The Ladies: A Journal of the Court, Fashion and Society, came chatting into existence in March 1872, offering scientifically precise fashion advice and demanding political rights for women. The weekly London newspaper sought out the burgeoning female readership, explicitly catering to upper-class society women who could pay the sixpenny rate but implicitly offering middle-class women a guide to social-climing success. Although The Ladies--with its fashion plates, housekeeping tips, suffrage demands, and employment advice--collapsed after nine months, its reign reflects a cultural moment and its deposing, a cultural instability. The journal proposes an impossible dream of womanhood allowing for femininity, domesticity, brilliance, assertiveness, and political activism. This project opens the window onto a forgotten Victorian periodical and its attempt to create a place in the Victorian culture and the Victorian press for the well-dressed women of England.
Here's to living the dream. (and to dreaming dreams of our own to live.)
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