November 1809’s Ackermann’s fashion plates focus on Morning Dress. The first plate features another mother-child pairing, with a very Romanticized depiction of the child (just look at those rosy cheeks!). Arbiter Elegantiarum‘s advice this month focuses on suiting one’s style of dress to one’s style of figure: “I would persuade them, that the endeavour to be appear what we are not, is as erroneous in dress as in morals, and that it as invariable fails in its object” (333).
Vol. II, no. xi, pages 332-34.
I’m really taken by this month’s fabric samples. The print on the left puts me in mind of bees, while the one on the right makes me think of those fuzzy caterpillars I used to love to touch when I was a child. I wouldn’t mind having a dress made out of either (although #4 is intended for a gentleman’s waistcoat, according to the description above…) (pages 342-43).
