Marian Elizabeth Pritchard

Marian Elizabeth Pritchard (6 April 1869 – 1 December 1945) was a late 19th- and early 20th-century British fashion writer and journalist who predominantly wrote under her formal married names Mrs. Eric Pritchard and from 1918, Mrs. C. W. Forester. She is most famous as the author of the 1902 style manual The Cult of Chiffon, and has been described as "one of the first truly outspoken high-profile fashion journalists." Biography Marian Elizabeth Westropp-Dawson was born on 6 April 1869. Her first husband was the paediatrician George Eric Campbell Pritchard, whom she married in 1894 and had a son with. When she began writing, she was known as Mrs. Eric Pritchard. The marriage ended in divorce in 1912, a petition from George Pritchard naming the Honourable Charles Cecil Orlando Weld-Forester as a co-respondent. On 1 April 1913, Marian married Weld-Forester, although continued writing as "Mrs. Eric Pritchard" until 1918, when The Daily Telegraph first noted she was now the Hon Mrs. C. W. Forester on 12 October 1918, and by December 21, noted that she was now "solely described" as Mrs C. W. Forester. Charles Weld-Forester died on 23 November 1937 at the age of 68, and Marian died, aged 76, on 1 December 1945. Career Writing as Mrs. Eric Pritchard, Marian was a regular columnist for The Lady and fashion editor for The Lady's Realm in the 1890s and 1900s. As a writer, Pritchard's work was noted for its sensuality and appreciation of the romantic and erotic potential of fashion, and how clothing could be used to present and construct the wearer's femininity. Her pieces for The Lady's Realm often discussed underwear at great length, arguing that even the most virtuous women could appreciate attractive lingerie without being accused of immorality. Pritchard compared the pursuit of chic and the appreciation of fashion to a modern-day religion, echoing her contemporaries such as the Comtesse de Tramar, who wrote books on beauty with purposefully religious-sounding titles such as Le Bréviaire De La Femme (1903), and L'Evangile Profane: Rite Féminin (The Profane Gospel: Female Rite, 1905). Whilst praising intelligence in a woman, both Pritchard and Tramar acknowledged the necessity of having to maintain one's appeal to a husband in order to preserve quality of life at that time, and encouraged their readers to combine their intelligence with clever dressing and good grooming.