... Or to give its title in full: Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics. The "fashions" part of the journal consisted of a pair of fashion plates in each issue, along with descriptions of the plates and articles reporting on the latest fashion news from London and Paris.
To start off 1823 on a suitably festive note, we have a ball dress.
White crèpe lisse dress, worn over a bright pink satin slip; the corsage of white satin, cut bias, and fits the shape: it is ornamented with simple elegance, being separated into narrow straps, nearly two inches deep, and edged with two small folds of pink crèpe lisse set in a narrow band of folded white satin, finished with a tucker of the finest blond lace. The sleeve is short, of very full white crèpe lisse, partly concealed by two rows of white satin diamonds, edged with pink crèpe lisse, and united by half a dozen minute folds of white satin: at the botton of the dress is one row of large full puffs or bouffantes, of white crèpe lisse; between each are eight white satin loops, attached to the bouffantes, and surrounding a cluster of half-blown China roses. The hair, without ornament, à la Grecque. Ear-rings, necklace, armlets, and bracelets, of dead gold, with pink topazes and emeralds, interspersed, and fastened by padlock-snaps studded with emeralds. Long white kid gloves. Pink satin shoes.
From all this verbiage I come away with a two key points. Firstly, that the "bright pink slip" was meant to be seen under the transparent overskirt (unlike the twentieth century garments of the same name). Secondly, that the bias cut was not invented by Vionnet in the early twentieth century, though here it is only used to make the bodice. The engraving informs me that waists were still fairly high and skirts narrow in the early 1820s, though the use of decorations at the hem is a first step in making skirts fuller.
The Repository doesn't name a dressmaker, so I've no idea if this was an actual garment or an artist's fantasy. Readers of this detailed description, however, would probably have been able to use it to create a facsimile with the aid of their dressmaker—though they might have used less expensive materials!
(The Philadelphia Museum of Art has put scans of the complete run of Ackermann's Repository up on the Internet Archive.)
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