As this article will argue, these archaeological discoveries and the subsequent displays arising from them provided a new visual and material culture of archaeology that inspired a British re-fashioning both in clothing and identity. The work of imagining the impact of classical Greek dress – on the body, health, and national fitness – provoked new ways of considering British civilisation both in relation to the ancient world and to existing cultures of nationhood in the 1880s. In the dress reform movement, and in the use of costume for stage drama a new creative fashioning of Britishness (and especially female.
