Hilary Davidson
NationalityAustralian
Occupationhistorian
Known forexpertise in analyzing the historical accuracy of costumes

Hilary Davidson is an Australian historian, who has specialized on the dress and textiles of the Georgian period.[1] In 2019 she published Dress in the Age of Jane Austen.[2]

Professional career

Early in her career Davidson traveled widely, and became an artisanal expert in recreating vintage clothing.

In 2012 Austrian archeologists published a report on their discovery of medieval bras.[3][4] Davidson's opinion on this discovery was widely quoted. She called the bras an amazing find, said one was very similar to a modern bra, and compared them to a missing link.[5]

In 2018 a team of archeologists found a skeleton that was still wearing thigh high leather boots, in mud in the Thames River.[6] Science Alert quoted Davidson, to provide context of the discovery, for its readers. She clarified that while thigh-high boots are a fashion item today, these boots seem to be designed for a working man, whose job required him to be wading in the shallows of the Thames.

The Bill & Ted test

The Bill and Ted Test Twitter
@BillAndTedTest

This is @fourredshoes Regency screen costume benchmark: the Beethoven scene from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If a production's main costumes are less well done than those of the extras in a minor part of a 1980s teen comedy movie, we have a problem.

March 27, 2020[7]

Slate magazine credits Davidson for a Bill & Ted test for period costume accuracy.[8] In an interview with Slate Davidson described spending six years working on Dress in the Age of Jane Austen, which required a great deal of meticulous checking of modern works. She described having the movie Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure playing in the background, when the heroes capture Beethoven. Davidson described being impressed at the authenticity of the costuming of the scenes set in Beethoven's time.[8] Even the background characters in those scenes were wearing quite authentic costumes. Surprisingly, the costume designers had achieved much more authentic costumes than more serious films with larger budgets.

Slate reported that Davidson created new twitter ID @BillAndTedTest specifically to publish analysis of the costume design of period movies. Slate quoted the tweet where Davidson gave the test its name.

Personal life

Davidson was one of the Australians stranded in Europe by the Covid 19 virus profiled by 7News, on January 8, 2021.[9] She described traveling to the United Kingdom, for just two weeks of consulting, in March 2020, arriving just in time for the travel ban. She thought that her job as a teacher in a government-run institution would have classified her as an "essential worker", however she still had not been able to get a high enough travel priority to return to Australia.

She had been able to teach online, in 2020.[9] But she described her frustration following the sixth cancellation of her travel plans, when Australia tightened travel restrictions from the UK, following the discovery of a mutated virus there.

References

  1. ↑ "Costuming in the EMMA. Movie with Fashion Historian Hilary Davidson". Austenprose. Archived from the original on 12 October 2020. Retrieved 19 May 2020. While this book is a serious study of fashion during the Regency period, I appreciate that the author has taken the witty tone that Austen is famous for and presented the material with some humor.
  2. ↑ "An excerpt from Dress in the Age of Jane Austen by Hilary Davidson". The Jane Austen Project. 14 October 2019. Retrieved 19 May 2020. New in the Jane Austen Online Gift Shop is Dress in the Age of Jane Austen – a fantastic large format hardback book by Hilary Davidson.
  3. ↑ "Austria finds bras from 15th century _ 500 years before garment thought invented". The Washington Post. Vienna. 18 July 2012. Archived from the original on 19 July 2012. Retrieved 19 May 2020. While paintings of the era show outerwear, they do not reveal what women wore beneath. Davidson, the fashion curator, described the finds as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.
  4. ↑ Audrey Yoo (10 July 2012). "600-year-old bras unearthed in Austrian castle". Time magazine. Retrieved 21 July 2012. The discovery was first reported in an article in this month's BBC History Magazine. Davidson said the medieval garments serve as "kind of a missing link" in the history of women's underwear.
  5. ↑ Hilary Davidson (20 July 2012). "Medieval bras uncover the fascinating history of women's daily support needs". The Guardian. Retrieved 19 May 2020.
  6. ↑ Michelle Starr (5 December 2018). "Medieval Skeleton Pulled From Thames, Still Wearing Thigh-High Leather Boots". Science alert. Retrieved 8 July 2020. This lifestyle is supported by the style of the boot, which, according to Davidson, was not high fashion of the time, but close to the everyday shoes of the working class seen in paintings in the 14th and 15th centuries.
  7. ↑ The Bill and Ted Test [@BillAndTedTest] (27 March 2020). "This is @fourredshoes Regency screen costume benchmark: the Beethoven scene from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure. If a production's main costumes are less well done than those of the extras in a minor part of a 1980s teen comedy movie, we have a problem" (Tweet) – via Twitter.
  8. 1 2 Rachelle Hampton (21 April 2020). "Does Your Favorite Period Drama Pass the Bill & Ted Test? A fashion historian explains her unusual standard for judging Regency costumes". Slate magazine. Retrieved 19 May 2020. Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure is many things: a time-traveling buddy comedy, an early Keanu Reeves vehicle, and—according to at least one expert—the standard for Regency period costuming on film. Fashion historian Hilary Davidson created the Bill & Ted test after noticing that a scene in which the two slackers kidnap Ludwig van Beethoven features surprisingly well-executed costumes for the era.
  9. 1 2 Hugh Whitfeld; Sarah Greenhalgh (9 January 2021). "'Debt up to their eyeballs': Aussies in England, wanting to come home, react to flight cap changes". 7 News. Retrieved 10 January 2021. The announcement of incoming passenger caps being halved, coincided with Hilary's sixth flight cancellation. 'I'm despairing. I feel abandoned by the Australian Government, that they're not doing anything to support and get home the thousands of people like me, who just want to go home,' she said.
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