Victorian Hairwork and Nineteenth-Century Mourning Practice

A lecture by Karen Bachmann (Fashion Institute of Technology, Pratt Institute)

Nineteenth-century England was rife with sentimental culture. Death rates were high due to numerous factors including disease, war, and high childhood mortality. Queen Victoria became an unlikely fashion icon when she submerged herself in mourning after the deaths of both her husband, Prince Albert, and her mother in 1861. Aside from her mostly black wardrobe, she was widely known for her love of mourning jewelry, which contained the hair of loved ones inside. Victorian hairwork became popular in both jewelry and shadowbox form, transcending the concept of a wearable human relic into a fashion statement of the period. This lecture will explore this connection between fashion and mourning and will highlight several pieces from the largest collection of ornamental hairwork in America—Leila’s Hair Museum—of which many pieces are now housed at the Morbid Anatomy Library in Brooklyn.

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people associated with a college or university, people with museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members

Image: Hair wreath, Presque Isle, ca. 1860.