Influence
Influence
Monarchs, nobles and celebrities have influenced fashion trends for millennia and this continues today.
Often the garments that people of power and influence wore became iconic. Such figures often become representative of the history of fashion, as their garments and accessories were well documented and frequently kept safe for the future.
Object in focus: Millicent Fawcett’s embroidered cape
In 1934, Charlotte Fawcett donated this embroidered wool cape to the museum. We believe it belonged to her aunt, Dame Millicent Garrett Fawcett. The iconic colours of the British women’s suffrage movement are purple, white and green, reflected in the vibrant purple of this cape.
Millicent was a suffrage campaigner, becoming the leader of the NUWSS, National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies, and frequently lecturing on behalf of the women’s movement. She advocated for women’s right to vote, helping to petition parliament on the issue. Millicent became a successful author and essayist, writing Political Economy for Beginners (1870) and contributing to Essays and Lectures on Social and Political Subject (1872).
Close up, Millicent Fawcett’s cape, 1868, ©The Salisbury Museum collection
She also travelled to South Africa in 1901 to investigate the conditions of the concentration camps following the South African War, campaigned to raise the age of consent and marriage to help protect children, and advocated against sexual double standards in law.
Her husband, Henry Fawcett was a local man, born in Salisbury in 1833. He was also a prominent activist for equal rights, and while campaigning met Elizabeth Garrett, Millicent’s older sister, who became the first British female doctor. After Elizabeth rejected his proposal of marriage to concentrate on her studies, he married Millicent in 1867.
Millicent and Henry often visited Henry’s parents, who lived just around the corner from the museum in the Cathedral Close. She is also mentioned on a statue of Henry, which now stands in the market square. When Henry died in 1884, Millicent continued to campaign for equality.
Millicent died in 1929, living to see the bill allowing women over 21 to vote, which was passed the previous year.