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Aigrettes, Egrets, and Regrets: Nineteenth-Century Fashion and the Desire for Feathers
Aigrettes, Egrets, and Regrets: Nineteenth-Century Fashion and the Desire for Feathers
Feathers, long a staple of fashionable design, became paramount to the well-dressed in nineteenth-century Europe and the United States. They increasingly decorated the edges of custom-made dresses, graced hats, or adorned elaborate hairstyles.
Much like the production of John James Audubon’s Birds of America series, this obsession with feathers in fashion reflected larger cultural interests in understanding and replicating the natural world. Though beautiful to look at, these designs ultimately came at an ecological price—with many bird populations decimated to meet demand.
Join art historian Erin Wilson as she explores these sartorial and environmental legacies.
Aigrettes, Egrets, and Regrets:
Nineteenth-Century Fashion and the Desire for Feathers
Thursday, January 9, 2025
6:00 PM–7:00 PM
Marly Room
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg
255 Beach Drive NE, St. Petersburg FL 33701
Free for MFA Members; $15 for Not-Yet-Members (Youth 17 and under are Free!)*
*Program ticket includes Art After Dark admission from 5:00 PM–8:00 PM! Arrive early or stay late to explore the MFA Collection Galleries, Special Exhibitions, and MFA Shop!
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ABOUT ERIN WILSON
Currently a PhD student at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX, Erin Wilson most recently served as the Museum of Fine Arts’ Associate Curator from 2022 to 2024. During her tenure at the MFA she curated such exhibitions as Explore the Vaults: Images Private and Public, c. 1500-1800 (2022) and Defining Lines, the Prints and Drawings of Maxime Lalanne (2022). She studies eighteenth-century French portraiture and material culture.
Photo Credit
Evening Dress (detail), Department Store R.H. White & Co., American 1885, Silk, feathers, Brooklyn Museum Costume Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of the Brooklyn Museum, 2009; Gift of John R. Hotson, 1946
