Glamour in Glass: Jane’s high-collared walking dress

As Jane is traveling about in Europe, she’s in need of an appropriate dress for walking. I found this one, to serve as a model, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art online catalog. One fo the interesting features, if you enlarge it, are the buttons down the front. To my eye, they look like shell and seem very modern in style.

The museum says, “This dress presents a lively and engaging textile with its overall small prints. This style of print was in high demand in the teens and although it could have been made in New England by this time, it was probably imported from England, which shipped large quantities throughout the period.”

The polka-dots are also much more contemporary in feel than I would have expected, but the ruffled collar and the overall simplicty of the dress would have appealed to Jane.

Here’s how the dress appears in Glamour in Glass.

Dressing herself in her high-collared walking suit, Jane marvelled at what it was to be hungry again. It had been so long since the thought of food had not turned her stomach that she had not at first recognised the pricking in her middle as hunger.

I imagine you might be wondering why food turned her stomach… If I told you that this line comes from Chapter Fifteen? No. I suppose that is not helpful. Well, April 10th isn’t that far away. Really.

Meanwhile, do drop by the Met’s page and look at the side view of the walking dress. It is just lovely.

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