We owe something to extravagance, for thrift and adventure seldom go hand in hand.
I recently flipped through a research book dealing with Edwardian women and was struck by a passage referencing the brief and scandalous craze for nipple piercing which swept the ladies of the aristocracy during the late 1890s. Fortuitously, someone on the Victorian mailing list I am a member of posed a question about the validity [...]
The minuet–among other dances–reigned supreme as the courtliest, most aristocratic dance through the Renaissance to the Georgian era. It was stately, it was elegant, it was–most importantly–proper; only the hands of the dance partners touched, their fingers clasped ever so gently. Until a new dance emerged from those frivolous Viennese; with the waltz came [...]
To the Edwardian man, the mustache was an affectation “the most flattering to the vanity of the young.” With it, “the boy feels himself a man. It helps him to look old and the look of age is useful in business and inspires confidence. The youth of twenty one looks thirty with a mustache [...]
