From corsets to maternity wear: Victorian and Edwardian styles on display in Kensington

Two related exhibitions in Kensington are currently examining Victorian and Edwardian fashions, with a range of clothes, photographs and letters from the Sambourne family on show.

Marion Sambourne was the wife of Victorian illustrator and Punch cartoonist Linley Sambourne. Their daughter, Maud, shared an artistic flair which she abandoned in pursuit of a prosperous marriage with Leonard Messel.

Sambourne House in Kensington preserves their home, and a short walk away is the much larger Leighton House, where the exhibition is being held.

Downstairs is a room with photos taken on a trip to Paris. Unusually for the time, the photos are mostly candid shots of Parisians wandering around, focusing on the clothes worn at the time.

I also learned that on the trip, people objected to having their photos taken when they saw the big Victorian camera on a tripod, so Linley Sambourne built a smaller compact camera (compact for the time) that he could use to sneak photos without drawing attention to himself.

Upstairs is a related exhibition, of the clothes worn by Marion  and Maud, so very much what you might expect to see if you’ve watched a costume drama. To my mind, two of the dresses stand out more than most.

One is the dress worn when Maud was pregnant, and as it’s right next to two classic Victorian lady’s dresses, the contrast between the tight waist of some and the rather more obviously bulging maternity wear is substantial. We rarely see maternity wear in exhibitions (or in costume dramas), so that’s a rare object. The purple colour would have also been exceptionally fashionable at the time.

I also noticed another later dress that shows the relaxing of attitudes in tight Victorian fashions and is half-way towards the flapper dresses of the art-deco era.

There are also a lot of letters (with admittedly very hard-to-read handwriting) and some rather more interesting receipts from shops where they commissioned their clothes—at a time when ready-to-wear wasn’t really a thing—and letters complaining about the hassle of buying the clothes.

It’s a small exhibition, but it’s an interesting one. It gives some insights into the practicalities of Victorian fashions that we might not have thought much about. The exhibition journey continues at nearby Sambourne House, with one more dress displayed in the main bedroom and a documentary film on the conservation process in the basement.

The photography and fashion exhibitions are at Leighton House until 20th October 2024.

Entry to Leighton House is £14 per adult, and you can also buy a joint ticket to both house museums for £22.

Both museums are on either side of the Design Museum, so a visit to see old fashions can be accompanied by the modern fashions of the Barbie doll as well.