Corsets, fashion & women entrepreneurs: Part 1

Join us for the first in a series of illustrated talks about corsets, dressmaking and women entrepreneurs in19th century Toronto. Historian and fashion expert Alanna McKnight will first introduce us to the controversial garment and its evolution with changing styles. She’ll also defend the corset, long blamed for causing health problems in women. This bad rap, Alanna maintains, is undeserved!

In Alanna's second talk, Sunday, Nov. 16, you’ll meet an extraordinary and unconventional corset maker. In the late 19th century, Mme Hannah Vermilyea had a showroom and a store in downtown Toronto and a corset-making factory in the Junction. She also held corset-making patents, was divorced, and was, at one point, caught smuggling corsets across the border!

For her last talk, Sunday, Dec. 14, Alanna introduces us to shop-owner Mary Augusta and the pre-industrial needle trade in Toronto. Much has been written about Mary's husband, Toronto's second Black doctor, but she would have been forgotten had she not in 1854 placed an ad for her Toronto dressmaking store in a newspaper serving the Black population in Upper Canada.

The talks take place at Back Lane Studios, 9 Neepawa Ave. in Roncesvalles Village (a block south of Howard Park Ave. and just east of Roncesvalles Ave). Tickets: $15 for each lecture (refreshments included). Only 30 tickets are available for each session.

Lecture 2. The Unconventional Mme Vermilyea: Corset maker, Toronto shop owner, divorcee and smuggler: Sunday, Nov. 16, 2:00-4:00 pm. Buy tickets

Lecture 3. Mary Augusta: The Forgotten Black Dressmaker with a Famous Husband: Sunday, Dec. 14, 2:00 -4:00 pm.

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Host or Publisher Back Lane Studios