This podcast shines a spotlight on three items of dress in the V&A collections with a courtly or royal theme. Susan North, Curator of Fashion 1550-1800 at the Victoria & Albert Museum, speaks about their style, materials, where and when they would have been worn, and caring for them.

In this podcast, we discuss: A resplendently embroidered mantua, 1740-1745, A shimmering, spangled waistcoat, 1775-1780, A floral court suit, 1790-1800

Susan is the Curator of Fashion before 1800 at the Victoria and Albert Museum and contributor of a chapter on flowers in the dress and jewellery of men and women in the upcoming book Floral Culture and the Tudor and Stuart Courts, edited by Susannah Lyon-Whaley (Amsterdam University Press, forthcoming).

Her other publications include 18th-Century Fashion in Detail and Sweet and clean?: Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford University Press, 2020).