On the Rocks • Group revives a gentler society

By anne marie distefano

The Portland Tribune, Nov 20, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (3 Reader comments)

ANNE MARIE DiSTEFANO / TRIBUNE PHOTO

Period details like Empire-waist gowns, ringleted hair and pearls are closely observed by Suzannah Hamlin (left) and her mother, Kay Demlow, who along with more than 200 others enjoy the balls, tea parties and gentle manners fostered by the Oregon Regency Society.

ADVERTISEMENTS

On a North Portland side street, on a cold, dark night, it looks like a hallucination: a white pavilion glowing with thousands of tiny white lights. Inside, men in frock coats and knee breeches and ladies in high-waisted gowns are rotating with dignified steps through a traditional English country dance.

In fact, it’s a ball hosted by the Oregon Regency Society, which pays homage to England’s Regency Period, which lasted roughly from 1790 to 1820. It was the era of the Napoleonic Wars, with fashions and customs most familiar to fans of Jane Austen’s novels, and their many film adaptations.

Stephanie Johanesen founded the society in April 2007. There already is a national Jane Austen society that is active in Portland, but Johanesen wanted something a little different.

“I don’t want to just read about it, I want to live it,” she says. “I wanted to create an atmosphere where we had an opportunity to step out of the T-shirt and jeans and put on something really ladylike.”

She pictured maybe 15 or 20 ladies meeting for tea, but the club now has 218 members from around the Northwest. About 80 are attending tonight’s ball. Other events have included picnics and dance classes.

“I didn’t expect it to be quite as large as it is now,” Johanesen says.

The 37-year-old environmental tech is seated on a red velvet chair in the parlor of the David Cole Queen Anne Victorian Mansion. She’s in a homemade ensemble that includes a low-cut black dress with a train and a feather headdress.

To create the classic Regency silhouette – a woman was supposed to look like a gently draped column, surmounted by cleavage – she’s eschewed a corset and stiffened herself with a wooden busk.

The appeal of the Regency, Johanesen believes, is its romance.

“It’s just looking pretty and feeling like a lady and having someone bow to you and ask you to dance,” she says. “The dances are very romantic and the atmosphere is romantic and the gentlemen are – just look at them, they’re walking around with their canes and they’re dignified and it’s a fantasy, it really is.”

Johanesen originally envisioned a mostly female club, but there are enough men here tonight for just about everyone to have a dance partner.

“Right now we’ve been focusing so much on the gentilities that I feel like we’ve been excluding them,” Johanesen says of the men. “But somehow they’re still here. Their wives are dragging them in, kicking and screaming.”

Her own husband is a loyal participant – “he grew the sideburns for me,” she says – although he’s away on business tonight.

“I think he secretly likes it,” she says. “As soon as he puts on the frock coat he starts walking around, puffing out his chest.”

1 | 2 Next Page >>