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Listed under:  Society  >  Culture  >  Costume
Video

The innovator

This is a short animated film highlights the versatility of wool as a natural fibre. The wordless film journeys through the ages and offers a unique view on how wool has been used - and continues - to clothe humans. The video provides an humourous stimulus resource to highlight the range of properties of wool.

Video

How to grow a pair of jeans

This is a slideshow for primary students that traces the steps in cotton production and processing from seeds to jeans. The ten slides in the show use photographs and relatively simple text to cover ground preparation for the cotton crop; seed planting; irrigation and the efficient use of water by Australian cotton farmers; ...

Video

Roman Times: Were ancient Romans slaves to fashion?

What clothing would you have worn to look cool in ancient Rome? Like people today, many ancient Romans felt that they had to follow the latest fashions. Find out why for many men tunics replaced togas, and that in some periods men wore beards and in other times they didn't. See what hairstyle options were available for ...

Video

Max Meldrum: 'Poland (Madame de Tarczynska)', 1917

This resource includes an enlargeable image, with corresponding catalogue information, of the painting 'Poland (Madame de Tarczynska)' by Max Meldrum (1875-1955). There is also a video with audio commentary on the artist's career and an interpretation of the artwork. Onscreen text provides additional information about the ...

Image

Washing clothes in an iron tub, c1890s

This is a black-and-white photograph made from a glass negative. It shows a woman washing clothes by hand in a galvanised iron tub outdoors, beside a high fence made from sheets of galvanised iron. A cane laundry basket and washed clothes hanging on a clothes line can be seen.

Image

Hawaiian feather cloak ('ahu 'ula)

This is a feather cloak given to Captain James Cook by a Hawaiian high chief at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii on 26 January 1779. It measures 1.54 m x 2.45 m and is made from the yellow and red feathers of an estimated 20,000 mamo, o'o and i'iwi birds. It consists of a fibre backing into which bundles of feathers have been tied. ...

Image

Convict jacket

This is a woollen convict jacket from Tasmania. The inside of the jacket is stamped with the mark 'WD', indicating that it was issued by the War Department, and it has an arrow mark, signifying British Government property. These marks date the jacket to after 1855.

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Hawaiian feathered helmet (mahiole)

This is a feather helmet from Hawaii that was given to Captain James Cook on the beach at Kealakekua Bay in January 1779. It is made from the yellow and red feathers of the mamo, o'o and i'iwi birds. The framework of the helmet is made from the tough aerial roots of the 'ie'ie plant. A net of olona fibres is laid over this ...

Image

Kapa (tapa), late 1700s

This is a rectangular piece of kapa (tapa or barkcloth) from Hawai'i, cut from a larger piece. There is a seam where two pieces were sewn together before decorating, and a plain border at one end is part of the outer border of the original larger kapa. The hand-painted decoration, in rich orange and black, consists of tapering ...

Image

Aviator William Ewart Hart's biplane, 1911

This is a 23.4 cm x 38.8 cm sepia-toned photograph of the homemade biplane of one of Australia's first aviators, William Ewart Hart (1885-1943), after its 1911 landing on the Sydney Showground, New South Wales. A crowd has gathered around the aircraft, obscuring Hart from view.

Image

Enrolling in the Land Army, c1944

This is a posed black-and-white photograph, measuring 24.7 cm x 19 cm and taken around 1944 in Drouin, Victoria by Jim Fitzpatrick. It shows a formally dressed young woman seated in front of a desk labelled 'War Agricultural Committee'. A man, seated behind the desk, is handing her a book entitled 'Food front'. The furniture ...