further developed in collaboration with a professional side-saddle rider, whose specialist equestrian practice enabled the riding habit to be tested in motion, offering insights into how such garments shaped posture, movement, and perceptions of femininity. These investigations demonstrate how women negotiated the tension between restriction and freedom, and how tailored riding dress contributed to shifting gender norms during the four decades under investigation. Furthermore, the research considers whether these sartorial adaptations participated in wider cultural and social changes by influencing perceptions of femininity and women’s presence in the public sphere. This study argues that the tailoring of women’s riding habits, through the adaptation of male bespoke tailoring techniques, played an important role in shaping new forms of feminine expression and agency. By placing re-making and embodied research at the centre of its methodological framework, the project demonstrates how dress functioned not only as a symbol of social identity but also as a process by which gender was negotiated and experienced. In doing so, the thesis contributes to an understanding of the relationship between garment making, tailoring, gender, and social change in nineteenth-century Britain.