Archives for November 2015

 

The death of England’s Princess Amelia, youngest daughter of King George III and Queen Charlotte, in November 1810 led many a lady’s magazine to focus on mourning clothing in their prints. Ackermann’s Repository was no exception. December’s plates feature mourning gowns for both the morning and the evening (although, handily, once mourning was over, one could simply exchange the black under-dress of the evening gown for a white or silver-grey one, to “form a most pleasing habit.”)

 

 

 

 

The “Patterns of British Manufacture” in the back of December’s issue also focus on mourning dress, with fabric samples appropriate for full and “second” mourning.

 

Arbiter Elegantiarum returns this month to wax fearful about the “influence that the love of dress has upon the inhabitants of country towns and villages.” AE urges “landowners, and proprietors of estates, to check as much as possible” the “ruinous propensity” of the less-than-genteel to mimic the fashions of their betters.

Interesting to consider whether many Regency-era landlords in fact had enough sway over their tenants and other employees to dictate what they could and could not wear. And whether the wives of said landowners played any part in such regulation. Can you imagine going off to police your “dependents” while wearing that “French tippet of leopard silk shag” that the lady in Plate #30 is sporting?

In earlier days, AE notes, it was easy to tell who was a gentleman: “one descended from three degrees of gentry, both on the mother’s and father’s side.” In contrast, during AE’s times, a gentleman is “any one who possesses a certain sum of money in the funds, though his father be a scavenger or a chimney-sweeper.” AE shares the fears of many a genteel person of the period, fears that the once strict boundary lines between the classes has become frighteningly permeable.

 

I wish we had more of the sample of #1 fabric, a “Spanish embroidered net”; it appears that part of the swatch has been ripped away, alas. Brown and rose are one of my favorite color combinations. Not too enamored of the Indian shawl print (swatch #2); perhaps it would be more attractive in a larger sample?

 

 

October seems an odd time for frolicking on the English shore, but one of this month’s fashion plates is labeled “Promenade, or Sea-Beach Costume.” The other is equally unusual: not just a “Morning Dress,” but a “Morning Dress, or Costume a la Devotion,” which I’m taking to mean “at prayers” or “at devotions,” given the background portrayed in the print. A young Regency woman of fashion can gossip with her friends, but she should also spend time communing with the Lord.

 

 

Polka dots? Big, yellow polka dots with bright red centers? On your drawing room curtains and sofa? Hard to imagine this “most lively and appropriate furniture print” on anything from the Regency era, doesn’t it?

 

No commentary from Arbiter Elegantiarum in September, just descriptions of one Full Dress gown and two Promenade Costumes. I’m struck by the lace-up fronts of two of the dresses (described as a”stomacher front” in the first plate, and  “bosom of the robe laced with white silk cord”); this style isn’t seen very often in Regency-set films. Perhaps because it is associated more with earlier periods’ styles?

Unless I’m misreading, the “neck-chain and cross” around the first lady’s neck is reported as being of “dead gold filigree.” Anyone have any idea of what “dead gold” is?

 

I’m taken by the unusual shapes on the “Indian shawl cambric” of this month’s fabric sample #3, and can imagine it making a lovely dress. Alas, Ackermann’s says “this article exclusively belongs to the simple order of domestic costume. It is sometimes seen in the high morning robe, but is better adapted to the embroidered shirt and foundling cap of the same, which most agreeably relieve it.” I was having a hard time picturing this fabric as a baby’s cap; good thing I had C. Willett Cunnington’s English Women’s Clothing in the Nineteenth Century to remind me that adult women sometimes wore “foundling caps” as part of morning dress (see illustration below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foundling cap