Jane Austen Festival Bath, 2025

For the fourth year in a row, I have travelled to Bath, UK to take part in the annual Jane Austen Festival. 

This year was extra-special on two counts, one being the anniversary year of Jane Austen's birth and the other on a personal level being interviewed and filmed by Germany's national broadcasting service ZDF. 

For the festival, I made the outfits for my entire party - consisting of my mum, my boyfriend and myself. For Saturday‘s Grand Promenade, I made a pelisse and hat based on an 1814 Costume Parisien print. A pelisse is a ladies’ overcoat of the Regency era, shaped rather like the dresses of the early 1800s with a high waist and long skirt, to provide warmth and protection from heavy weather.
I chose a finely striped cloth with dark gold and purple stripes. The bodice and sleeve patterns are vaguely based on McCall‘s 7493 but altered and fitted to myself. The pelisse in the 1814 print has a short and somewhat more narrow skirt, typical for the mid-1810s, but I wanted my pelisse to be more versatile with some of my earlier 1800s gowns, and I also just love the dramatic swoosh of a long skirt. The pelisse has double-layer storm capes (like men’s greatcoats from the era) and I made them detachable. In fact at first they were so detachable that they kept flipping up unto my neck at any gust of wind like the shoulder collar an irritated frilled lizard, so I had to stitch them down on Friday night for the Saturday promenade in a few places.

I also made my mum a new bonnet to go with her burgundy gown and spencer, which I made for JA Festival 2023. 
The promenade was magnificent with an incredible 2000 wonderfully robed, inspiring attendants and HM 33rd Regiment of Foot who framed and musically accompanied the promenade with drums and flutes! The forecasted rain ultimately kindly waited until after the promenading was concluded so no hems got six inches deep in mud.