Late start

My other new home, the McClay Library, doesn't open until noon on Sundays, which I have some difficulty remembering. David and I got there around 10:30, thinking it opened at 10, so we went to the Ulster Museum nearby to see the Royal Ulster Academy's 133rd annual member exhibition. It was very impressive.

I then wandered into a neighboring gallery showing women's clothes from the early 1900s, when upper-class women began to wear clothing without corsets. I know some friends have recently visited Winterthur in Delaware to see fashions from Downtown Abbey. These would be similar styles. From the show catalog:

"In 1906, the renowned fashion designer Paul Poiret declared ‘a war on corsets’, and produced beautiful dresses made of lightweight fabrics in soft colours. These were influenced by the Art Nouveau movement and the costumes of the Ballets Russe. By 1910 this modern silhouette had overtaken corseted styles, and the 1912 publication of the ‘Journal de Dames’ presented beautiful illustrations of these styles as inspiration for a new generation of liberated women."
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