Doris Langley Moore

Doris Langley Moore
Doris Langley Moore (around 1935)
Born	1902 Lancashire, England
Died	1989
Occupation	Author & biographer, fashion historian.
Nationality	English
Subject	Fashion history; Lord Byron

Doris Langley Moore OBE (1902–1989) also known as Doris Langley-Levy Moore, was one of the first important female fashion historians. She founded the Fashion Museum, Bath (as The Museum of Costume) in 1963. She was also a well-respected Lord Byron scholar, and author of a 1940s ballet, The Quest. As a result of these wide-ranging interests, she had many connections within fashionable, intellectual, artistic and theatrical circles.

Doris Langley Moore was born in 1902 in Lancashire, England. She was educated in South Africa, where her father was a newspaper editor. At the age of 18, she returned to England to study classical languages at university.

In her twenties, Langley Moore wrote a few lifestyle books, one of which, The Technique of the Love Affair (1928), was reprinted in 1999/2002. This was a tongue-in-cheek self-help book which suggested ways in which love affairs in the post-World War I era could be successfully conducted.Dorothy Parker, reviewing for The New Yorker, commented: "The Technique of the Love Affair makes, I am bitterly afraid, considerable sense. If only it had been placed in my hands years ago, maybe I could have been successful instead of just successive."

Subsequent books included Pandora's Letter-Box (1929) and, in 1933, co-written with her sister June Langley Moore, a guide for society hostesses called The Pleasure of your Company.

Doris Langley Moore was one of the first major female fashion historians and curators along with Anne Buck. In contrast to male fashion historians such as her friend James Laver and C. Willett Cunnington, Langley Moore favoured a hands-on object-based approach where she drew her conclusions after personally examining surviving artefacts. In 1949 she exploded the myth of the 18-inch waist, which almost all Victorian women were supposed to have had, by measuring over 200 surviving dresses and bodices in collections across the country. Her survey revealed that the average 19th century waist measurement sat comfortably within the 20–30 inch range, and that almost none of her subjects had a waist measurement less than 21 inches.