Day 4 - V&A, Suzi's House, and "As You Like It"

The station for the V&A Museum

The Tube coming in with the rest of our group.

The station sign for the V&A stop.

Monday, September 14th - This morning we went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. At the museum we met up with Suzi Clark. At first we had some trouble finding Suzi, as we came in through a different entrance from the Tube, while Suzi came through the street entrance. Once we found her we went to the fashion gallery, with a side stop to the Asian Textiles exhibit, which had some lovely gowns on display. Here are some of my favorites from the V&A.

A 1780s gown from the Asian Textiles Exhibit. The fabric is made out of block-printed Indian cotton.

Regency Gown

Another 1780s dress. I love the jacket.

Close-up to the jacket details

Shoe from 1900

 1940s Men Suits

Men's Riding outfit

London Ensemble

Designer: Betty Jackson

From: Autumn/Winter 2005

Suit

Designer: John Cavanagh (1914-2004)

Year: 1963

Beautiful blue floral gown.

 Day Dress

Horrockses

1957

Close-up

Day Dress

About 1912-1914

About the 1840s-1850s.

1965 Suit

1860s Wedding Gown

The V&A Courtyard

A lovely painting I saw at the V&A.

Isn't this dress just darling? The girl looks so sweet and charming!

After lunch at the museum some of us went to Suzi's house to see some of her collection. On the way I was able to see several sites.

 

Aspley House - The First Duke of Wellington's House

The theater were The Phantom of the Opera plays.

Piccadilly Area

Another picture of the Piccadilly area

Still another one

And another one

And still another one.

While we were at Suzi's house we had some real English scones, clotted cream, jam, and tea. Which was scrumptious! During the trip I have come to love real English scones with clotted cream. Yummy! Sadly, I have no pictures from Suzi's house. :(At her house I did see two Charles Frederick Worth bodices. Ah!!! One of my favorite designers. And I also saw a bunch of lace, stays/corsets, textiles, etc....

At around 5:00PM or so we all headed over the Globe for a performance of As You Like It. Just so you know, this was first exposure to Shakespeare and I LOVED it!!!! The play was great! I wanted to watch it again once it was over. That is how much I like it. Plus, most of us had "Groundlings" tickets, which means standing around the stage - THE best seat in the theater, as the actors would be right by you. In fact, my mom and I and group of friends stood by the side stage stairs and the actors and actresses would walk or run by us. Their skirts brushed us, the men swords would be close to hitting us. You could reach out and touch them! In the wrestling scenes they would be right there in front of us. Ah!!!!  

As we weren't able to take pictures of the play, I did find some online so you could see some of the lovely costumes.

 

Here are also some of  pictures from that evening.

St. Pauls from the Shakespeare Globe

The Globe stage at night.


~Ashley

"As You Like It" pictures from:  http://static.guim.co.uk/ and http://www.independent.co.uk/