When Zack Pinsent was 14, he set fire to his last pair of jeans.

It was a declarative act for Pinsent, who also shed his purple polos from American Eagle and his other modern clothing in what he said was an attempt to find his own sense of style.

He realised, he said, that the high street wasn’t speaking the vocabulary that he wanted to dress in.

That moment set him on a journey of finding, wearing and styling clothing from bygone eras.

Today Pinsent, now 30, exclusively wears historical garments, with a preference for styles from the Georgian (1714-1837) and Regency (1811-1820) periods – complete with waistcoats, pantaloons, stockings, cravats, tail coats, top hats and canes.

He often makes the garments himself from vintage fabrics he is able to source from those eras.

Pinsent might be an extreme example of so-called historical dressing.

But now that he runs his own clothing business, creating bespoke pieces made to resemble those from the 17th through the early 20th centuries, he has noticed a shift in demand.

“My clientele is getting younger and younger, which is fantastic,” he said.

“They’re fed up of fast fashion and the global scourge that it is.”

Read more: Carrie Bradshaw’s closet: A style archive spanning decades of television

He said they are also pushing back on “wearing beige the whole time” and are “against the minimalist Ikea look”.

Pinsent is among a number of fashion fans showing interest in period dress, a trend recently boosted by shows such as Netflix’s Bridgerton (set in the Regency era) and its spinoff, Queen Charlotte, as well as HBO’s The Gilded Age. 

He is partial, however, to Downton Abbey, the period drama set between the 1910s and 1920s that ran for six seasons and spawned two films, with a third to be released in September.

Bonhams, an auction house, is looking to capitalise on this fervour for modern pieces made to appear historical by launching an exhibition and auction of costumes and props from the Downton Abbey franchise.

The auction includes such items as a pale sea-green gown worn by Maggie Smith as Violet Crawley, along with her cane and spectacles, and the wedding gown worn by Laura Carmichael as Lady Edith in the show’s final season.

Props such as antique furniture, butler trays, letters and the Grantham family car are also on offer.

An auction house staff member looks at a wedding dress belonging to the character Lady Mary from the 'Downton Abbey' series during a press preview. Photo: AFP

The auction runs through Sept 16, online, with a free exhibition of all items in London at the Bonhams New Bond Street sales room.

This isn’t the first time Bonhams has dived headfirst into pop culture.

Last year, the firm auctioned off props, costumes, and set pieces from The Crown, raising more than US$2mil (approximately RM8.5mil), according to Women’s Wear Daily.

“Provenance is hugely important in everything we sell,” said Charlie Thomas, the UK group director for house sales and private and iconic collections at Bonhams.

“But this sort of modern day provenance, where it’s from a film or television production series like Downton, there’s huge interests and appetites across the globe. It’s not just the UK.”

Anna Scott Robbins, the costume designer for the last two seasons of Downton Abbey as well as the subsequent films, said she often sourced items from the 1920s or used materials from that era to create new garments.

Often, she had to rely on modern materials to make ensembles that closely resembled clothing worn at the time.

Scott Robbins was frequently inspired by antique fashion plates and illustrations.

“Then the challenge is shopping for fabric that looks and behaves the way vintage fabric does,” she said.

For example, “velvet today is just 100 times heavier than velvet from the 20s”, and it took extensive shopping and working with the right suppliers to find an equivalent that would mimic materials from that era.

The pieces, however, remain mostly modern creations.

Read more: Saggy pants and waistbands: K-pop stars revive another Y2K fashion trend

“There’s a very interesting study to be done about costumes, especially historical costumes, as historical artifacts versus pieces of memorabilia,” said Raissa Bretana, fashion historian at the Fashion Institute of Technology Museum in New York.

“This auction is revering these garments as historical artifacts, because the show and the subsequent films have been so culturally significant. It’s almost ironic to think that these reproductions of historic garments have become historical artifacts in their own right.”

Bretana acknowledged that costumes in historical dramas, regardless of their status as memorabilia, can have a “profound impact on how people understand history”.

Hazel Clark, a professor of design studies and fashion studies at The New School in New York, pointed out that the costumes can also distort the public’s understanding of historical events, as viewers are not seeking “real history”, but rather a story where “everything works out well in the end”.

Period dressing allows its followers to “simply appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the past without necessarily having to reckon with the complexities of the past,” Bretana said.

“They don’t have to imagine the hardships. They just simply get to look at the beautiful clothes.” – ©2025 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.