Welcome to Fashion in the Age of Bridgerton. This website catalogues and allows users to keyword search dozens of fashion plates from the Lady's Magazine; or Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex (1770-1832) from the Regency period (1811-1819).

Inspired by our mutual love of women's history, eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literature, women's magazines and - not least - Bridgerton, this website is a collaborative project between Jennie Batchelor (Professor of Eighteenth-Century Studies at the University Kent) and a team of brilliant undergraduate researchers from the University of Kent's School of English: Stefana Ivanova, Elisabeth Johnson, Sam Robinson, Chloe Sawbridge and Robyn Steel. We wanted to make these images accessible to as wide an audience as possible and to solve that perennial problem: how to locate and sift through images using words. The metadata we have captured here, we hope, will make the glorious garments, accessories and hair styles in these plates alive again to modern enthusiasts and makers.

You can find particular garments, styles, colours, fabrics and (sometimes) designers using the keyword search bar above. Alternatively you can peruse all of the images on the site by clicking 'Browse Fashion Plates', or view 'Fashions by Year'.

More information about the hugely popular and influential Lady's Magazine and its fashion coverage can be found via the links above. And do also visit this site's digital sister, Patterns of Perfection, a database with a large selection of 50 years of needlework patterns from the same publication.

Happy browsing!

And do consider joining the Lady's Magazine project's social media channels:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ladysmagproject

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ladysmagproject 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/batchelorjennie/

Jennie Batchelor, University of Kent

June 2022