Every September, the city of Bath experiences a unique invasion: Jane Austen fans. They come in their thousands, armed with reticules, parasols, and even their own small militia. For a single week each year, it feels as if the city has been transported back 200 years to when the author herself walked the streets of Bath.
What We Wore
It is a truth universally acknowledged that the best part of the Jane Austen Festival is the opportunity to play dress-up. Both of us made our dresses by hand, and carefully hand-picked accessories to match the colour palette, and feel of our looks.
I myself wanted to emulate the more acidic characters of Austen, such as Caroline Bingley; wealthy, well-dressed, and always primed with a back-handed remark. To emphasise this, I created a bright yellow dress embellished with sunflower appliques, which had the added bonus of making me very easy to spot in a crowd. The accessories were maximalist; white gloves, a velvet reticule, a lacy under-layer around her collar (known as a chemisette), and gold and black jewelry. The final crowning glory was a cream bonnet, which completed the picture of a respectable, if vicious, society lady.
“With appropriate attire acquired, we were ready to launch ourselves on the city of Bath”
Matilda, on the other hand, drew inspiration from the sweeter Austen Heroines, such as Jane Bennet. She kept to a simple dress design with delicate sleeves in a soft powder-blue cotton, a colour which undoubtedly falls under the newly-coined ’Bridgerton Blue’. For accessories, Matilda found a cameo necklace which perfectly matched the tone of her dress. Cameo necklaces were popular in Europe during the 19th Century as part of the revival of Greek and Roman culture, often featuring portraits or scenes from classical mythology. With appropriate attire acquired, we were ready to launch ourselves on the city of Bath.
What We Did
Every year, the festival begins with the Grand Regency promenade, a huge parade of people in Regency wear that snakes through the city centre, visiting many of Bath’s most recognisable locations.
The parade begins at the Holburne Museum, which will be familiar to Bridgerton fans as the home of Lady Danbury. The museum’s gardens provide an ideal mustering point for participants to gather, socialise, and wait for the start of the promenade. As genteel as this activity sounds, it is not without its perils. This image was captured the moment before I, in an attempt to save my bonnet from a gust of wind, managed to hit Matilda in the face. It is bittersweet to look at now; in particular, the look of complete trust on Matilda’s face which is, surely, never to be restored.
The rest of the promenade went off without a hitch. Numbers this year were better than ever, with approximately 1100 people participating in the event. I particularly enjoyed chatting with different people as we walked; I spoke to a mother and daughter who had come all the way from California for the festival. At the end of the promenade, there was a particularly sweet surprise for one attendee as her boyfriend got down on one knee and proposed. It must have been a truly memorable moment, to be surrounded by hundreds of people all dressed in Austen attire, entering a happy future with your new fiancé. However, my favourite moment of the parade had to be the miniature poodle with its own tiny bonnet, processing along like a monarch in a vintage pram. After all, what is romance compared to a dog in a hat?
What did our debutante make of it all? Matilda Barker gives her thoughts.
Even as a Jane Austen fan — and sporadic sewing project fan — of many years, the Jane Austen festival in full regency dress is something I never would have done on my own. The beauty of university friendship is finding a friend like Rose who will give you the opportunity, and confidence, to sew your first full dress and walk down the streets of Bath in it. This sense of a hugely diverse community brought together permeated the whole festival in such a lovely way, even beyond the parade. There were so many easy conversations with fabulously dressed strangers as we wandered through the city and ticked off all my favourite activities: expanding our minds with extensive reading (Topping and Co.) and sampling some delicacies (Knoops). My favourite part of the trip was visiting the regency fair after the parade — convincing myself that outside a regency mindset white gloves were not a practical purchase. With a slightly more sensible choice, I’m very excited to use my new cameo necklace to bring some more subtle regency flair into my day to day fashion!
If you’re interested in getting involved, check out https://janeausten.co.uk/pages/festival-home-page for more information on all things Regency
