Today, our group spent our last full day in London by visiting the Victoria and Albert Museum. This. is the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
When we arrived at the museum we were given the tasks to find objects and somehow connect and relate them to plays that we have seen during our trip. There were so many beautiful objects to choose from and I was amazed by how so much was in great condition. I really enjoyed looking at all the furniture such as the ornate beds and dressers. My favorite things to look at were the outfits. I found it quite difficult to find a connection between other objects and plays that I have seen. However, many of the regalia and outfits that I saw reminded me of one play in particular that I saw on my own during my stay which would be Les Miserables.
Les Miserables was not on our group’s itinerary. However, I love the show so much that I decided to buy a ticket and go see the play during my free time. One of the great novelties of viewing Les Mis is getting to see all of the beautiful costumes. There is no escaping the visual identity of 1815 France through costumes ranging from regal to raunchy, from comedic to tragic, relaying a whole 30 years of 19th Century fashion, the story stretching from the year 1815-1848. It is, for a story decidedly bleak, alive with visual charisma.
One outfit that reminded me of Les Mis was a wedding dress paired with a petticoat made in Englsnd during 1851. The dress and petticoat are associated with a horsehair lace bonnet. This collection is linked with the marriage of Eliza Sneath to Joseph Candlin in Sheffield in 1851. Both the dress and the petticoat are made of cotton and the sleeves are made of bobbin lace. I most especially enjoyed how the flowery pattern and red color of the petticoat contrasts with the solid white of the dress.
The reason that this dress reminds me of Les Mis is because at the end of the play one of the characters, Cosette, gets married to another character named Marius. The style of this dress really reminded me of the style of her dress in the play. Seeing a wedding dress from such a long time ago in the past also immediately brought my mind to Les Mis because it is the only play that I have seen that features a wedding. I loved studying all the beautiful detail of the dress and it really reminded me of the extravagant way people would dress during such a time and how that luxury shows in the production of Les Mis. We see a variety of peasantry wear in the play, but we also see extravagant dresses worn by Cosette. It was very interesting to make such connections between an outfit from 1851 and the production of Les Mis.
While I did not get my own picture of the wedding dress, I was able to capture other images of outfits that also reminded me of Les Mis. There were many male outfits in the museum. that reminded me of costumes worn by characters such as Marius and other men in the play. I also enjoyed seeing all of the other beautiful dresses that somewhat resembled the outfits worn in the set of Les Mis. Searching for objects throughout the museum to connect to a play was very entertaining because it felt like a scavenger hunt. However, when one is not studying theatre and simply in London to learn of England’s history, one should still pay attention to the objects in museums and consider not how the objects connect to a theme of fantasy in a play, but how they connect to the themes of reality in their own lives.
Theatre in London U of A 