I would like some new blogs about food, clothes and the past

March 1, 2021 4:44 PM

I like to read blogs. I like to sit down and just....read them, borne back ceaselessly into the past by the previous posts button. Because we are living in a nightmarish dystopia, I cannot read about anything challenging. I would like blogs about food, clothes and the past, with certain restrictions.

1. I like the old boring kind of blogs best, where it's just one person and their interests. I am happy to read old, old blogs.

2. I'm not super-interested in blogs about contemporary American fashion. Past fashions, fashion outside the US, theories about fashion, information about manufacturing, etc, are all fine, but I don't really want to read about what's currently on-trend. I love The Dreamstress, but sadly it has been my bedtime reading for months and I have finished the blog.

3. I am familiar with many of the big name blogs - Messy Nessy, Atlas Obscura, etc.

4. I like a lot of text.

5. Ideal topics are things like everyday life in ancient Rome, Victorian cooking, Japanese fashion in the 1950s, vegetables 'round the world, etc.

posted by Frowner to Home & Garden (13 answers total)

I’ve been reading a blog called A Hundred Years Ago. It started out with the blogger sharing pages from the diaries her grandmother kept in high school, each entry being published on the blog exactly 100 years after it was written. When she ran out of diaries, she started a new thing where she tries a recipe from a cookbook or magazine published a hundred years ago, or shares a food-related advertisement, a page from a domestic science textbook, or something similar that might have been a part of home life in her grandmother’s time.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:41 PM on March 1 [4 favorites]

Something old: Full Table, The Visual Telling of Stories (table of contents)
posted by MonkeyToes at 5:42 PM on March 1

Apologies if this is not helpful (you could read these on a website, which feels rather blog-like?), but here are some food-related newsletters I like:

Sourced is a "project to research the politics, commerce and culture of food and drink through focused investigations into ingredients"

Alicia Kennedy is a food writer who writes about the intersection of food and capitalism with occasional mostly vegan recipes

Vittles is a London based newsletter about food/cooking/restaurants

Wordloaf is all about baking bread and flour more generally

Actual blog (but he has shifted more to newsletter format recently): David Lebovitz writes about living in Paris with cooking, baking and drink recipes

So far I've only done the free versions of the newsletters, so my recommendation is based on unlocked content.
posted by mandymanwasregistered at 5:46 PM on March 1 [1 favorite]

The Language of Food
posted by wintersweet at 7:27 PM on March 1

I've read some detailed posts about past makeup eras on Glamour Daze, and from glancing at the home page, it appears to be organized as a vintage fashion blog.
posted by Carouselle at 7:52 PM on March 1

So you’ve read Ex Urbe, right?
Notable posts:
“The Borgias” vs. “Borgia: Faith and Fear” (accuracy in historical fiction) (Includes some fashion discussion, and late in the post she casually mentions that the palace of Versailles was fancy because they picked up all the poop off the floor at least once per day)
The Shape of Rome (layers of history)
How to Spot Good Gelato from 15 Feet Away
posted by Huffy Puffy at 8:09 PM on March 1 [3 favorites]

Remembering how you've posted about reading Styleforum and its ilk in the past, it's very likely that you're already aware of Die, Workwear!. If you aren't, while it does cover contemporary American fashion in addition to and in combination with other topics, it does so from a far more progressive and open-minded perspective than sadly is the norm for bloggers who cover menswear.
posted by Strutter Cane - United Planets Stilt Patrol at 4:41 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]

Do you know the Lesbian Historic Motif Project? The blog occasionally reviews fiction, but the focus is on scholarship that would be useful to someone writing historical romance about women loving women. This means there's tons of information about women's lives and careers, in all their complication. The entry on Mary Diana Dods: A Gentleman and a Scholar is a good jumping-off point.
posted by yarntheory at 5:51 AM on March 2 [2 favorites]

The Botanist In the Kitchen - where botany meets the cutting board

Cooking in the Archives - Updating Early Modern Recipes (1600-1800) in a Modern Kitchen

Mid-Century Menu

Dinner is served 1972
posted by carrioncomfort at 6:03 AM on March 2 [1 favorite]

Mostly food history ones:

18th Century Cuisine Blog
Food Museum Blog
Food Anthropology
Table Matters Gastronomy section
Edible Geography
Gastronomica, University of California's Food studies journal
Catholic Cuisine - a blog about food eaten on Saint days
Eccentric Culinary History
Cookbook of Unknown Ladies
Ancient malt and ale blog
Ancient Roman food project and also this one
Dutch culinary historian's blog
Various long reads on culinary history (though mostly recent history and culture)
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:12 AM on March 2 [3 favorites]

I just devoured the archives of this blog: The Everyday French Chef - something about the writing style, the accessibility of the recipes, the general coziness was very appealing.
posted by peacheater at 9:14 AM on March 2

I am obsessed with vintage and antique fashion. Here are my favorite blogs:
The Vintage Traveller
Better dresses Vintage
TruFaux Jewels
DeniseBrain
Bata Shoe Museum
posted by RobinofFrocksley at 12:33 PM on March 2

I enjoy the singular focus of the Broken Chains blog, where the writer takes road trips to chain restaurants (and some retail stores) that have dwindled to a handful of locations in the midwestern and southern United States. The writer is upbeat and positive, and does research into the history of each chain without succumbing to an apocalyptic tone.
posted by JDC8 at 11:07 AM on March 3 [2 favorites]