Alice Healy

Professional ramblin’ man.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Officially a @UofGlasgow graduate. Dress and Textile Histories, you’ve been a joy.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Celebrating dissertation feedback in the only respectable way.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

The duality of treadle machines.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Feeling very Lizzy Bennet this morning.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

@YaleBooks @JaneAustenHouse @FourRedShoes @AustenDress @JaneAustenLIVES @austendaily Charlotte Lucas, ultimate pragmatist and increasingly relatable burden to parents.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Today I’m attending the @MakingHistDress ‘Replicas, Reconstructions and Recreations’ workshop virtually from sunny Bute. @FourRedShoes’ keynote on expanding the embodied turn was a brilliant introduction to the range of methodological questions in historical recreation!

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Big fan of the shadow cast by this Norman Hartnell dress, featured in the ‘Beyond the Little Black Dress’ exhibition @NtlMuseumsScot

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

I submitted the diss and drank a martini, and I think that sums up that experience.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Some things never change. Daily Mirror, 17th January 1914.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Note how the beaks and eyes have been replaced by glass and gold, signalling the values placed upon avian bodies in this period.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

This Harry Emanuel necklace (@britishmuseum) showcases how the bodies of birds were aestheticised as part of jewellery in the 1860s and 70s. Emanuel patented his framing and adhesive techniques to transform plumage into “novel [articles] of manufacture.”

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

However, preservationists bolstered their arguments for the end of the bird and feather trade by asserting that many birds used in fashionable dress were insectivorous, placing these earrings at an interesting intersection of Victorian ethical discourses.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

This pair of earrings from the @V_and_A feature the heads of honeycreepers, connected to the hook by figures of flies. In the late 19th century, birds were transformed into material goods and reanimated as novelties on the fashionable lady. (AP.258-1875)

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

The position of the cast metal fly next to the beak mimics a predatory relationship, co-opting the lived experiences of birds for aestheticised accessories.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

The Young Ladies’ Journal, an illustrated periodical running from 1864-1920, is a goldmine for avian adorned bonnets - some more conspicuous than others. These illustrations are from 1885, predating the emergence of the SPB by four years!

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Looking today at this macabre set of earrings from the V&A. The practice of wearing hummingbirds, “the gems of bird life,” in jewellery reached the height of its popularity in the 1860s and 70s, but continued on bonnets into the early 20th century! (AP.259-1875)

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Some wild stuff (quite literally) from the Victorians. Writing is difficult, but at least the view is nice.

[Alice Healy @ahehealy]

Nothing quite like a floor 11 sunrise.