Throughout the eighteenth century, fashion responded to political and topical events and, in France, this was widely evident in women’s dress during the Revolution. In September 1789, just two months after the fall of the Bastille, the editor of the Magasin des Modes nouvelles (that would become the Journal de la Mode et du Goût in 1790) wryly observed that, “there can be no doubt that a revolution like the one in France must offer the capital city the inspiration for several new fashions” (quoted in Jones 188). A new bonnet illustrated in the September 21 issue celebrated the union of the three estates (the clergy, the nobility, and the people) (Fig. 5). The tall white gauze “Bonnet aux trois ordres” with a large national tricolor cockade at the side is “embroidered with olive branches in green silk, and trimmed with a band of white taffeta on which are embroidered a cross, a sword, and a spade” (Ribeiro 56). The Marquis de Lafayette is credited with the creation of “this new symbol of national pride” that combined Bourbon white with red and blue, the colors of the city of Paris (Shilliam 109). In November, the publication illustrated a patriotic red, white, and blue striped satin caraco (with its newly stylish narrow peplum at the back) and skirt inspired by the national ribbons that men wore in their buttonholes and that were used to make cockades (Ribeiro 54) (Figs. 6-8). The same plate also depicts shoe buckles in the shape of the towers of the Bastille that was slowly being dismantled.

Although working-class women (like working-class men) were unenfranchised, they were nonetheless active agents in the struggle for political change throughout the Revolution and demonstrated their dedication to the cause by participating in popular uprisings and other forms of protest, attending governmental sessions, and forming clubs (Fig. 12). The most well-known and radical of these was the Society of Revolutionary Republican Women that agitated for the “right to wear a bonnet rouge,” the most potent symbol of the Revolution generally worn by working-class men (Shilliam 123). More moderate women including “market workers, religious women, and…some servants and seamstresses” who had benefited from aristocratic patronage prior to the Revolution vocally opposed this tactic, and the frequent street disturbances between these two groups prompted the National Convention to outlaw all “women’s societies and popular clubs” on October 30, 1793 (Shilliam 123; Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson 213). In its decree, the Convention posed the questions of whether women could “exercise political rights and take an active part in the affairs of the government? Can they deliberate together in political associations of popular societies?” Regarding both of these issues, “the Committee decided in the negative” (quoted in Levy, Applewhite, and Johnson 214).

David’s 1795 portrait of Madame Emilie Sériziat and her son (Fig. 13) illustrates the fashionable female silhouette at the beginning of the Directory (1795-99) following the downfall of Maximilien de Robespierre in June 1794 as well as the changes in the white cotton chemise dress from its introduction in the early 1780s. Rather than the fullness of that decade, Madame Sériziat’s more close-fitting dress has a wide rounded drawstring neckline and gathered bodice, slightly raised waistline accented with a green silk sash, long sleeves buttoned at the wrist, and a softly gathered skirt. The dress has a bib-like opening that fastens at the top of the shoulders and she has tucked a plain white fichu into the front of the bodice. Over her shift (also known as a “chemise” in French), she may be wearing one of the new unboned, high-waisted cotton corsets, although it is possible that the linen bodice lining (seen in many surviving dresses) serves as a bust support (Figs. 14, 15). She also wears a lace-edged cap and a straw hat decorated with a wide silk ribbon and bows matching her sash, tied under her chin with blue ribbons, and her unpowdered, simply styled curly hair reaches her shoulders. Just visible behind the bow on the left side of the hat is the tricolor cockade that was obligatory for women from September 21, 1793 and was still required during the Directory (Ribeiro 77). Since the 1760s, children of both sexes were dressed in short-sleeved white cotton gowns (rather than as miniature versions of their parents) and by the end of the century, portraits and fashion plates show the close similarity between garments worn by adult women and their offspring.

Although English women had been aware of—and often followed—French trends throughout the eighteenth century, this communication was interrupted by the wars between England and France that began in 1793 and, with only a brief cessation of hostilities during the Peace of Amiens in 1802-1803, continued until 1815 when Napoleon was finally defeated at Waterloo. A year after the Journal de la Mode et du Goût ceased publication, Nicolaus Heideloff introduced his high-end fashion magazine, The Gallery of Fashion (1794-1803). Born in Stuttgart, Heideloff lived in Paris during the early years of his career and, at the outbreak of the French Revolution, he went to London where he spent the next three decades (Metropolitan Museum of Art). While women’s dress in England showed the same shift towards one-piece gowns with high waists in the 1790s, the overall silhouette was considerably fuller than in France. The large-format plates of The Gallery of Fashion illustrate the differences—especially evident at the end of the century—between the rounder shape with more coverage preferred by English women than the revealing dresses of their French counterparts (Figs. 16-18).

“Emma Hamilton: Seduction and Celebrity,” an exhibition held at the National Maritime Museum, London (2016-2017), explored the complicated and compelling personality of this historical figure with the goal of: “recover[ing] a life of multivalent importance and periodic brilliance… [t]hat merits analysis, not only in its own right, but as a window on the opportunities and restrictions surrounding female achievement in late-eighteenth century European society,” (Colville 9, 11).

As curator Quintin Colville asserts, Emma Hamilton’s affair with the celebrated victor of the Battle of the Nile have often defined her and many histories have presented her “principally as a temptress who captured the affections of Britain’s greatest naval hero” and besmirched “the reputation of a man of such unarguable eminence” (Colville 9). Although she was keenly aware of the impact that her beauty had on those around her—especially powerful men—and was “conscious that it acted as her passport,” Emma was not motivated by pure vanity in her social advancement, a charge of which she was frequently accused (Colville 24). And, despite the many ways in which her life was circumscribed by contemporary societal expectations for women (to which she did not necessarily adhere), she “had significant agency and serious intent” (Colville 25).

Emma Hamilton’s life was characterized by a series of performances—as a model for leading artists (principally Romney but others including Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun),  and, most notably, in her Attitudes that she enacted between about 1786 and 1800 and that brought her widespread acclaim and notoriety (Fig. 4). At the age of 16, Emma Hart (née Amy Lyon), a single mother, became the mistress of Charles Greville, the nephew of Sir William Hamilton, who brought her to Romney’s London studio for the first time in 1782. This young woman who was eager for self-improvement—and willingly submitted to Greville’s tutelage to educate her in the ways and manners of polite society—took advantage of this opportunity: “transforming what could have been a brief engagement into long-standing collaboration and multifaceted artistic education,” (Colville 25).

Romney, for his part, was immediately drawn to Emma’s gift for emotional expression and ability to assume theatrical poses that she had learned during a brief stint on the London stage. Over a period of nine years, he would produce over seventy paintings of his “Divine Emma” that range from “society portraits, ‘in character’ representations, rapid ‘unfinished’ sketches… and her portrait incorporated into the subject of history paintings” (Riding 68) (Figs. 5-8). According to curator Christine Riding, “Romney encouraged and nurtured Emma’s talents—which she was to use to such dramatic effect with her famous Attitudes” (Riding 67-68). In his Life of George Romney (1809), the artist’s friend and biographer William Hayley described Emma’s facility for acting:

“Her features, like the language of Shakespeare, could exhibit all the feelings of nature and the gradation of every passion with a most fascinating felicity of expression,” (Riding 63).

Another contemporary, described her as “all Nature, yet all Art” (Seduction and Celebrity 137).

Further, although Emma was “was known primarily for her visual image” by the mid-1780s, the Attitudes allowed her to exploit the “aura of her ‘real’ presence, forging a connection or ‘touch’ with the viewer” (Russell 146).

On his visit to Naples in 1787, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe saw Emma perform her Attitudes and his description indicates that she had, by then, already developed the elements of these highly individualized presentations. According to Goethe, Sir William:

“has had a Greek costume made for her [Emma] which becomes her extremely. Dressed in this, she lets down her hair and, with a few shawls, gives so much variety to her poses, gestures, expressions, etc. that the spectator can barely believe his eyes. He sees what thousands of artists would have liked to express realized before him in movements and surprising transformations—standing, kneeling, sitting, reclining, serious, sad, playful, ecstatic, contrite, alluring, threatening, anxious, one pose follows another without a break,” (Russell 147).

Others who saw Emma’s Attitudes were similarly impressed by her emotionally charged evocations of classical and historical figures:

“spectators repeatedly distinguished between the identity of the performer and the success or beauty of the performance,” (Bolton 145).

The Comtesse de Boigne, who, as a child in 1792, had participated in the Attitudes, later acknowledged Emma’s dramatic abilities but summarily dismissed the woman herself:

“She brought the statues of antiquity to life and without servile copying, recalled them to the poetic imaginations of the Italians by a sort of improvisation in action.  Others have sought to imitate the talent of Lady Hamilton; I don’t believe any have succeeded… Outside this instinct for the arts, nothing was more vulgar and common than Lady Hamilton. After she had shed the antique costume to wear ordinary clothes, she lost all distinction,” (Bolton 145).

Not withstanding their disdain for Emma Hamilton’s “vulgarity,” her Attitudes, performed for private audiences at Sir William’s residence, became a draw for foreigners on the Grand Tour and other elite visitors to Naples (Russell 155).

In 1794, the German artist Friedrich Rehlberg published Drawings Faithfully Copied from Nature at Naples that featured twelve of Lady Hamilton’s much larger repertoire of Attitudes, including a Sibyl, the Muse of Dance, Niobe, and Mary Magdalene (Figs. 10, 11). Three years later, an English translation was published in London under the title Lady Hamilton’s Attitudes, an event excitedly reported in The Morning Post: “Lady Hamilton’s attitudes are at last made public” (quoted in Russell 154). Rehlberg’s drawings illustrate the importance of shawls and Emma’s skillful deployment of them. Although Indian shawls would become the rage as fashion accessories by the mid-to-late 1790s, Emma incorporated them as props from 1787, as Goethe attested:

“She knows how to arrange the folds of her veil to match each mood, and has a hundred ways of turning it into a headdress… [A]s a performance, it’s like nothing you ever saw before in your life,” (Bolton 143).

In 1800, the last year that Emma would perform her Attitudes, the Irish writer Melisina Trench highlighted Emma’s use of “several Indian shawls” in enacting different roles and personae:

“She disposes the shawls so as to form Grecian, Turkish, and other drapery, as well as a variety of turbans. Her arrangement of the turbans is absolute sleight-of-hand, and she does it so quickly, so easily, and so well,” (Russell 147).

Lady Hamilton and Horatio Nelson met briefly in Naples in 1793, but their romantic attachment began in 1798, when Nelson returned to the city following his resounding defeat of the French navy at the Battle of the Nile. By the following year, the affair between Sir William’s beautiful wife and the adulated (and married) Nelson was common knowledge and even tolerated by Emma’s husband. When the three returned to England in 1800, Emma was pregnant with Nelson’s child and their daughter Horatia was born in January 1801 (Figs. 12, 13). Although Nelson’s reputation among the British populace remained untainted by his relationship with Emma, she came under relentless attack and the flattering Romney portraits were superseded by caricatures that critiqued her physical appearance, her morality, and her ulterior motives as Nelson’s love interest (Fig. 14).

Following Sir William’s death in 1803, Emma’s financial situation became precarious and when Nelson, her last protector, was killed at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, it declined further. Without the intervention of these influential men who could shield her from public disgrace, Emma was increasingly ostracized by London society. Destitute, Lady Hamilton died in Calais on January 15, 1815, attended by fourteen-year-old Horatia.  Although Emma has often been judged harshly by successive generations since the early nineteenth century, her biographer Kate Williams asserts that:

“[Emma’s] early self-representations retained their impact: the Attitudes, the poses, the allure—and, most of all, the sheer power of her skillfully variable self-creation.” (247) 

Like women’s dress, men’s daywear fashions of the early 1790s were similar to those of the preceding decade. Three-piece suits comprising single- or double-breasted coats with standing or turned-down collars (the latter known as a frock, or fraque) fitted closely to the body with long tight sleeves and cutaway fronts, single- or double-breasted waistcoats cut straight across, and slim breeches were in vogue. In addition to solid-colored often dark wools, striped silks were popular for men as well as women (Figs. 1, 2).

In France, after July 1789, the Magasin des Modes nouvelles also discussed the impact of the political upheaval on men’s dress. Although the forms of their suits remained the same, colors took on new meanings, as was the case with women’s clothing. A striped tricolor cotton coat in the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (Fig. 3) was presumably worn by a firm supporter of the Revolution, and the national cockade that appeared on women’s headwear was also worn by men. In October 1789, the Magasin des Modes nouvelles insisted that “The national cockade… is worn, or should be, by absolutely all the men of the capital who can be called to bear arms”—that is, those who were eligible to join the National Guard (Fig. 4 / quoted in Chrisman-Campbell 273). The cockade was obligatory for all men following a decree of July 5, 1792 (Hunt 59). A plate from April 1790 (Fig. 5) shows a “demi-converti” (half-converted) in a red coat, black waistcoat, breeches, stockings, hat and buckled shoes. This young no longer titled aristocrat is beginning to accustom himself to the new constitution, although he is not fully in favor of the current changes (Ribeiro 54). The text accompanying the plate also describes his ensemble as “half-mourning,” referring to the aristocrats who lamented “the diminished powers of the monarchy and [signaled] their willingness to die for the royal cause” (Ribeiro 53-54).

Waistcoats that were increasingly the focal point of the suit when worn with solid-colored coat and breeches also demonstrated political sympathies. A rare surviving example “with revolutionary symbolism must have belonged to a noble convert to the cause [who] declared his allegiance to the Revolution—whether real or feigned” (Fig. 6 / Chrisman-Campbell 275). The waistcoat is embroidered in petit point with an all-over tricolor diamond pattern and trimmed with bands of black-and-white plush on the center front edges and around the hem. Two embroidered inscriptions on the pockets proclaim L’Habit ne fait pas le moine (‘The habit does not make the monk”) and Honi soit qui mal y pense (medieval French for “Shame on him who thinks evil of it” and the motto of the English chivalric Order of the Garter) (Chrisman-Campbell 277). As dress historian Kimberly Chrisman-Campbell notes, rather than the implied “don’t judge a book by its cover” conveyed by the first message, “the wearer is clearly issuing an invitation to do just that” (Chrisman-Campbell 277). The second saying suggests an affinity not only with English masculine styles that had been influential since the 1770s, but also with “a larger ideological movement” (Chrisman-Campbell 278). The caterpillar (Fig. 7 / to be “en chenille” indicated casual dress), the butterfly and scissors (suggesting the sacrifice of finery), the word “charmant” that is embroidered twice around the collar, and the green silk lining (green was the color of the Comte d’Artois, Louis XVI’s younger brother) all complicate our interpretation of the wearer’s political sympathies (Chrisman-Campbell 278). The possibility for clothing to mask a citizen’s true allegiances—to the Revolution or the monarchy—was a constant source of unease, discussion, and even physical confrontation among revolutionary leaders and the populace.

The politically correct simplicity of male dress during the Revolution is evident in Jean-Louis Laneuville’s 1793-94 portrait of Bertrand Barère de Vieuzac (Fig. 8), a member of the National Convention and the Committee of Public Safety that ruled France during the Terror, and exemplifies the revolutionaries’ belief that “dress revealed something about the person” (Hunt 82). His tailcoat with a high turned-down collar and wide lapels, double-breasted waistcoat with lapels, and fall-front breeches are all made of solid-colored wools; his white linen shirt has a fashionably high collar with its top edges just visible over his checked cotton cravat and a plain frill; and his hair is unpowdered. The folded papers under his right hand refer to the trial and sentencing of “Louis Capet” (a dismissive reference to the king’s dynastic lineage) that took place in January 1793. As art historian Amy Freund notes, Laneuville’s portrait of Barère is typical of the artist’s style during the Revolutionary years and “the illusion of immediacy and transparency fostered by these visual strategies suited Revolutionary notions of the politically engaged self” (Freund 332).

Although freedom of dress was declared a right by the National Convention on October 29, 1793, the question of clothing and the potential for its subversion continued to plague Revolutionary leaders, and even towards the end of the Directory, in 1798, the ruling government considered “the possibility of punishing those who did not wear the national cockade” (Hunt 81). Between 1789 and 1794 when outward signs—especially clothing—became invested with political significance, “dress was… politically transparent” (Hunt 82). This preoccupation led the Committee of Public Safety to commission designs for both civil and official clothing from the leading artist, Jacques-Louis David (Fig. 14) in May 1794 (shortly before Robespierre was removed from power and guillotined). His revolutionary credentials (deputy, member of the Jacobin Club, friend of Robespierre, and regicide) as well as his strong interest in clothing manifested in his work for the theatre and the festivals made him the perfect choice to remake the character of the French people through a national costume that would be “more appropriate to republican and revolutionary character” (Figs. 15, 16 / Hunt 75-76). David’s designs for civil clothing drew on classical antiquity, more recent historical periods, and theatrical costume (Hunt 76). As Lynn Hunt stresses, David’s designs deliberately avoided sans-culottes dress: “The leveling, if it was to take place, was to take place upward and not downward” and officials’ clothing should identify them as distinct from the general population (76-77). As she also notes, David’s project to re-dress his fellow citoyens involved:

“two contradictory principles… On the one hand, the deputies of representatives of the people were supposed to be… just like them, because part of them… On the other hand, the representatives were obviously other, different, not like the people exactly because they were the teachers, the governors, the guides of the people.” (Hunt 77)

After the downfall of Robespierre, the issue of civilian dress disappeared, but that of official costume still concerned legislators and, in November 1797, the government of the Directory agreed on a costume that was to be worn by all deputies comprising “a ‘French’ coat of ‘national blue,’ a tricolor belt, a scarlet cloak à la grecque, and a velvet hat with tricolor aigrette” (Hunt 77, 79). When this uniform was finally adopted in February 1798, the response was unenthusiastic. The editor of the Moniteur found that “this great quantity of red clothing fatigues the eyes extremely; yet it must be admitted that this costume has in it something beautiful, imposing and truly senatorial” (quoted in Hunt 80). Bouquerot de Voligny (Fig. 17), a member of the Council of Ancients (one of the governing bodies of the Directory), proudly sat for his portrait in the full splendor of this decidedly distinctive official costume with its “quite noble and picturesque” elements as well as its “theatrical air” that were remarked on by a foreign visitor to Paris (Fig. 18 / quoted in Hunt 80).

A well-known print by Alexis Chataignier dating to about 1797 sums up the swift changes that occurred in French society and dress at the end of the eighteenth century (Fig. 1). On the right, an Ancien régime couple in elaborate court attire of silks, embroidery, lace, powdered hair and wig, corset, hoop, buckled shoes, sword and fan (the quintessential accessories of former male and female elegance), recoil in horror from the (clearly) younger couple they have just encountered, exclaiming “Oh! Quelle folie que la nouveauté…” (Oh! What folly is novelty). For their part, the Incroyable and Merveilleuse are highly amused by the outdated modes of the “antiquated” man and woman on the other side of the Revolutionary divide whom the Merveilleuse scrutinizes with her spy glass. The no-less-exaggerated garb of these fashionistas of the Directory include (on him) a square-cut coat with even skirts and wide lapels, chin-covering cravat, long tight breeches fastened with ties rather than buckles, a walking stick, flat pointed shoes, shoulder-length unpowdered curls, and a bicorn hat, and (on her) a high-waisted trained gown with shocking elbow-baring sleeves, equally flat pointed shoes with ribbon ties (Fig. 2), and no sign of understructure.

The dress of the Incroyables (Fig. 3) “can be seen as one those manifestations of masculine defiance against… sartorial uniformity;” however, its association with royalist sympathies meant that it was also a political signifier during the still-fraught years of the Directory, when revolutionaries and monarchists vied for political control that sometimes erupted into street violence (Ribeiro 122). In her memoirs, the Marquise de Créquy recalled the “almost impossible to describe” Incroyables:

“with their square-cut coats and their hounds’ ears locks of hair. Just imagine—they wore medallions, lorgnettes, chains, ear-rings, cameos, and had their cadenenttes [the hair looped up at the back] caught up with a comb. They had the most ridiculous stockings you have ever seen, for they were striped across so as to make large coloured rings round their legs. They also surrounded their necks with an extraordinary style of cravat.” (Fig. 4 / quoted in Waugh/Men 109-110)

The ever-more-revealing chemise reflected the increasing influence of classical antiquity in the last years of the eighteenth century. Jean Baptiste François Désoria’s 1797 portrait of Constance Pipelet (Fig. 9) and Jacques-Louis David’s 1799 depiction of Henriette de Verninac (née Delacroix / Fig. 10) illustrate the changes in this gown that had occurred in the few years since David painted Madame Sériziat (Fig. 13 in womenswear). Seated on an appropriately classicizing chair, Pipelet’s unadorned white cotton chemise has a rounded drawstring neckline, softly gathered bodice and skirt, waistline placed directly under the bust, and short tight sleeves, like the merveilleuse in Chataignier’s print (Fig. 1). Her short, tousled curls à la Titus are tied with a narrow red silk ribbon (Ribeiro 127). Madame de Verninac, also seated on an antique-inspired chair, wears a sleeveless chemise that exposes more of her chest and her full arms. Her sole ne plus ultra accessory that was requisite for a woman of fashion and communicated her wealth is an expensive mustard-colored Indian shawl with narrow palmette borders (Fig. 11). Introduced into England in the 1780s by men who had traveled to India, these finely woven cashmere shawls were brought back to France by soldiers who had participated Napoleon’s Egyptian campaign from 1798 to 1799.

In 1798, the Journal des Dames et des Modes (1797-1839) that would become the most influential French fashion periodical of the early nineteenth century illustrated a sleeveless dress, dubbed “à la prêtresse” worn with knitted silk sleeves. The text accompanying a 1798 plate in the Tableau Général du Goût shows a sleeveless chemise with knitted “flesh-colored” sleeves that were reportedly relegated to theatre corridors (Fig. 12); the few women who preferred knitted sleeves to “nudity” wore white ones. Josephine du Pont who emigrated to the United States with her husband Victor Marie du Pont in 1795 was back in France in 1798, from where she wrote to Margaret Manigault, her friend in Charleston, often describing the latest fashions in detail. In Paris in December, she reported that “The women who do not leave their arms bare resort to silk sleeves held in place by very small fichus [bands]” (quoted in Low 46). She also commented on the body-revealing aspect of chemises and the ideal physique needed to appear alluring:

“Rounded figures are required; the women eat heavily to fatten themselves. You can imagine how attractive one must be to stand a dress without a single bit of lace around it, although one can keep from looking indecent by the way it is made.” (quoted in Low 46)

Many caricatures from the turn of the nineteenth century satirize not only the sheerness of muslin gowns but less-than-suitable female bodies that are excessively thin or fat.

Leading into the eighteenth century, new philosophies emerging from the Age of Enlightenment were changing attitudes about childhood (Nunn 98). For example, in his 1693 publication, Some Thoughts Concerning Education, John Locke challenged long-held beliefs about best practices for child-rearing. A slightly later child development theorist was Jean Jacques Rousseau. Locke and Rousseau both put forward general principles about children’s dress. However, it was not until the 1760s that their ideas were clearly reflected in children’s wear (Paoletti).

Locke and Rousseau advocated that young children receive more regular hygiene. They also believed that dressing children in many layers of heavy fabrics was bad for their health. For those reasons, linen and cotton fabrics were preferred for babies and very young children because they were lightweight and easily washable (Paoletti).

Although the tradition was in decline, some infants may have been swaddled. Swaddling was a very long-held European tradition where an infant’s limbs are immobilized in tight cloth wrappings (Callahan). The practice was losing popularity due to the opposition of Locke and Rousseau (Paoletti).

Babies were then dressed in “slips” or “long clothes” until they began to crawl (Fig. 1) (Callahan). These were ensembles with very long, full skirts that extended beyond the feet (Nunn 99). Babies also sometimes wore tight-fitting caps on their heads.

Once a child was becoming mobile, they transitioned into “short clothes” (Callahan). Unlike long clothes, these ensembles ended at the ankles, allowing for greater freedom of movement (Callahan). Short gowns had back-opening bodices and sometimes “leading strings” attached at the back or tied under the arms (Magidson). Leading strings were streamers of fabric used to protect young children from falling or wandering off (“Childhood”).

The prevailing fashion for short clothes in the 1790s had emerged in the 1760s: a white frock worn with a colored sash around the waist (Fig. 2). This style was worn by very young children of both sexes. The most common sash colors were pink and blue, although they were not used to indicate gender. A  colored underslip may have also been worn, which would show through the translucent white top material (Paoletti). While this style originated with very small children, it quickly became more pervasive: in the 1790s, a very similar style was worn by girls even into their teens. Some portraiture from the later years of the 1790s show young children in a high-waisted white frock dress with no colored sash (see Fig. 3). This style would become the reigning fashion for childrenswear — and womenswear — in the early nineteenth century (Callahan).

A significant development in fashion for young boys occurred in the 1780s. Previously, young boys wore skirted gowns until they were “breeched” by age seven, and then wore adult menswear styles (Reinier). However, boys now wore a transitional type of ensemble for young boys called a “skeleton suit” from approximately ages three to seven (Fig. 2) (Callahan). Skeleton suits “consisted of ankle-length trousers buttoned onto a short jacket worn over a shirt with a wide collar edged in ruffles” (Callahan). Older boys would then wear ensembles resembling adult menswear, although the fit was typically looser and more relaxed (Fig. 4).

An American group portrait titled The Cheney Family, circa 1795, is an excellent visual resource for 1790s children’s wear (Fig. 5). The youngest children wear long gowns and short gowns. A young boy wears a skeleton suit while an older boy wears a relaxed variation of a menswear suit. Three girls stand in order of height, each wearing a white frock gown with a pink waist sash.