Sarah A Bendall - The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens

6pm for 6.30pm Friday 27th November
Sarah A. Bendall in conversation with John Gagne

This study explores – for the first time – the changing professions and roles of the women who worked to clothe six Stuart queens between 1603–1714: Anna of Denmark, Henrietta Maria, Catherine of Braganza, Mary of Modena, Queen Mary II and Queen Anne.

Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, and using a wide range of written, visual and material sources, this book explores how changing patterns of work and consumption saw women become key producers, retailers and consumers of fashion during the 17th century, and illuminates the strong connections between the royal courts and London's fashion marketplace.

From royal wardrobes, workrooms and laundries to workshops and retail premises in London's bustling streets, Sarah A. Bendall highlights the integral role that women of multiple backgrounds played in the creation and maintenance of elite dress. The royal accounts show that this work was facilitated by migration, global trade, familial networks and changing guild structures, and that the patronage of queens and elite women was integral to supporting and promoting women's rise in the fashion trades as celebrated silkwomen, tirewoman, milliners and mantua makers.

The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens challenges understandings of women's work in the court, the household and the fashion marketplace, and shows how clothing played a key role in women's economic participation in 17th and 18th-century England more broadly. It offers fascinating insights for all those interested in the history of women and gender, fashion, material culture and consumption, and, of course, to all those interested in Stuart history.


Sarah A. Bendall is Senior Lecturer at the Gender and Women’s History Research Centre, Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She is the author of Shaping Femininity (Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2021), which was shortlisted for the UK Society for Renaissance Studies biannual book prize in 2022, and co-editor of Embodied Experiences of Making in Early Modern Europe: Bodies, Gender, and Material Culture (2024).

John Gagné is Cassamarca Associate Professor of History at the University of Sydney. His research pursues the links between war, representation, material culture, and the human body in premodernity. He is the author of Milan Undone (Harvard, 2021), co-editor with Stephen Bowd and Sarah Cockram of Shadow Agents of Renaissance War (Amsterdam, 2023), and co-author with Timothy McCall of Fabric of War (Cambridge, 2025).

The event is hosted in part by Medieval and Early Modern Collaborative Network (MEMC) at the University of Sydney. John is the Centre Director.