Neo-Victorian
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neo-Victorian is an aesthetic movement which amalgamates Victorian and Edwardian aesthetic sensibilities with modern principles and technologies, originating in and still centered in Japan. Examples of this would include push-button cordless telephones made to look like antique wall-mounted phones, CD players resembling old time radios, Victorianesque furniture, and Victorian-style clothing with Goth, Punk and Rivet accents.
Many who have adopted Neo-Victorian style have also adopted Victorian behavioural affectations, seeking to imitate standards of Victorian conduct and interpersonal interaction. Some even go so far as to embrace certain Victorian habits such as shaving with straight razors, riding penny farthings and using ink pens to write letters in florid prose sealed by wax.
Neo-Victorianism is embraced in the Lolita, Aristocrat and Madam fashions popular in Japan.
Neo-Victorian aesthetics are also popular in the US and United Kingdom among cultural conservatives and social conservatives.[1] Books such as The Benevolence of Manners: Recapturing the Lost Art of Gracious Victorian Living (ISBN 978-0060987459) by Linda S. Lichter call for return to Victorian morality.
A large number magazines and websites are devoted to Neo-Victorian ideas in dress, family life, interior decoration, morals, and other topics.
[edit] In popular culture
It is also growing in popularity amongst fans of the steampunk genre of speculative fiction, and may include a high degree of cosplay. Neo-Victorianism is also popular with, and in many ways prefigured by, those who are interested in Victoriana and historical reenactment.
Neo-Victorians have appeared in:
- The Diamond Age in which Neo-Victorians are one of the main groups in the novel.
[edit] See also
- Victoriana
- Victorian decorative arts
- Anti-Victorianism, in some ways the opposite of Neo-Victorianism
