Chawton House - Dressing Up!

From elegant assembly rooms and private balls to bustling theatres and fireworks displays, Dressing Up: Fashion and Nightlife in Eighteenth-Century Hampshire explores how people across Hampshire experienced life after dark between 1750 and 1820.

Drawing on rare books, manuscripts, fashion plates and artworks from Chawton House alongside clothing and accessories on loan from private collections, the exhibition reveals the choices, preparations and social expectations behind an evening’s entertainment. Discover how women and men dressed for different occasions, how hairstyles and cosmetics reflected changing fashions, and how accessories transformed Georgian ladies and gentlemen for their evenings.

Alongside beautiful fashions, from a 1730s embroidered waistcoat to a 1799 fan made from magazine pages, you can expect to see the hidden details of a Georgian night out, including underwear and wig curlers. Objects essential to a successful evening – sedan chairs, gambling tokens and tickets – are displayed alongside some of the responses nightlife generated in the press, from detailed newspaper accounts and irreverent caricatures to literary scenes in novels. The exhibition charts getting ready, getting there, and getting entertained, following the journeys people made to reach Hampshire’s theatres, assembly rooms, gardens and country houses.

Dressing Up brings together fashion, literature and local history to offer a fresh perspective on what a night out really meant over two hundred years ago.

This exhibition has been co-curated by scholars in the History Department at the University of Southampton, Dr Julie Gammon and Professor Maria Hayward. We are grateful to the Ardeola Charitable Trust for supporting this project, and to the Lewis Walpole Library for image use.