Like many nineteenth century fashion plates, this one was separated from of the magazine where it was originally published. This means it has no context. We can hazard a guess that it was published in a French magazine and happily it has a date printed on it, but otherwise we can't know what types of outfits these ladies are wearing (morning dress? promenade dress? afternoon dress?) or what their garments are made of. Chances were that their garments were made of silk, plain (on the left) and figured (on the right) both being favoured:
Some of the dresses are decorated with fancy trimming, others with folds... but in whatever manner the skirt is trimmed, the sleeves must always be decorated to correspond. Silks are upon the whole the materials most in request for promenade robes, for though white muslin begins to appear, it is but slowly, and mousselines de laine though enjoying a certain vogue, are not so distingué as silk.
The New Monthly Belle Assemblee, June 1839.
The Court and Ladies' Magazine of March 1839 announces that:
The newest mousselines de laine and de soie, are striped, two, three and four colours... Striped silks and satins are likewise coming in, so that striped dresses will be de rigeur this season.
Court and Ladies' Magazine, March 1839
Nearly two centuries later, what seems most evident is the way in which the fashionable silhouette of the 1830s has almost become that of the 1840s. Skirts are now bell-shaped and reach the ground, while the full sleeves, modish in the earlier part of the decade, have shrunk and slid down to the lower half of the arm. The bonnets our models are wearing are not quite as small and enclosing as the "poke" bonnets of the 1840s, but they're getting there.
No comments:
Post a Comment