Tag: Frock Coat

1747 – Arthur Devis, Mr. and Mrs. Bull

Arthur Devis’s 1747 portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Bull seems to depict a quite fashionable couple in the year of their marriage in what we presume to be their home. But closer analysis reveals that much of the work is likely a fiction, though the clothes they’re sporting–whether their own or imagined–remain fashionable.

frock coat

The frock coat is a collared man’s coat worn through the eighteenth to the twentieth century. It rose to prominence mainly in the nineteenth century, especially Victorian England. It is characterized as a knee-length overcoat, buttoned down to the waist, that drapes over the lower half of the body like a skirt.

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