The crossover between fashion and fiction in literature is a great one. Across cultures and across the centuries, clothing and costume have been integral to plot and character. They also tell you a lot about the author! Margaret Atwood for one describes dress in great detail in all her novels (The Handmaid’s Tale, The Blind Assassin, Alias Grace) but did you know she used to sew all her own clothes and was photographed by Vogue? And how wonderfully well we can see and understand Anna Karenina and Emma Bovary from the detailed descriptions of their appearance.
The shoe, the hat, the handbag; the colour, the cloth: words paint a thousand pictures.
What people wear and how they dress in literature conjures up rich worlds of ideas, politics, culture and society, revealing fascinating details of time, manner and place. ‘Costume drama fiction’ has attracted some of the greatest writers in the world, many who have made fashion central to their stories. Margaret Atwood, Hilary Mantel, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Linda Grant, Salman Rushdie and many more in our day, but also Jane Austen, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gustave Flaubert and Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa in past fictions.
Fashion and Fiction is an idea dreamed up by journalist Rosie Goldsmith, who, not surprisingly, is passionate about both and dreamed of weaving them together in a series of illustrated talks and events to showcase this glorious cross-stitch of text and textile.
The Fashion and Fiction on 29 September 2015 was with Linda Grant.
Photos by London Video Stories
Drawings by Ian Long (lipstrob@yahoo.com)
Video by London Video Stories