129, 130 The full-bottomed wig of Lord Mohun, c. 1710 (LEFT), has become in a generation the formalized wig of Martin Folkes, c. 1740 (RIGHT).
The essential lines of eighteenth-century costume were, as we have noted in the previous chapter, already laid down in the last twenty years of the seventeenth. The enormous prestige of the Court of Versailles had already resulted, all over Europe, in a willingness to accept, in matters of fashion as in much else, the dominance of France. Henceforward fashionable clothes meant, for the upper classes at least, French clothes.
Versailles, however, was no longer the court of a young king, avid for pleasure, but of an ageing monarch whose thoughts were turning to piety. Madame de la Vallière and Madame de Montespan had been replaced by the dévote Madame de Maintenon, and this change was reflected even in the courtiers’ clothes. So far as materials were concerned, they were rich and splendid enough, but the easy, flowing lines of the earlier modes had given place to a new ideal of propriety and tenue. The general effect was of rigidity, dignity and seriousness. The new headdress for women – the fontange, which built up the hair into a peak crowned by a high cap – increased the apparent height and added to the vertical effect.
The same appearance of dignity was obtained by men, from 1680 onwards, by the perruque à crinière or full-bottomed wig.[129] We have already dealt with the first appearance, at the Court of Louis XIV and the Court of Charles II, of the wig worn, not to conceal the lack of natural hair, but as an essential item in the dress of every upper-class man. It began to be powdered in the early years of the eighteenth century, and this strange custom persisted until the French Revolution.
The full-bottomed wig was an extremely cumbrous affair, and very expensive. It formed a mass of curls framing the face and falling below the shoulders. Fops wore it even longer. Until about 1710 it was also very high above the forehead. At home it was often replaced by an embroidered cap, and literary men and philosophers are sometimes shown in contemporary portraits as bare-headed but with their hair cropped close.
It was quite impracticable for any active pursuit, and soldiers soon evolved what was known as the ‘campaign’ wig. This continued to have a mass of curls but arranged in three locks of hair, one at the back and one at each side of the face, the ends being turned up and tied in a knot. The ‘Ramillies wig’ (called after Marlborough’s victory over the French in 1706) was a further simplification. The hair was drawn back and tied in a long pigtail, generally with two bows of black ribbon, one at the top of the pigtail and a smaller one at the bottom.
On informal occasions men wore the bob wig, with the hair ending in a roll round the back of the neck. Clergymen and scholars affected a bob wig which was frizzed rather than curled. They also wore the ‘tye’ wig, with the hair drawn back into a queue tied with black ribbon. In the ‘bag’ wig this queue was enclosed in a square black bag or pouch, made of silk. The wig itself was sometimes black, but in general it was covered with white or grey powder. It could be made of human hair (this, naturally, being the most expensive) or of goat’s hair, horsehair or vegetable fibres. Women, in general, did not wear wigs but powdered their own hair, sometimes added to by means of false curls worn at the back of the head.
129, 130 The full-bottomed wig of Lord Mohun, c. 1710 (LEFT), has become in a generation the formalized wig of Martin Folkes, c. 1740 (RIGHT).
131 The five orders of periwigs, William Hogarth, 1761.
The closing years of the reign of Louis XIV were marked by an increase, if that were possible, in stiffness and formality, but his death in 1715 opened a new era. As if in reaction against all that the Roi Soleil had stood for, women’s clothes became looser and with more flowing lines. A contemporary notes in the magazine La Bagatelle, 1718, that ‘at present comfort seems the only thing that the ladies of Paris care about when dressing’.[133] The new form of dress was called a ‘sack’ or ‘sacque’, a comfortable, rather shapeless garment, with small box pleats behind. When these were double or treble and descended from the neck, merging below the shoulders into the folds of the gown, they were known as the ‘sackback’. A more usual name is the ‘Watteau pleat’. Scholars have attacked the term as erroneous, but it is certainly true that nearly all the ladies in Watteau’s pictures are wearing it.
132 Mr and Mrs Andrews (detail), Thomas Gainsborough, c. 1748. The gentleman is in informal country attire but the lady is wearing the extremely wide paniers of the current mode.
133 Portrait of a Lady, workshop of Sir Godfrey Kneller (1646–1723).
A curious feature of the clothes of this period was the return of hoops. Instead of height women now seemed to aim at width, and the skirt was distended sideways, sometimes to as much as fifteen feet, by means of whalebone or rods of osier. Hence the word panier, the French for ‘basket’, which the underlying structure of the skirt somewhat resembled. The extreme width of women’s dresses at this period was the cause of some inconvenience, since it was impossible for two ladies to pass through a door side by side or even sit on the same couch. The fashion even had an effect on architecture, for example in the curved balusters of eighteenth-century staircases.
The classification of women’s dresses at this period is a matter of some difficulty. Modern scholars have suggested a general division into ‘open’ robes and ‘closed’ robes, while acknowledging that such terms were never used at the time. The closed robe was a dress consisting of a bodice and petticoat (sometimes forming one garment) with no opening in the front of the skirt. The more characteristic open robe had a gap in the front of the skirt, in the shape of an inverted V, which allowed the petticoat to be seen beneath. This petticoat was sometimes quilted and sometimes embroidered even more lavishly than the skirt itself.
There was a similar arrangement of the bodice, which had a gap in front filled in by means of a stomacher shaped like a shield and stiffened with pasteboard or busks. It was often heavily embroidered or decorated with a series of bows decreasing in size from top to bottom. The bodice was usually laced behind, and stiffened with whalebone.
The characteristic eighteenth-century sleeve ended just above or just below the elbow and was wide enough for the chemise-sleeve to emerge from it, with its ruffle of lace. Sometimes the ruffles were double or treble, the upper ones being slightly shorter so as to display the lace to better advantage. It was fashionable to match the lace on the ruffle with that on the cap and tucker.[137] The latter was the white, frilled edging to the bodice, originally part of the shift but often sewn on separately. The ‘modesty piece’ had a similar function, that of concealing the lower part of the décolletage. The handkerchief, sometimes called a ‘neckerchief’, was a large square of linen, muslin or silk, folded and draped round the neck. (In fact, both terms are etymologically absurd,since the word ‘kerchief’, couvre-chef, originally meant a covering for the head.) There was also a version known as the ‘half handkerchief’, for informal occasions.
For three-quarters of the eighteenth century there was no essential change in the male mode established in the middle years of the reign of Louis XIV. Male dress consisted of coat, waistcoat and breeches. The coat was close-fitting to the waist and then flared out in skirts of varying length. It had three vents, one at the back and one at each side, the last two being pleated. The coat was either collarless or was provided with a narrow, upright band. There was a row of buttons down the front of the coat, but most of these were left unfastened. The sleeves were of great importance, and it is often possible to date clothes by the gradual diminution in the size of the cuffs as the century progressed. At first they were extremely large, being turned back and buttoned either just below or just above the elbow. Beneath the cuff showed the ruffle of the shirt, the lace used matching the lace of the shirt front.
Beneath the coat was the waistcoat, of different material and sometimes heavily embroidered. After the middle of the century the embroidery spread to the coat itself. In the early years of the century the waistcoat was almost as long as the coat and, like it, was furnished with buttons all the way down. The lower buttons were never fastened. It was close-fitting to the waist and then flared out in skirts with unpleated vents, often stiffened with buckram. The back of the waistcoat was made of less expensive material.
134 Studies of three women, Jean-Antoine Watteau, c. 1716–17.
135 Costumes for a lady and her maid, from La Couturière, mid-eighteenth century.
136 Workroom of a dressmaker and diagrams to show the method of cutting, from the Encyclopédie Méthodique, 1748.
Knee-breeches were universally worn throughout the century. They were fairly loose and fitted over the hips without the need of either belt or braces. They were closed below the knee with three or four buttons, and at first the stockings were drawn over them. From about 1735, however, the breeches, closed with an ornamental buckle, were worn over the stockings.
Neckwear continued, without much variation, the tradition of the late seventeenth century, that is the cravat or the steinkirk described in the previous chapter; but from about 1740 younger men began to wear a stock, consisting of a piece of linen or cambric sometimes stiffened with pasteboard and buckled behind. Sometimes there was worn with it a black tie known as a ‘solitaire’. This was usually worn with the bag wig.
The three-cornered hat was almost universal throughout the century, although country people and scholars sometimes wore their hats uncocked. The usual practice was to turn up the brim and attach it to the low crown in such a way as to form a triangle. The brim was usually edged with braid, and a button or a jewel was sometimes fixed to the left cock. The appearance of the hat was naturally conditioned by the width of the brim. The so-called ‘Kevenhuller hat’ had a wide brim, and was fashionable in the 1740s. The same is true of the Dettingen hat (called after the Battle of Dettingen in 1743). It aimed at an effect of military swagger. The usual colour of hats was black, although Beau Nash, ‘King of Bath’, made himself deliberately conspicuous by wearing a white hat. The material was beaver, a cheaper variety being made of rabbit fur.
137 The Graham children, William Hogarth, 1742. There is hardly any distinction between children’s clothes and adult attire.
By the 1760s we can begin to discern the tentative beginnings of a new style. In essence the change consisted of a decreasing emphasis on the French ‘court’ style and an increasing adoption of English ‘country’ clothes. There was, in short, a trend towards practicality and simplicity. Coats were plain, had narrower cuffs and the skirts were sometimes cut away in front for ease on horseback. Even the universal three-cornered hat began to be replaced, at least for such pursuits as hunting, by a narrow-brimmed, high-crowned hat which served as a kind of primitive crash-helmet, and in which we can already see the outline of the top hat of the nineteenth century.
138 Thé à l’Anglaise chez la Princesse de Conti (detail), Michel-Barthélémy Ollivier, 1766.
139 Joseph Suss, anon., 1738.
140 Lady with straw hat, C. W. E. Dietrich, c. 1750.
141 Mob cap, 1780.
However, the ‘macaronis’ of the 1770s were a reaction against these developments. They wore very thin shoes with enormous buckles made of gold, silver, pinchbeck or steel and set with real or imitation stones. They affected very large buttons on their coats. Their hats were extremely small, but their wigs were dressed high on the head, prodigiously curled.
This was in line with the development of women’s hair-dressing at this period. The hair, having been dressed close to the head since the age of the fontange, began to rise in the 1760s, and we hear that ‘Lady Strathmore’s dress is the wonder of the town, her head a yard high and filled, or rather covered with feathers to an enormous size’ (Letters of the Hon. Mrs Osborn, 1767). This was probably an exaggeration in the 1760s, but became true in the 1770s. George Colman the Younger describes a contemporary headdress: ‘A towering toupee pulled up all but by the roots and strained over a cushion on the top of her head, formed the centre of the building; tiers of curls served for the wings; a hanging chignon behind defended her occiput like a buttress; and the whole fabric was kept tight and water proof by a quantity of long single and double black pins’ (Random Records, 1770).
The ‘double pins’ mentioned were what we would call hair-pins, which came into use just about this time. The ‘cushion’ was a pad stuffed with tow, wool or horsehair, and because it induced headaches, it was later replaced by a wire frame over which the natural hair was draped, with false hair added. The whole was plastered with pomatum and covered with white powder. Such a structure, which sometimes remained untouched for months, soon became the resort of vermin, and the little ivory claws on the end of a long stick which antique dealers still refer to as ‘back scratchers’ were really made to insert into the headdress in an endeavour to relieve the intolerable itching.
142, 143 Male and female coiffures, c. 1778.
144–7 Three female headdresses and man in a soft hat, c. 1778. It was at this period that the headdresses of women reached their most exaggerated height. Men, on the other hand, were adopting a more simple style, even discarding the tricorne.
148 The Morning Walk, Thomas Gainsborough, 1785.
The headdress was sometimes crowned with the most fantastic objects: a ship in full sail, a windmill with farm animals grouped about it, a garden with real or artificial flowers. Or else a hat could be worn. Such hats were rather small in the early 1770s, but gradually grew larger. Some were of soft material, some with stiff crowns and wide brims adorned with feathers, as can be seen in Gainsborough’s famous picture, The Morning Walk.[148] This was painted in 1785, by which time the hair was being dressed broad instead of high, was frizzed instead of curled and was sometimes enclosed in an enormous mob cap instead of a hat.
Beginning in the 1770s, there was a marked change in the general outline of women’s dress, which can be summed up as a transition from hoops to a kind of bustle. The bodice also began to be puffed out, giving a pouter-pigeon effect. Bodices were in general deeply décolleté, the gap being filled in with a neckerchief. Many women adopted a masculine style of waistcoat, and even a ‘great-coat’ dress or ‘riding-coat’ dress with revers and a triple falling collar. Considerable variation in female attire was now possible, as we can see from La Galerie des Modes, a pioneer in the field of the fashion plate, published in parts at irregular intervals between 1778 and 1787.
149 Meeting between Joseph II of Germany (1741–90) and Empress Catherine the Great (1729–96) at Koidak, 18th May, 1787, J. H. Löschenkohl, 1787.
The fashion plate, indeed, sprang into existence at this period, with immense consequences in the dissemination of fashion. As Vyvyan Holland has pointed out in Hand-coloured Fashion Plates, 1770–1899, it is important to distinguish the fashion plate from the ‘costume plate’. The latter attempts to show clothes ‘after the event’, as it were, as Wenceslas Hollar did, for example, in his Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, published in 1640, or as Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean did in France in his admirable engravings of male and female costume at the court of Louis XIV. Even Le Monument du Costume of Freudenberg and Moreau le Jeune, published in Paris between 1775 and 1783, consisted of ‘costume plates’.
150 N’ayez pas peur, ma bonne amie, after Moreau le Jeune, c. 1776. A visit to the mother-to-be. The gentleman is an abbé. The visiting ladies are wearing the elaborate day clothes and the high headdresses of the period.
151 Les Adieux, Robert de Launay after Moreau le Jeune, 1777. The lady is entering a box at the Opera in full evening dress with enormous paniers and deep square décolletage.
152 Le Rendezvous pour Marly, Carl Gottlieb after Moreau le Jeune, 1776–77. Walking dress of considerable elaboration.
153 The Promenade at Carlisle House, J. R. Smith, 1781. At this house of assignation the gentlemen wear their hats, the one on the left having abandoned the tricorne and adopted ‘country’ clothes.
Curiously enough the first true fashion plates were not French but English. The Lady’s Magazine was publishing them from 1770 onwards. And suddenly similar plates were being published all over Europe. Accustomed as we are today to fashion illustrations, it is hard for us to realize that, before the invention of the fashion plate, information concerning the latest fashion was so hard to come by that Marie-Antoinette’s dressmaker found it worth while to travel the Continent every year in a huge berline containing dolls dressed in the latest modes de Paris.
It would be very instructive for the student of costume to compare two sets of fashion plates, such as those in La Galerie des Modes and those of Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion (he would have to do so in some great public library such as that of the Victoria and Albert Museum).[154–7] Although a gap of a mere ten years separates these two publications, the clothes depicted in them are entirely different. What had happened in the meantime, of course, was the French Revolution.
154, 155 The newly invented fashion plate: La Galerie des Modes, c. 1778. LEFT Woman in a Polonaise Dress; RIGHT Elegant dressmaker delivering her work.
Like all great social upheavals, this had a profound effect on the clothes of both men and women. The dress of the Ancien Régime was swept away. Suddenly there were no more embroidered coats or brocaded gowns, no more wigs or powdered hair, no more elaborate headdresses, no more talons rouges. ‘Return to Nature’ was the cry, but in the matter of costume this is never quite possible, unless people are willing to adopt the nudity of nature. What, then, actually happened?
In male dress the quest for simplicity meant the abandonment of French ‘Court’ clothes and the acceptance of English country clothes. For a variety of historical reasons the English upper classes had never been content to flutter round a court, like their French counterparts. They preferred to spend their time on their country estates. And for active pursuits such as fox-hunting they soon found that they were compelled to adopt a simpler form of dress from that considered fashionable in the capitals of Europe. They took all the embroidery off their coats and had them made of plain cloth. They abolished the lace ruffles at wrist and throat, put aside the white silk stockings and fitted their legs into stout boots. And, as we have already noted, for the universal three-cornered hat they substituted a primitive form of ‘topper’.
156 Walking dress of 1798. Fashion plate from Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion. Heideloff, a Swiss, was driven out of France by the Revolution and published his great work in England.
Now, even before the French Revolution, there was much enthusiasm, even in France, for all things English. England was looked upon as a land of liberty (which indeed, by comparison, it was), and the result was a wave of Anglomania which found its full expression when the privileges of the French nobility had been swept away. During the Terror, of course, it was dangerous to wear fashionable clothes of any kind, but after the execution of Robespierre, those who had survived the guillotine began once more to dress as they pleased. And what they were pleased to wear was a fantasticated version of English country clothes. The Englishman’s hunting coat was given tails of extravagant length, boots of extraordinary shapes replaced shoes, waistcoats became extremely short, collars rose to a great height behind the head, and neckcloths became so voluminous that they sometimes rose over the chin and even concealed the mouth. Wigs were abandoned, and the unpowdered hair was worn in a wild mop sometimes brushed forward over the forehead. Few more bizarre silhouettes have ever been seen than those of the French Incroyables of the 1790s.
157 Day dresses, 1796. Fashion plate from Heideloff’s Gallery of Fashion. Plumes were worn in the hair even when walking in the country.
Women’s dress at this period was less extravagant, but showed an even more drastic break with the past. Paniers, bustles and corsets were all abandoned, as were also the rich materials of which dresses had formerly been made. Instead women wore a robe en chemise, which did indeed look like an undergarment, for it consisted of a white, high-waisted muslin cambric or calico garment falling to the feet and sometimes so transparent that it was necessary to wear white, or pink, tights underneath. Sometimes the material was dampened so that it clung to the body in imitation of the folds of the Greek dresses represented in antique statues. Heelless slippers contributed to this effect. Hairdressing was simplified with a similar intention, but the effect was somewhat spoilt by the plumes of ostrich feathers which it was fashionable to stick in the hair. These were worn even in the daytime, but it should be emphasized that there was at this period very little difference between ‘full dress’ and ‘morning dress’ except in the quality of the materials. One curious result of the extreme flimsiness of women’s clothes at this time was that pockets in the garments themselves became impracticable. Hence the appearance of a little handbag known as the ‘reticule’, or ‘ridicule’, which women began to carry about with them everywhere they went.
158 Point de Convention, Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1801. Even Frenchmen have now adopted English ‘country’ clothes.
In France the accession of Napoleon to power put an end to the extravagance of male fashion under the Directoire. Englishmen had never adopted these strange modes, and by 1800 had settled down to a tightened and smartened version of country clothes: a top hat, a not too exaggerated neckcloth, a coat with revers and a collar of medium height, made of plain cloth and cut away in the front, a waistcoat, not as short as it had been in the 1790s, breeches with a square flap and diagonal side-pockets, and breeches fitting into riding boots. In the evening, pumps, knee-breeches and silk stockings were worn, and a bicorne was carried under the arm. The English had been slower than the French to abandon hair-powder, but when the government imposed a tax on it in 1795, it ceased to be worn except by some of the older men. The pigtail was given up except by the military, who kept it for another ten years.
159, 160 Morning dress of 1799 (LEFT) and ball dress of 1800 (RIGHT).
In fact, by the end of the eighteenth century the general lines of costume were already laid down: for women a version of what came to be known as the ‘Empire’ gown; for men a costume which we can already recognize as that of ‘John Bull’. These two modes, male and female, showed very little variation all over Europe. One is struck again by the fact that, since the seventeenth century, West European culture has been basically one, and that therefore there is little differentiation in the costume of the various nations, so far, at least, as the upper classes are concerned.