Early New Zealand Fashion Plates 1811-1825
Toured and curated by the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.

Featuring some treasures of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery: a suite of 45 fashion plates from Rudolph Ackermann’s 19th Century publication – the style bible of its day- Ackermann’s Repository of Arts hand-coloured etchings.

The exhibition showcases the ‘Jane Austen era’ when fashion - if not politics, took its lead from post- Revolutionary France. A new egalitarianism in Europe swept across to touch the shores of New Zealand, and created a freer, less constricted design ethic for female dress, led by the Empress Josephine and the Napoleonic Court. Themes included the Turkish Harem, the Napoleonic Wars and the Gothic Revival of the period. The book has since found a new life as the ‘go to’ publication for all British film and TV dramas recreating the Regency Period.

The new “Empire Dress” style was emulated in Regency England when the Industrial Revolution too, enabled new cotton processing methods and a wider availability of quality muslins and cottons. Fashion plates in the show portray the latest in morning dress, carriage dress, garden party and promenade attire, evening dress, opera and wedding dresses.

The exhibition is accompanied by a selection of Regency Period fashion accessories, including gloves, parasols, lorgnettes and fans, beaded bags and a 1809 original copy of The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics by Ackermann, together with a later Victorian Period dress c.1860 on loan from the Kauri Museum.

This exquisite collection of fashion plates was gifted to the DPAG in 1960 by Miss Margaret Middleditch of Rye, Sussex England.  

Image: Rudolph Ackermann, Dinner Dress, 1825, hand coloured etching on paper. Collection of the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.