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Archives for March 2016

Ackermanns Fashion Plates December 1811

March 16, 2016 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

Can’t remember seeing a riding dress featured in Ackermann’s Fashion plates before. This one is rather dour, at least in color: “a pale lead or olive tinge.” Better ride a strikingly-colored horse if you put that gown on, else you’ll be likely to fade right into the background of the dank English countryside…

Plate 35, Riding Dress
Plate 36, Mourning Dress

Ackermanns Dec. 1811 Vol. VI, no xxxvi

 

I’m in love with the first of this month’s fabric samples, a “cerulean blue and white embossed satin.” Dreaming about drifting about a ballroom in a dress made from that one, I am. The other dress fabrics look pretty dreary in comparison…

Check out the note about the creators of the tambour work on last month’s fabric sample—a potential plot detail for someone’s next Regency novel, perhaps?

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Filed Under: Regency History Tagged With: Ackermanns, Ackermmann's, clothing, dress, fashion, mourning, riding

Ackermanns Fashion Plates November 1811

March 9, 2016 By BlissBennet 1 Comment

 

Arbiter Elegantiarum blows November’s chills away with a blast against the overuse of fur in winter fashion. Muffs come in for particular scorn: “these monstrous muffs, or rather muffles (for they completely handcuffed the poor women).” At least, though, muffs have been abandoned, suggests Arbiter; alas, the ungainly fur tippet is still to be found,  that once “graceful ornament of a winter dress” which has, unfortunately, “swelled itself out into a large plaister of fur, which covered the back and shoulders, and completely destroyed the beauty of the figure.” What woman would want to wear a garment that Arbiter compares to “the collar of martyrdom, which was formerly fixed upon the neck of the unfortunate victims of the infernal Inquisition”? Not me!

 

Plate 28, Walking Dress
Plate 29, Carriage Dress

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Fall colors grace this month’s fabric samples: fawn, rusty brown, and yellow gold. Sample #4, a “Persian kerseymere, worked in tambour,” is “much in vogue with our male fashionables.” The photograph here is not very clear; I’d love to see a better close up of the tambour (embroidery) work, wouldn’t you?

Fabric samples Nov 1811

Fabric samples Nov 1811

 

 

Ackermanns Fabric samples Nov 1811

 

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Filed Under: Regency History Tagged With: Ackermanns, clothing, dress, fashion

Ackermanns Fashion Plates October 1811

March 2, 2016 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

Did our fashion columnist invent a new word to describe this month’s first fashion plate? What do you make of the following:

We take it upon us to remark, that the length of the waist in this plate may be considered in the extreme, as few of our fair country-women seem disposed to depart from a becoming modiocrity in this particular.

I’m still struggling to parse this sentence. At first, I assumed that “modiocrity” was a simple typographic error, meant in fact to be “mediocrity” (my spell check keeps changing it to that, in any case!). But can a “mediocrity” ever be described as “becoming”? I’m charmed by the idea that our columnist has combined mediocrity and modish to come up with the coinage “modiocrity.” But I’m still left scratching my head; why does the writer feel forced to point out that the low waistline of this round French robe is “in the extreme” if he believes few ladies likely to change from the current style of high waists?

Plate 22, Walking Dress
Plate 23, Evening Dress

 

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Some colorful fabrics for gowns, some for evening dress and some for day dress. I’d like to see a day gown made from sample #4; I’m a fan of combinations of brown and pink. And the name—”palm-leaf imperial striped cambric”—is impressive, too!

Ackermans October 1811

 

Ackermans October 1811 fabric samples

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Regency History Tagged With: Ac, Ackermanns, Ackermmann's, clothing, dress, fashion

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  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates January 1817
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates December 1816
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates November 1816
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates October 1816
  • Ackermann’s September 1816 Fashion Plates
  • Ackermann’s August 1816 Fashion Plates
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates July 1816
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates June 1816
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates May 1816
  • Ackermann’s Fashion Plates April 1816

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