In the 1780s the styles from the previous decade continued to be popularized, emphasizing more casual clothing in both womenswear and menswear. At the same time, fashion publications were becoming a vital part of spreading trends and fashion news.

The informal styles for men and women that were introduced in the previous decade were firmly entrenched by 1780s. For the former, the frock coat with a high turned-down collar and wide lapels, hip-length sleeveless waistcoat, and breeches that outlined the shape of the thighs dominated men’s daytime wardrobes. For the latter, in addition to the robe à l’anglaise, robe à la polonaise, robe à la lévite, robe à la circassienne, and caraco-and-petticoat combination that gained popularity in the 1770s, the robe à la turque, the redingote (the Gallicization of “riding coat”), and the chemise were new options for daywear. A more regular fashion press that emerged in the 1770s continued to expand, disseminating new styles more rapidly to a wider audience.

Womenswear

Although women had worn masculine-inspired wool riding habits throughout the eighteenth century, in the 1780s the redingote constituted fashionable day attire (Fig. 9). This coat dress was also based on menswear with a high collar, wide lapels, and double-breasted closure with outsized buttons, and was often accessorized with paired watch fobs (Fig. 9)—another nod to a current fad among stylish young men. Few redingotes have survived, but their popularity in this decade is evident in the pages of the Galerie des Modes (1778-1787) and the Cabinet des Modes that began publication in 1785 and changed names twice before ceasing in 1793. In November 1786, the retitled Magasin des Modes Nouvelles françaises et anglaises illustrated a young woman in a redingote of “lemon-yellow wool, with apple-green stripes” with a collar and lapels à la marinière (sailor) and a double-tiered “ample gauze fichu” with its ends knotted “en cravatte” (Fig. 10). Barely visible under the hem of her mannish garment are her highly feminine shoes of pink satin trimmed with a black silk ribbon (Fig. 10). At the end of the two-page description that provides further details of her ensemble, “frizzed” coiffure, and “chapeau-bonnette…très bouffante,” the editor notes that “our Ladies have adopted the fashion of redingotes” from English women. In spite of the flamboyantly trimmed hats and delicate footwear that generally accompanied the redingote, its visual similarity to men’s dress prompted the same critiques that were leveled at women throughout the century for transgressing gender boundaries by their adoption of tailored riding suits. In 1789, The Lady’s Magazine worried that,

“[O]f late, I think, women appear, in their great coats, neckcloths, and half-boots, with so masculine an air, that if their features are not very feminine indeed, they may easily be mistaken for young fellows; especially when a watch is suspended on each side of a petticoat.” (Waugh/Women 127) (Fig. 9)

While wool redingotes were most closely associated with men’s fashionable daywear, they were also made of silk. A watercolor drawing of Marie Antoinette dating to about 1780 (Fig. 11) shows the queen in an ivory redingote (likely silk) with a black collar and zigzag trimming and narrow bands of fur edging the skirt fronts and petticoat hem. An extant example in the collection of Palais Galliera (Fig. 12) with an impressive scalloped double collar is of yellow silk taffeta. In her portrait by Labille-Guiard, the Comtesse de Selve (Fig. 13) wears a chic double-breasted dark grey velvet redingote with gold cord crisscrossed around the buttons similar to the plate in the Magasin des Modes nouvelles and a matching hat with a single white plume.

The chemise popularized the vogue for white more broadly in this decade as is evident in portraits and fashion plates showing women in white, two-piece cotton and silk gowns and in surviving garments (Figs. 18, 19). In 1786, the Comtesse de Provence, the queen’s sister-in-law, sat for Joseph Boze who depicted her in high-styled robe à l’anglaise and petticoat of gleaming ivory silk satin trimmed with scallop-edged lace and matching bowknots and a satin-striped fichu (Fig.  20). The following year, the Magasins des Modes nouvelles illustrated a young woman in a “fourreau” (a gown with back panels stitched from the back of the neck to the hem) of white linen over a petticoat of white [silk] taffeta, and informed its readers that for morning walks, especially during fine weather, white fourreaux, robes à l’anglaise, and caracos with matching petticoats (Fig. 21) should be worn over white underpetticoats and that blue, pink, purple, and other colored underpetticoats, or “transparens,” were out of fashion.

In the 1780s, Queen Marie Antoinette, who spent extravagantly on her wardrobe and could afford the most richly brocaded silks, purchased the newly fashionable lightweight, drapey fabrics for both her informal daywear and her formal gowns. The pages of the Gazette des Atours de Marie Antoinette, an album containing fabric swatches of gowns made for the queen in 1782 (Fig. 22), are filled with taffetas (plain woven silks) in solid colors and stripes, some with ikat patterning, that were used for “Robes Turques,” “Lévites,” “Robes angloises,” “Redingotte,” “Grands habits,” “Robes sur Le petit panier,” and “Robes sur Le grand Panier” (James-Sarazin 41-44) (Figs. 2, 4, 12). The inscription next to a swatch of cream-colored taffeta ordered for a grand habit to be worn at Easter indicates that the dress was trimmed by “Mlle Bertin,” who likely lavished yards of three-dimensional trimmings onto this entirely plain fabric. In 1783, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun reprised her 1778 portrait of Marie Antoinette (much admired by the royal consort) in which the queen wears a frothy grand habit of white silk with white-and-gold trimmings (Vigée-Lebrun updated the queen’s coiffure in the later version) (see 1770-1779 overview) A (slightly) less formal dress (probably a robe parée) dating to the 1780s (Fig. 23) in the collection of the Royal Ontario Museum said to have been worn by Marie Antoinette is of ivory satin embroidered in silk and metal threads and sequins with ribbon swags, tassels, and delicate florals and foliage in shades of pink, green, blue, and ivory.

Barbara Johnson (1738-1825), daughter of a clergyman from Olney, Buckinghamshire, who kept an album with fabric swatches of all her gowns (Figs. 24 & 25) beginning in 1746 at the age of 8, bought several examples of understated silks and cottons for gowns and petticoats in the 1780s. These included a “Callicoe” with black-and-tan stripes patterned with tiny sprigs in September 1780; a “Red double Taffety” [plain weave] and “an English Chintz” with a blue, red, and green floral pattern on a white ground in 1781; “a strip’d Satin” in dark green and dusty rose-pink in December 1782; “a brown taffety” in June 1785; and two more “Callicoe[s],” one with a small meandering vine pattern in blue, yellow, and green on a black ground in August 1787 and another with small floral-and-foliate sprigs in yellow, deep pink, white, and light brown on a black ground in October 1789 (Rothstein/Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics). While many British and French chintzes featured white or light-colored grounds, dark grounds such as green, brown, and black, known as “ramoneur” (chimney sweep) in French, were particularly popular in this decade and the 1790s (Fig. 25).

In addition to domestically produced printed cottons that targeted a range of consumers, elite women favored expensive, skillfully painted-and-dyed and embroidered Indian cottons for the refinement of their embellishment and the high quality of the material itself (Figs. 26, 27).

As dress historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell notes,

“marchandes de modes were convenient (if problematic) symbols of class, consumption, and sexuality. By displaying themselves to public view in magasins de modes (fashion shops) and in the streets, [they] provoked controversy and curiosity” and these women “came to personify fashion itself, with all its glamour and foibles.” (Chrisman-Campbell 53-54)

The most renowned marchande de modes in Paris was Rose Bertin, whose shop, “Au Grand Mogol,” was on the exclusive Rue St. Honoré. Bertin’s services to the fashion-obsessed Marie Antoinette secured her reputation among an affluent international clientele who were willing—when they settled their bills, sometimes on an annual basis—to pay her exorbitant prices and made her the target of critics, who decried her undue influence over the queen and what was perceived as her familiarity with—and even insolence towards—her high-ranking customers.

Significantly, although publications like the Galerie des Modes and the Cabinet des Modes depict upper-class men and women, they simultaneously reflect the growing consumption of fashion that encompassed the middle and working classes and mark a shift in the locus of trendsetting styles from the court to the city of Paris (Jones 182).

In England, Barbara Johnson’s album attests to the popularity of what were known as Pocket Books that were “issued especially for women [and] appeared in quantity…during the second half of the eighteenth century” (Rothstein 36). These small books included “pages ruled for engagements month by month” as well as a variety of information such as “hackney carriage rates; new taxes… new country dances, songs, cookery recipes…[and] one or two fashion engravings” (Rothstein 36). Beginning in 1754, Johnson affixed engravings from “16 named publications, as well as many unidentified plates” to the pages with her fabric swatches (Rothstein 36). From her home in Buckinghamshire, Johnson had access to The Ladies Complete Pocket Book (first published in 1758 and one of her favorites, judging by the 15 times that identified engravings appear in the album between 1770 and 1825); The English Ladies Pocket Companion or Useful Memorandum Book; Carnan’s Ladies Complete Pocket Book; The Ladies New Memorandum Book among several others (Rothstein 36-37) (Figs. 24, 25). In addition to Pocket Books, more fashion-focused magazines were also available such as The Lady’s Magazine (the fourth publication with that name) that began in 1770 (Rothstein 40).

Fashion Icon: LOUISE CONTAT (1760-1813), French actress

In 1784, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ controversial play and succès fou, The Marriage of Figaro, ensured the reputation of Louise Contat as a gifted actress and fashion trendsetter (Fig. 1). Although leading actresses and ballet dancers had set new styles throughout the century, the establishment of a regular fashion press beginning in the 1770s added to their visibility and renown and reinforced the mutually beneficial relationship between fashion and the theatre. Beaumarchais himself recognized this relationship in the preface to the published edition of Figaro:

“Because characters in a play show themselves to have low morals, must we banish them from the stage? What should we seek at the theatre? Foibles and absurdities? That’s well worth the trouble of writing about! They are like our fashions; we can’t correct them, so we change them.” (quoted in Chrisman-Campbell 215)

Born in Paris in 1760, Louise Contat debuted at the Comédie-Française at age 16 in 1776 in the role of Atalide in Jean Racine’s 1672 play, Bajazet. In response to the mixed reviews that acknowledged her “charming figure,” but found her talent somewhat lacking, Contat undertook further dramatic studies and lessons in elocution. Following subsequent performances in Zaïre and Britannicus, she was made a sociétaire of the Comédie Française in 1777—a decision that may also have been prompted by her liaison with a high-ranking admirer, with whom she had two children. Dubbed the “Vénus aux belles fesses” by the underground press, Contat next attracted the attention of Charles Philippe, comte d’Artois, younger brother of Louis XVI, and in December 1780, she gave birth to their son. As mistress to a member of the royal family, Contat’s career benefited and she was offered enviable roles. Her beauty and vivacity were particularly well suited to ingénue parts and her appearances in Le Vieux Garçon by Paul-Ulric Dubuisson, Les Courtisanes by Palissot, and La Coquette corrigée in the early 1780s brought her acclaim. Following her breakout role in The Marriage of Figaro, Contat enjoyed many further theatrical triumphs playing lovers, coquettes, and young mothers. In 1785, the actress was awarded a pension from the royal treasury, and she remained loyal to the Bourbon family after the outbreak of the Revolution in July 1789.

In 1787, the Galerie des Modes depicted a young woman in a redingote with steel buttons and a wide-brimmed hat with striped ribbons and a large standing frill dubbed “à la Contat” after the actress herself (see Chrisman-Campbell 215). In attempting to explain the success of Contat’s hats, the Magasin des Modes nouvelles suggested at least one reason why women desired to copy actress fashions:

“Most of our ladies who have adopted these hairstyles have convinced themselves that they will make conquests as striking [as Mlle Contat’s characters had made on stage and Mlle Contat had made off stage], or at least will have the same seductive aura as Mademoiselle Contat.” (quoted in Jones 189-190)

However, the journal cautioned its readers against too closely emulating actresses and to limit their toilettes to the private rather the public sphere: “One must have the most modest, decent, naïve, soft and circumspect tone: the least bit of freedom, the slightest affectation, will give one the look of a prostitute” (quoted in Jones 190). In spite of the appreciation of their talents, their enormous popularity, and their acknowledged roles as fashion leaders, actresses were equated with the “nymphs” who sold their bodies—presumably to the highest bidder—until the turn of the twentieth century.

Menswear

As in the 1770s, the primary influence of fashionable menswear came from England. The trend towards simplicity and informality of the English country gentleman’s attire that took hold in that decade became more pronounced in the 1780s and was emulated by fashionable young men in France and elsewhere on the Continent (Figs. 1, 2). In the French capital, frock coats, jockey hats, and riding boots were expressions of the Anglomania that swept the country at this time, as indicated by the renamed Magasins des Modes Nouvelles françaises et anglaises. Sebastien Mercier deplored this obsession with all things English:

“Just now English clothing is all the rage. Rich man’s son, sprig of nobility, counter-jumper shop clerk—you see them dressed all alike in the long coat, cut close, thick stockings, puffed stock; with gloves, hats on their heads and a riding switch in their hands. Not one of the gentlemen thus attired, however, has ever crossed the Channel or can speak one word of English… [E]nglish coats, with their triple capes, envelop our young exquisites. Small boys wear their hair cut round, uncurled and without powder…” (Mercier 148-149)

Although the writer conceded that “the dress is neat, and implies a most exact cleanliness of person,” he nonetheless implored his “young friend[s]” to “keep your national frippery” and to

“dress French again, wear your embroidered waistcoats, your laced coats; powder your hair… keep your hat under your arm, and wear your two watches, with concomitant fobs, both at once. Character is something more than dress.” (Mercier 148)

Beyond these imitations of English dress that he found distasteful, Mercier also noted other objectionable imports from France’s longstanding rival:

“Shopkeepers hang out signs—‘English Spoken Here.’ The lemonade-sellers even have succumbed to the lure of punch, and write the word on their windows… [T]he racecourse at Vincennes is copied from that at Newmarket. … [A]ll these modes and drinks and customs would have been rejected, and with disdain, by the Parisians of thirty years ago” (Mercier 149).

The contrast between men’s informal day and formal evening wear is evident in Joseph Wright of Derby’s portrait of Sir Brooke Boothby (Fig. 9) and Joseph Boze’s depiction of the Comte de Provence, younger brother of Louis XVI and future Louis XVIII (Fig. 10). Dress historian Aileen Ribeiro notes that while Boothby’s

“portrait has been seen, both in pose and in dress, as influenced by late Elizabethan and Jacobean melancholy… the costume is certainly not indicative of a melancholic déshabillé, but a definite statement of high fashion.” (Art of Dress 48)

Carefully reclining on the ground in a wooded landscape and holding a copy of Rousseau. Juge de Rousseau, Boothby wears a three-piece matching suit of soft brown wool consisting of a slim-fitting double-breasted frock with turned-down collar and wide lapels and tight sleeves that have been unbuttoned at the wrist to afford greater ease of movement, a double-breasted waistcoat, and close-fitting breeches secured with buttons above the outer knee, white silk stockings, and black low-heeled buckled shoes (Fig. 9). The neutral color and plainness of his suit sets off the whiteness of his equally plain white linen shirt and cravat, tied in a bow. Ribeiro notes that “Oxford Street in London was famous for its shops selling a wide range of cottons and linens, and was particularly admired by foreign visitors in the 1780s” (Art of Dress 48). Set at an angle on Boothby’s unpowdered hair is a hat with a circular brim and a round crown known as a “wide-awake”; by the 1780s, this style “largely replaced the cocked three-corner hat which became the preserve of the conservative and the old-fashioned” (Ribeiro/Art of Dress 49).

At the other end of the spectrum, the Comte de Provence, seated on a gilded chair upholstered in red damask, wears a richly embroidered habit à la française with coat and breeches of pale blue silk glittering with gold spangles and a coordinating white silk waistcoat, covered in embroidery (Fig. 10). A former page to Louis XVI described the king’s formal dress of the 1780s that closely corresponds to Provence’s suit:

“on Sundays and ceremonial occasions his suits were of very beautiful materials, embroidered in silks and paillettes. Often, as was the fashion then, the velvet coat was entirely covered with little spangles, which made it very dazzling.” (quoted in Waugh/Men 107)

The late-eighteen-century formal suit was distinguished from the frock not only by its rich materials, but by its standing collar that emerged in the 1760s and grew in height through the end of the century, single-breasted closure, and the inverted-V shape of the single-breasted waistcoat skirts. While the placement of the embroidery on Provence’s coat along the center front edges, cuffs and pocket flaps is consistent with that seen in earlier decades, the delicate floral sprays and bowknot motifs are typical of the last quarter of the century and reflect an overall change in aesthetic from the heavier, lush ornamentation that previously characterized this type of decoration (Fig. 11). Throughout the century, clients purchased uncut panels embroidered with all the pieces of the suit that were subsequently made up by a tailor for the individual wearer (Fig. 12).

For the more skeptical Paris-dweller, Sebastien Mercier, this “Pandora’s Box,” characterized by sensory overload, was filled with seductive attractions that could lead to ruin (Mercier 205). Declaring it “unique; nothing in London, Amsterdam, Vienna, Madrid can compare with it. A man might be imprisoned within its precincts for a year or two and never miss his liberty…,” he also warned of the “vices [that] hold sway there” and the venality of the “prostitutes [and] the stock-exchange dealers [who] meet here three times a day; money is their one topic, and the prostitution of the State…” (Mercier 202, 205).

Although “prices [were] triple, quadruple the prices anywhere else,” the Palais-Royal was never without those who came and paid, “especially the foreigners [like Villiers], who love having everything the heart of man can desire assembled in one place, under one roof, for their pleasure” (Mercier 206).

On July 12, 1789, as the political situation in France (and Paris, especially) became more unstable, Camille Desmoulins, a young lawyer from Picardy, made an impassioned speech to the crowd gathered in the gardens of the Palais Royal, exhorting his fellow citizens to take up arms. Two days later, the Bastille, the hated symbol of absolute monarchy and tyranny, was stormed by an angry mob and, over the next several months, completely destroyed.

CHILDREN’S WEAR

(BY SUMMER LEE)

The Baillie Family, circa 1784, depicts James Baillie with his wife and four children (Fig. 4). Baillie’s wife holds a baby wearing a long gown, which extends well past the baby’s feet. The young boy wears a dark blue skeleton suit with a white collar, which is extremely similar to the one worn in The Oddie Children, circa 1789 (Fig. 5). However, one notable exception is the pink sash tied around his waist. The younger Baillie girl wears a white gown with a blue waist sash, and lifts her skirt to reveal a dark blue underslip. Her ensemble is not unlike those worn by the Oddie girls. The older Baillie daughter wears a more mature style of gown, yet she wears a pervasively fashionable waist sash like her younger siblings.

REFERENCES:

• Buck, Anne. Dress in Eighteenth-Century England. London: B. T. Batsford, 1979. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1148934170
• Blum, Stella, ed. Eighteenth-Century French Fashion Plates in Full Color, 64 Engravings from the “Galerie des Modes, 1778-1787.”  New York: Dover, 1982. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1099092948
• Brédif, Josette. Classic Printed Textiles from France, 1760-1843: Toiles de Jouy. London: Thames and Hudson, 1989. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/851978139
• Callahan, Colleen R. “Children’s Clothing.” In The Berg Companion to Fashion, edited by Valerie Steele. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. Accessed August 08, 2020. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1223089692 
• “Childhood.” In European Renaissance and Reformation, 1350-1600, edited by Norman J. Wilson, 319-321. Vol. 1 of World Eras. Detroit, MI: Gale, 2001. Gale eBooks (accessed August 7, 2020). https://libproxy.fitsuny.edu:2653/apps/doc/CX3034600137/GVRL?u=fitsuny&sid=GVRL&xid=480f4328.
• Chrisman-Campbell, Kimberly. Fashion Victims: Dress at the Court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2015. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/909036350
• Cullen, Oriole. “Eighteenth-Century European Dress.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eudr/hd_eudr.htm
• Cunnington, C. Willett. Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century. London: Faber, 1972. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/397113
• _______, and Phillis Cunnington. The History of Underclothes. New York: Dover Publications, 1992. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/868279842
• “Introduction to 18th-Century Fashion.” Victoria & Albert Museum. Accessed September 16, 2016. http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/i/introduction-to-18th-century-fashion/
• James-Sarazin, Ariane, and Régis Lapasin, Gazette des Atours de Marie-Antoinette:  Garde-robe des atours de la reine: Gazette pour l’année 1782. Réunion des musées nationaux – Archives nationales, 2006. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/738549606
• Jones, Jennifer. Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2004. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1201426327
• Le Coton et la Mode: 1000 ans d’aventures: 10 novembre 2000-11 mars 2001, Musée Galliera, musée de la mode de la Ville de Paris. Paris: Somogy éditions d’art, 2000. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/698138631
• Magasins des Modes Nouvelles francaises et anglaises. https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10461536s/f7.item
• Magidson, Phyllis. “Fashion.” In Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, edited by Paula S. Fass, 344-348. Vol. 2. New York, NY: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Gale eBooks (accessed August 7, 2020). https://libproxy.fitsuny.edu:2653/apps/doc/CX3402800166/GVRL?u=fitsuny&sid=GVRL&xid=0084684d. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/961280814
• Nunn, Joan. Fashion in Costume 1200-2000. Bridgewater, NJ: Distributed by Paw Prints/Baker & Taylor, 2008. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/232125801
• Paoletti, Jo Barraclough. “Children and Adolescents in the United States.” In Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion: The United States and Canada, edited by Phyllis G. Tortora, 208–219. Oxford: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. Accessed August 28, 2020. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/744701921
• Popkin, Jeremy D., ed. Panorama of Paris. Selections from Le Tableau de Paris by Louis Sebastien Mercier, based on the translation by Helen Simpson. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1101345838
• Pratt, Lucy, and Linda Woolley. Shoes. London: V & A Publications, 1999. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/880102437
• Reinier, Jacqueline S. “Breeching.” In Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood: In History and Society, edited by Paula S. Fass, 118. Vol. 1. New York, NY: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. Gale eBooks (accessed August 7, 2020).  http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/961280814
• Ribeiro, Aileen. The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France from 1750 to 1820.  New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/263551344
• _______. Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe. New Haven and London:  Yale University Press, 2002. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/988795293
• Rothstein, Natalie. A Lady of Fashion: Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics. New York: Thames and Hudson, 1987. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/748992365
• _______. Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century in the Collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Boston: Little, Brown, 1990. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/438246692
• Waugh, Norah.  The Cut of Men’s Clothes. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1964. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/927414537
• _______. The Cut of Women’s Clothes, 1600-1930. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1968. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1074444804
• Weber, Caroline. Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution. New York: Picador/Henry Holt and Company, 2006. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1028433074
• Wroth, William Warwick. The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century. London & New York: Macmillan, 1896. http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/975991037

Secondary Sources

Also see the 18th-century overview page for more research sources… or browse our Zotero library.