TV Filming at Woodford Academy National Trust and The Darnell Collection

The picturesque and historic National Trust property, Woodford Academy in the Blue Mountains of NSW, was the venue for the filming of a documentary series featuring the history of undergarments called The Gallery of Everyday Things.

 Crinolines, bustles, Victorian corsets and petticoats, and a smattering of 20th century bras, girdles and underwear from The Darnell Collection, were featured.

Tamara was our obliging 'Victorian lass' who sported all sorts of undergarments. She was filmed descending a narrow staircase in her crinoline dress, just as a woman would have done at Woodford  Academy when it was a coaching inn in the mid 1800s.

Victorian fashion brought Woodford Academy back to life for a day!

My assistants, Kirsten and Olivia, standing amidst a sea of petticoats in the original school room
(a handmade modern crinoline, made from garden tubing and hessian tape, waits to be used)

Tamara demonstrating what a crinoline dress looks like when seated

What is looks like underneath a crinoline dress!

Makeup stylist, Rachel, creates a soft, Victorian look

The camera crew filming Tamara as she descends the narrow Victorian staircase in her crinoline dress

Bustles or Tournures in The Darnell Collection

During a recent photo shoot I on which I collaborated with Cotton Australia as we build the world's first Cotton in Fashion History Digital Library, I found at the back of the storage unit a box of extraordinary late 19th century bustles.

Bustles like these were worn by fashionable ladies in the late 1880s. The soft layered look, popular in the pervious decade and immortalised so beautifully in paintings such as August Renoir's "Le Moulin de la Galette" in 1876, was replaced by a severe, tailored silhouette with an exaggerated (and often extraordinary) fullness at the back created by layers of fabric. Fixed around the waist of the wearer, a bustle, made from a framework of watch spring wire held in place by grommets attached to heavy-weight cotton cloth, supported the folds of fabric to create a stiff protrusion. Georges Seurat's "La Grande Jatte", painted in 1884, captured this very rigid silhouette perfectly.

What I found fascinating about these and the other bustles in the collection is the fine woven cotton thread that covers every inch of the watch spring wire. As much as for decorative purposes, the cotton covering protected the metal from dampness and rust.