Victorian Field Science Outdoor Apparel: The All-Important Shawl

Great female scientists of the Victorian era wore shawls.

Rarely if ever have I used a shawl. The word itself implies that you didn't plan for the weather well. You didn't bring a coat.

But "shawls of paisley design were in fashion for nearly one hundred years."  Shawls were the fashion of 19th-century lady naturalists and you know I do as they do; I'm spending the month of September in a #sciart performance project dressed as 19th-century American mycologist Mary Elizabeth Banning.

This is not Mary Elizabeth Banning.
This is British paleontologist Mary Anning in more of a cape.

Portrait of an Unknown Woman, or, as I call it Bad-ass Little Red Riding Shawl, by Alexander Molinari.
 

Queen Victoria serving shawl fierceness.

How to wear the shawl, this not new but new-to-me article of clothing? I went for this:

Young Beatrix Potter, mycologist, in a wrapper.

Photo credits: 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crinoline_fashion_1860.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Anning_painting.jpg

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Alexander_Molinari

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queen_Victoria.jpg

https://publicdomainreview.org/2014/07/23/the-tale-of-beatrix-potter/