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Archives for May 2017

Ackermann’s Fashion Plates November 1813

May 31, 2017 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

The shapes of Regency dresses are often simple, but the addition of detailed, intricate ornamentation differentiates the gowns of the bourgeois from those of the fashionable. Such fancy trims are on display in Ackermann’s fashion prints of November 1813. Plate 33, a Morning Dress, features a shirt with a “deep fan frill of vandyke lace, the dress ornamented at the bottom, to correspond.” Its accompanying spencer also features vandyke lace on the cuffs, as well as Spanish slashed sleeves and front embellishments made of cord and button.

Ackermann's fashion plate 33, Nov 1813: Morning Dress

Plate 33, Vol. X, no. liv

 

The sleeves and neckline of the Evening Dress in Plate 34 are ornamented with puckered white satin, to compliment to the blossom-colored crape of the round robe. The bottom of the trained gown is also adorned, with a combination of white satin and blossom-colored crape, in what looks a bit like oversized flower blossoms. The writer notes that the gown’s “back and bosom [are] uncommonly (not to say unbecomingly) exposed,” suggesting such low cut gowns might be verging on the edge of risqué in the early years of the 18-teens.

 

Ackermann's Fashion plate 34, Evening Dress, Nov. 1813

Plate 34, Vol. X, no. liv

Both prints show their models wearing their hair in loose curls, curls adorned with “a small sprig of barberry” in the informal morning dress, and “small autumnal flowers of various hues” for the formal evening dress. Real flowers, I wonder? Or artful imitations?

 

 

November’s fabric samples include #1, an “animated and lively sample of the true Circassian cloth,” a fabric that Fairchild’s Dictionary of Textiles reports is “a yard-dyed fabric made of wool and cotton with a diagonal wave. Original made in France with wool warp and filing; in England with mohair yarns.” Lively and warm enough for fall’s chill!

Fabric sample #2 may not look as interesting, a simple “specimen of the new patent twine cloth, for sheeting,” but its method of production is “extremely curious,” as the machine upon which it is produced is “worked by steam.” Steam-driven power looms had first been built in 1785, but this aside suggests how novel they still were in the Regency period.

 

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

Ackermann’s Fashion Plates October 1813

May 24, 2017 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

I’m as much, if not more, intrigued by the accouterments in this month’s prints than in the dresses themselves. Both prints feature ladies reclining on chairs, one seated, and one partially kneeling. Both chairs have scrolled backs, and slightly curved out legs, giving both an air of elegance to the ladies resting upon them.

I’m also curious about what these two ladies are holding in their hands.  The one in plate 26, in “Morning Dress,” appears to have  a tiny book of some sort in hand. A memorandum book? A small prayer book? It seems far too small to be a household account book, or even a journal or diary.

At first, I thought that the lady of plate 27 might be holding a newspaper, something I would have been very excited to see. But, realizing she was attired in “Evening Dress,” and that the sheets in her had seemed to be separate, rather than folded as a newspaper would be, I thought it more likely that a collection or book of sheet music might be intended here. She would make a lovely figure sitting down to the piano-forte in her pea-green gown, with its “deep flounce of lace round the feet, headed with silver netting.”

Ackermann's Fashion Plate 26, October 1813: "Morning Dress."

Plate 26, Vol. X, no. lviii

Ackermann's Fashion Plate 27, October 1813: Evening Dress

Plate 27, Vol. X, no. lviii

 

 

This month’s fabric samples include a chintz designed for “her Grace the Duchess of Bedford,” to “ornament several of the rooms in the cottage now building in Devonshire.” No, you can’t purchase the same exact fabric; what would the duchess say! The pattern is offered “as a sample of those numerous and beautiful articles for furniture, which are exhibited at the splendid gallery of Mr. Allen, of Pall-Mall.”

I’m drawn to fabric sample #4, described as a “rich lilac-shot figured sarsnet, calculated for spencer, pelisses, mantles, and bodices.” The sample looks more pink than lilac to my eye. The zig-zags topped with what look to be tiny French knots make for a very unusual fabric, one that would have had me hieing off to Mr. King’s silk mercer shop. And since his shop is also in Pall-Mall, perhaps I would have also taken a peek into Mr. Allen’s?

 

Patterns of British Manufacture, Ackermann's October 1813

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

Ackermann’s Fashion Plates September 1813

May 17, 2017 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

For the first time, a plate is missing from the scans of Ackermann’s I’ve downloaded via Archive.org. The September 1813 edition scanned includes plate 19, “Evening costume,” but the page where plate 20, “Promenade Costume,” should be is blank. A victim of the habit of people cutting the plates out of magazines, even those in library collections, and selling them separately? Today such prints can be purchased for between $30 and $60 from rare print dealers online.

A Pinterest Board titled “1813” includes a (cropped) image of the print in question, so I’ve borrowed a copy from there. Our fashionable lady looks quite comfortable, reading her book with her “large Eastern parasol, with deep Chinese awning,” doesn’t she? I do wish the prints gave us a better idea of the shoes mentioned in the descriptions; I’d like to see if/how the “Roman shoe, or Spanish slipper” differed from a typical English lady’s slipper…

Plate 19: "Evening Costume." Ackermann's September 1813

Plate 19, Vol X, no. lvii

 

Ackermann's Fashion Plate 19, August 1818: "Promenade Costume"

Plate 20, Vol. X, no. lvii

 

"Fashions for Ladies." Ackermann's September 1813

 

The celebration of Wellington’s Vittoria victory continues to be a theme in this month’s fabric sample #3, a “unique and elegant article for ladies’ robes, pelisses, mantles, and scarfs, styled the Vittoria striped gauze.” I wonder what the drapers might have said, if you asked them why it was a “Vittoria” striped gauze?

 

Ackermann's fabric samples, September 1813

Ackermann’s fabric samples, September 1813

 

 

 

 

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

Ackermann’s Fashion Plates August 1813

May 10, 2017 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

This month’s fashions celebrate Wellington’s June 1813 victory at Vittoria, which led to the collapse of French rule in Spain. The evening dress in Plate 11 is labeled “The Vittoria or Wellington Costume,” although I don’t think there is anything in particular about its design that would lead one to think of either the English general or the town in which 1813’s battle was fought. Is a dress with “shoulders, back, and bosom much exposed” a sign of celebration? Or the bosom covered by “shell-scalloped lace”?

 

Plate 11, Vol. X, no. lvi

Plate 12, Vol. X, no. lvi

 

 

The Wellington celebration continues in this month’s fabric samples, with Thomas and Co. silk-mercers selling a “Wellington colonnade satin crape or gause, which can be had of ht proprietors in the varied colours of the season.” But other fabric purchasers may have had something other than the war in mind; the “variegated check gingam” in sample #1 is suggested not only for “the intermediate order of costume,” but also for “the sea-side trowser or bathing-wrap.” Is the sea-side trowser in question is part of a woman’s bathing costume? Or simply part of an outfit she might wear when promenading on the beach? My understanding is that many of those who engaged in sea bathing during the Regency did so in the nude…

 

Fabric samples, Ackermann’s August 1813

 

Filed Under: Regency History Tagged With: Ackermann, Ackermanns, Ackermmann's, bathing, clothing, dress, fabric, fashion

Fashion Advice from Ackermann’s Repository July 1813

May 3, 2017 By BlissBennet Leave a Comment

 

As I mentioned in last week’s post, the July 1813 edition of Ackermann’s Repository featured in addition to its fashion plates a “Letter from a Young Lady in London to Her Friend in the Country,” a letter replete with information on the latest in urban fashion. Some key shifts in fashion our Lady reports:

 

• The adoption of the Cossack coat and Pomeranian mantle, in place of the spencer and French cloak

• Fashionable headgear includes the “skimming-dish hat of straw or chip”; the “large hamlet poke, with lace bands, brought under the chin”; and “the provincial bonnet, composed of satin and lace, ornamented with flowers”

• Trains are beginning to “revive” in dancing dresses, although our young lady fears “they can never be admitted in the dancing dress, without infringing on good sense and good taste.”

Add-on bodice

• Colored satin bodices have become too common, so much that they “can no longer be considered as genteel, or select,” although our Lady contends for their “utility, in offering an easy purchased change.” (See this informative post by Natalie Garbett for more on these add-on bodices)

• Hair worn in “the Grecian style” is better than wearing a turban or even a small Spanish hat, especially for “the female who has not passed her meridian.”

• Diamonds and pearls “must always retain their pre-eminence,” but “bracelets of wrought gold, or of colored enamel, to represent small natural flowers” are also in style

• Satin half-boots for full dress are decidedly out (“most sensibly exploded”!)

Chinese fan 1820-30; Philadelphia Museum of Art

• A “few first rate fashionables” have given up their parasols in exchange for “the Oriental or Indian fan composed of feathers,” but such items are “as yet too singularly attractive for general adoption.” Wouldn’t that make you wild to get your hands on one??

 

Filed Under: Regency History Tagged With: Ackermann, 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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