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| Courtesy Library of Congress. |
Traditionally, English fashion followed Parisian modes. The
French Revolution (1789) overturned fashion as well as society and ladies abandoned
the courtly styles of the ancien regime.
They adopted a simple ‘Grecian’ or ‘classical’ look with bare arms, and gowns
as straight as a wax candle.
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| Lady's Monthly Museum, Dec 1798. |
La Belle Assemblée
(September 1807) recalled this startling change, led by the daring Mme Tallien
of Paris: ‘Nakedness, absolute nakedness, and nothing but nakedness, was
therefore seen at the play-houses, at the opera, at the concerts, routs, and in
public walks as well as in private assemblies. When one lady left off a fichue
[a piece of linen pinned or tied across the bodice], another laid aside a
petticoat. When one uncovered her arms,
another exposed her legs or thighs. Had
the progress of stripping continued a little longer...French ladies would in
some months have reduced themselves to be admired, envied, or blamed, as the
Eves of the eighteenth century’. Mme Tallien’s rival, Mme de Beauharnois, wore
‘flesh coloured satin pantaloons, leaving off all petticoats’ under a ‘clear
muslin gown’.
White muslin gowns were a fashion staple: the
elegant Miss Tilney in Austen’s Northanger
Abbey ‘always wears white’.Dresses with trains were worn for morning and full dress: heroine Catherine Morland and her friend
Isabella ‘pinned up each other’s trains for the dance’. However, a few years later
trains fell out of favour even for full dress as gowns became shorter.
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| Courtesy Library of Congress. Note the short gowns. |
The train’s disappearance had an unfortunate side-effect because of the diaphanous gowns in fashion. One's bottom was practically on show, so fundamentally modest ladies wore an ‘invisible petticoat’ to
hide their nether regions. This was a band
of very finely knitted material, tightly fitted so that it did not slip down,
but it made walking difficult. Luckily by the winter of 1807 trains trimmed
with broad lace reappeared for evening dress, although petticoats were now so
short that ladies' ankles could be seen by admiring gentlemen.
