Happy Irish Fashion Friday! As we go into the weekend on what is a dismal July weekday – we’ve had no sun for what seems weeks now – I have some thoughts and tribulations on Irish Fashion and the precarity of working as an Irish dress historian in the museums and heritage world. Like these women above trying to find and work with Irish dress history sources is sometimes, literally, nail-biting!
Naturally. when I go abroad I like to visit museums to find out more about the area and it’s heritage and history. When I visited Bologna of this Year I visited the Museum of the History of Bologna situated in Bologna’s city centre. The museum details the story of Bologna from pre-historical times through the Roman and Renaissance up to the Twenty-First Century. With a nominal fee of eight euros and situated over several floors visiting the museum was a great way to find out more about the history of Bologna which I admit I knew very little about!
In my last post, I talked about the Christian principles evident in Anne of the Island and it got me thinking of my own childhood being brought up on these principles and other moral principles by my beloved maternal grand-mother. My grand-mother, or Nanny as I called her, as we say in the country in Ireland ‘Granny reared’ me for most of my young life.
The image of a traditional Irish woman; a home-maker, mother, traditionalist, and industrious provider for her family in times of need. Although if you look carefully enough this woman (we do not know if she was ever a mother; as like a lot of Irish women she is an anonymous woman from history)she appears to have the remnants of a permanent wave and is wearing silk stockings. This image sits somewhat at the intersection of traditionalism and modernism; this Irish woman is working at a traditional industry, spinning wool, but is sporting a modern hairstyle and silk stockings. Read on to find out how women in 1930s Ireland grappled with and experienced both traditional and modern modes of femininity.