Austentacious Style: Regency Bonnets
As 16 December approaches, readers around the world prepare to mark Jane Austen Day — the annual celebration of the writer whose wit, clarity and exquisitely observed worlds have shaped English literature for more than two centuries. This year carries particular resonance: 2025 marks 250 years since Austen’s birth in 1775, and events across Bath, Hampshire and beyond are already underway, honouring not only her novels but the enduring cultural landscape she portrayed.
At Selvedge, Austen has long been a touchstone. Her finely woven narratives, attentive to clothing, craft and the textures of domestic life, have inspired articles throughout our archive — from explorations of Regency dressmaking to the textile traditions that framed the world she knew. As we share one such piece in the days leading up to her birthday, we celebrate Austen not just as a beloved novelist, but as a chronicler of material culture whose influence continues to thread through our pages.
We hope you enjoy the following article, featured in Selvedge Issue 101, Grow:
Austentacious Style: Regency Bonnets
During the turbulent years of the Regency, almost every style of hat and bonnet was tried on for size. The hairstyle excesses of the 18th century were abandoned in favour of natural concoctions of pretty ringlets or even a postrevolutionary style crop, meaning that a far greater range of styles of headwear was newly possible. The Neo-Classical reigned with filets and diadems as well as cauls, capotes, and veils allowing for a wealth of decoration and expression. There were styles inspired by military uniform, Gothic Romanticism, and a fond nostalgia for English rural country life.
Fashions in headwear became so important that the influential fashion magazines of the day devoted whole pages to them at a time when accessories were only ever featured with a full ensemble. La Belle Assemblée announced in 1806 ‘A lady is not considered fashionable if she appears in public for two successive days in the same bonnet.’
It would appear that Jane Austen not only read fashion magazines, but also adhered to their recommendations. In August 1814, within a month of seeing a fashion plate in Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, Austen wrote to a friend: ‘I am amused by the present style of female dress; the coloured petticoats with braces over the white Spencers and enormous Bonnets upon the full stretch, are quite entertaining. It seems to me a more marked change than one has lately seen.’
Millinery fashion plate from German magazine 'Neues Journal für Fabriken, Manufakturen, Handlung, Kunst und Mode', 1809.
Bonnets were of consistent interest as they contributed largely to a first impression; writing from Southampton in February 1807 Jane Austen notes: ‘Mrs. B. is ill, but she is a nice-looking woman, and wears one of the prettiest straw bonnets in the place’. When in Bath in 1801 she writes: ‘I find my straw bonnet looking very much like other people's, and quite as smart. Bonnets of cambric muslin on the plan of Lady Bridges' are a good deal worn, and some of them are very pretty.’..
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Image Credits:
Lead: Bonnet, American, mid-19th century, Woven straw, 70 cm. Museum of Fine Art, Boston. Gift of Miss Eleanor E. Barr.
All further images as credited in photo captions.