‘Aglaia will propose no violent revolution in matters of attire, such as the Rational Dress Association advocates, but its contents will be directed to teaching both men and women how to discriminate by choosing and rejecting, and so gradually moulding the exigencies of our climate and situation, the claims of artistic arrangement of drapery, and harmony of colour.’ These are the words of the artist-designer Henry Holiday, president of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, explaining the didactic goals of their journal, Aglaia, in an 1892 Hearth and Home interview. A culmination of the various artistic and reform movements in Victorian fashion, the Union is often alluded to in most extant discussions of the alternative sartorial trends of that period. However, no in-depth study has been made of the group and its myriad activities, which included not just a journal but educational projects such as their ‘Exhibition of
Living Pictures’, a series of tableaux vivants publicly performed in 1896 as a means of disseminating their sartorial agenda.

This paper presents a short biography of the Healthy and Artistic Dress Union, outlining their pedagogy under the leadership of artists such as Holiday, Walter Crane and G.F. Watts. A brief history of the organisation will precede a discussion of Aglaia and an examination of the ‘Exhibition of Living Pictures’, illustrating the impact of creative production and philosophy upon Artistic Dress from this period, and the perhaps unsung relevance of this group for the development of fashion in the early 20th century.