Fashion Foibles

A black and white image, it is an advertisement from Madam Dowding's magazine. It is an ad for corsets and has images of men and women wearing them.

Fashion can change a lot over a century, and in the Victorian to Edwardian eras, this is especially true: moving from bustles and leg-o-mutton sleeves to the short and boyish dresses of the late 1920s. The Harris Family who inhabited Eldon House from 1834-1959 took thousands of photographs chronicling their lives and their fashion. The collection is now housed at Western University Archives and Special Collections as part of the Harris Family Fonds. This exhibition explores this collection, alongside period advertisements and illustrations that show some of the interesting “Fashion Foibles” of the past.