Fashions for April 1831

Court & Dinner Dress April 1831

Loretta reports:

By the 1830s, the vertical look is completely gone, the big sleeves are taking over, and hair is starting to get wild.  Though fashion illustrations look completely bizarre, I have seen some of these looks reproduced in period films, and they are more beautiful and graceful than you might suppose.

One of the looks I find particularly interesting is court dress, of which this is a great example. Plumes were required, as were the lace lappets (those lacy things hanging by the lady's ears) and a train. This plate does a good job of showing the difference between what one wore, say, to a Royal Drawing Room and what one wore for an evening event. As opulent as evening dress could be, court dress had to be very much more so.  The monarchs seem to have been very particular about court dress. Interestingly, Queen Victoria insisted on large plumes. She wanted to be able to see them easily.

As extravagant as this dress might appear, it's relatively normal-looking compared to what ladies were obliged to wear during the reign of George III and the time of the Prince Regent. Author Candice Hern offers an overview and examples of  Regency-era court dress here at her website.

April 1831 fashion description

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An Elegant Woman's Jacket, c1780, from Printed Cotton from India, c1750

Susan reporting,

I'm deep in the middle of final copy edits, so this will be a quick - but very beautiful! - post.

This woman's jacket is from the splendid new exhibition that opened last week in the DeWitt Wallace Decorative Arts Museum of Colonial Williamsburg. Printed Fashions: Textiles for Clothing and Home features stunning examples from the late 17thc to the early 19thc, all drawn from Colonial Williamsburg's own collections. I'll be writing another post about the exhibition soon, but for now this will serve as a sample of the glories currently on display.

The jacket was made in Europe c1750 from a textile imported from India - a mordant-painted and resist dyed cotton - and lined in linen. Jackets like this would have been worn over a linen shift and a contrasting petticoat, and would likely have been accessorized with a triangular kerchief around the neck, with white ruffles pinned to the bottoms of the sleeves.

According to the placard:

This charming jacket is constructed from an earlier India chintz textile, clear evidence that the chintz was sufficiently prized to warrant restyling years later. The center-front closure suggests a date in the late 1770s or early 1780s. Fitted jackets worn with separate skirts called petticoats were practical and comfortable for work and informal occasions. They were more economical than full-length gowns because they did not require additional yards of fabric.

More to come....

Jacket, maker unknown, Europe, c1780; textile, India, c1750. Colonial Williamsburg. Photo ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott.

Breakfast Links: Week of March 27, 2017

Breakfast Links are served - our weekly round-up of fav links to other web sites, articles, blogs, and images via Twitter.
• Charles Spurgeon's 1880s photographs of London's street traders.
• "We must make haste, for when we home are come, We find again our work has just begun": women's never-ending work in the 18thc.
• The enduring legacy of the Pocahontas legend.
• A brief, poignant video in honor of the at-risk textile mills that once defined the landscape of the North of England.
• Image: An over-the-top fop via an 1930 Saturday Evening Post cover by J.C. Leyendecker.
• With flint and derring-do, the early 20thc pilot Ruth Law ruled American skies.
• Experts restore a rare 17thc Dutch Golden Age map found stuffed up a Scottish chimney.
• George Washington's Mount Vernon during the American Revolution.
• Image: In 1902, a Frenchman imagined what women might look like if they started taking up "male" professions - don't you want to be this journalist?
• How an 1887 Harlem, NY mansion became a Depression era rooming house - and home to an 85-year-old con artist.
• Regency rules of the road.
• New on-line exhibition for An Agreeable Tyrant: Fashion After the Revolution by the DAR Museum.
• The lost townscape of 16thc Edinburgh recreated.
• Houses of death: walking the wards of a Victorian hospital.
• Katherine Goddard printed the first complete copy of the Declaration of Independence.
• How to do, well, basically everything, according to cigarette cards.
• Pride and racial prejudice - how the far right is trying to associate their dogma with Jane Austen.
• Switchel, the 18thc energy drink.
• Child dropping (or child abandonment) in Regency Britian.
Hungry for more? Follow us on Twitter @2nerdyhistgirls for fresh updates daily.
Above: At Breakfast by Laurits Andersen Ring. Private collection

From the Archives: Frothy, Fashionable Caps, c.1780

Susan reporting,

Since I'm in Colonial Williamsburg this week, it seemed like a good time to revisit this popular post from 2015. Then,  the mantua-makers had just finished two complicated sewing projects, and their form of relaxing was to replicate several silk gauze caps of the late 1770s-early 1780s.

Caps had been part of an Englishwoman's day-time wardrobe for many generations before this. Ostensibly to cover the head and hair for modesty's sake, they were worn by nearly all women of every age and rank. For working women, linen caps kept hair tidy and out of the way, and offered extra protection around open fires. For the more fashionable, caps could also provided a base for the wide-brimmed hats worn out-of-doors.

By the last quarter of the 18th c., however, caps had evolved into notable fashion statements on their own. Trimmed with ribbons, bows, and ruffles and enhanced with fine stitching and embroidery, caps inflated into frothy confections to match the towering hairstyles ("heads") of the time.

These stylish caps were made of the finest silk gauze, a translucent fabric with a crisp hand much like modern organza. The narrow rolled hems, pleats, and tiny stitches were a test of skill for the mantua-makers, as Nicole Rudolph, above left, demonstrates. The original caps were so airy and insubstantial that few survive in collections today. (Our CW manuta-makers report that even after a single careful laundering, the caps

begin to wilt, and after two, they're pretty much done.)

But longevity wasn't the caps' point. They were a trend-driven fashion, with new variations appearing frequently in the London shops. They could be further personalized with different bows, as the back view of the example, lower left, demonstrates (though it could use some equally fashionable big hair beneath it for proper height.) Compared to a new gown, caps were also inexpensive, and an easy way to update an older wardrobe.

Looking at the satirical prints of the time, right, it's easy to assume that the size and foolishness of the caps was exaggerated (along with everything else) by the artists. They weren't. Former apprentice Abby Cox models one of the caps copied by the shop from a print, lower right, and there's no denying its exuberant charm. Yes, the cap is extreme, and more than a little foolish to modern eyes, but to an 18th c. lady - and more importantly, to an 18th c. gentleman - there were few things more unabashedly flirtatious than a pretty young woman in a sweet ruffled cap.

Above left: Photo copyright 2015 Susan Holloway Scott.
Right: Detail, Deceitful Kisses, or The Pretty Plunderers, from an original by John Collet, printed by Carrington Bowles, 1781. Collection of the British Museum.
Lower right: Photographs copyright 2015 the Margaret Hunter Shop.

Feasts and Feats of Drinking

Midnight Modern Conversation ca 1732

Loretta reports:

Though Easter Tuesday comes rather later this year, I’m working with Hone’s date, since it seems equally applicable to all feast-days. I think, too, this offers a good example of phrases that sound modern, but actually have been around for a long time. Unlike so many other expressions, “hair of the dog” is as familiar to us as it was to Hone’s readers in 1826.  The OED traces it to the 16th century.

As to the “feats of potation”—given the level of drinking in Hone's time, one can only imagine what his ancestors might have consumed, to impress him so deeply.

Easter Tuesday

Image:
Unknown artist after William Hogarth, A Midnight Modern Conversation ca. 1732courtesy Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection Accession No. B1981.25.351

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.