January Fashion Friday

For our first Fashion Friday of 2025 here is a fantastic video by historian Ruth Goodman from YouTube.
Lots of info on daily life for the different classes in Victorian England. 
While only a bit is about "Fashion" per se there is a tremendous amount of good info on daily living here. Always keep in mind that this is where many people in the West came from and they would have brought many of these patterns of life with them.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta

August Fashion Friday

A question I am often asked is what colours are there in the photos? 

So for this month's Fashion Friday we present two images and a video to keep in mind when looking at historic photographs from our period.

Clothing, buildings, uniforms etc are all shades of grey of course.  However, unlike modern Black and White photos (using a system known as Panchromatic) the original photographic systems did not react to all colours the same way!

These two images give you a good idea of what colours look like in the original photos.
Note the comparison with normal Black and White in the center of the top image and the right of the bottom.

Also keep in mind that most early tintype and glass plate photos are mirror images so they are backwards from what one would expect.

A good example of how the colours don't always match up with what you would expect is this famous shot from the American Civil War of George Armstrong Custer and his friend who was a Confederate soldier.

 

Custer, on the right, has the typical dark jacket easily assumed to be Union Blue but, what colour are his uniform trousers?  

We know from colour lithographs of the time, and surviving examples, that they were fairly light blue. If we didn't already know that though it could easily be assumed to be grey like the Confederate's trousers.

 

 

 

 

Here is a video from VPS_Gettysburg found on Instagram, that shows some great examples.
There is a thriving Tintype photo scene for re-enactors in the States so lots of examples of the outfits in colour to compare with their tintype versions.

Enjoy
The Victorian Society of Alberta.

 

Homesteaders

Another "Living History" series.
This one is set in Manitoba.
Participants have to live on the land for 1 year as if they were newly arrived homesteaders.
A fascinating look at how some modern couples handle the rigours of 19th C frontier in Canada.
The series is 9 parts here is the first one:

The remainder are available here on YouTube

Thanks for reading.
The Victorian Society of Alberts

24 Hours in Victorian England

This series of four videos from Britain are an entertaining, and relatively informative, look at how ordinary people lived and worked in Victorian England.

While conditions for most people in Britain at the time were pretty miserable it is because of those conditions that so many people came out to Canada to start over. For though the "primitive" and "frontier" life in Western Canada was rough, it was much better than being back home.

The rest of the episodes are available on Reel Truth History Documentaries channel on YouTube.

Thanks for reading.

Victorian Society of Alberta