Regency runway

I know very little about fashion, as my invariably pedestrian wardrobe choices make immediately clear to everyone I meet. (Who needs Elle when you have The Gap?)

Still, I enjoy gawking at runway styles as much as the next clothing-challenged girl, and if those styles have a Jane Austen tie-in, all the better. So I lapped up a feature that appeared this spring in Vogue, under a title that pretty much sums up what follows:“61 Regency-Inspired Runway Looks to Mark 250 Years of Jane Austen and 20 of the Pride & Prejudice Movie.”

The piece, compiled by Vogue’s senior archive editor, Laird Borrelli-Persson, juxtaposes Regency-era portraits and fashion plates, plus stills from the aforementioned Pride and Prejudice movie, with photos of actors and models wearing allegedly Regency-inspired couture dating from 1994 to 2025.

Ribbons, ruffles, Empire waists, and creamy expanses of bosom abound, although some then-and-now parallels seem closer than others. The gown Helena Bonham-Carter wore to Cannes in 2006 wouldn’t look out of place at the Netherfield Ball, at least to my inexpert eye, but despite its high-waisted silhouette, a see-through Givenchy number from 1996 would probably have gotten its wearer booted from polite society in Austen’s day.

Still, for a novice like me, Borrelli-Persson makes a fascinating point about the continuity of fashion history, the ways in which looks that we may think we’ve left behind keep on influencing the clothes we--or at least the richer and more fashionable among us--wear today.