IT’S truly old-fashioned romance.

    Sarah and Gabriel Chrisman were drawn to each other out of a shared fascination with the Victorian era.

    And over time, their passion has bloomed in a very unconventional fashion.

    For the last five years, the Seattle-based couple who married in 2002, have dressed, traveled, cooked, eaten, and entertained themselves as if they lived in the 19th century.

    Though a life free of cell phones, Internet, modern transport and sneakers smacks of horror to most people today, the Chrismans insist they are the lucky ones.

    “Even before I met Gabriel, we both saw value in older ways of looking at the world,” academic and massage therapist Sarah, 35, writes in a personal essay for Vox.

    “He had been homeschooled as a child, and he never espoused the strict segregation that now seems to exist between life and learning.

    “As adults, we both wanted to learn more about a time that fascinated each of us.

    “But it took mutual support to challenge society’s dogmas of how we should live, how we should learn. We came into it gradually — and together.”

    Sarah wears a corset all day, every day. Gabriel, a library and information science academic, wears authentic gold-rimmed 19th century glasses.

    Their home, built in 1888, is equipped with oil-powered lamps, and doesn’t have an electric fridge or oven.

    Clothes are washed in a bucket of room-temperature water.

    For entertainment, Sarah reads 1890s editions of “Cosmopolitan,” or the couple go for a cycle ride on their penny-farthings.

    They both see the pursuit as academic research — far more intense than any sociological study they have encountered on the subject. But it is also a lifestyle.

    Sarah insisted she and Gabriel still meet up with friends to discuss academia, or go hiking — in their Victorian clothes.

    “I manage hiking quite well,” she said. “I modeled my outfit off a photo of Fay Fuller, the first woman known to reach the summit of Mount Rainier in 1890. She was dressed in an ‘immodest’ climbing outfit of her own devising.”

    After one year of wearing a corset every day, Sarah said her waist went from 32 inches (81 cm) to 22 inches, she experienced fewer migraines and her posture improved. “And honestly, the corset lets me know when I’m full! I don’t have to worry about eating too much.”

    (SD-Agencies)