September 2018

Roses are the theme of October 1816’s fashion plates, serving as trimming for both the Half Dress gown of plate 22, and the Ball Dress of plate 23. The Half Dress is described as being made of “lilac sarsnet,” but the ink of the print seems to have changed over time, to a dark almost black shade here. The print doesn’t show us the front of the gown, but we can see the unusual back, with its bands of pink ribbon in a triangle from each shoulder to the waist center. Pink ribbon also serves as a double border between which appears a row of large “French roses.” The model’s cornette, or cap, comes in for particular praise; even though the style is “French” it is “so simply elegant and becoming, that we have not for some time seen any half-dress cap to equal it.”

Ackermann's October 1816, plate 23: Half-Dress

Vol. II, no. x (2nd series), Plate 23

Ackermann's October 1816 Fashion plate description part 1

Both of the gowns featured in this month’s plates were provided by one of the magazine’s subscribers; perhaps said subscriber had a particular fondness for French roses, for they appear as a headdress atop the model of plate 23’s ball gown, too [Does anyone know what makes a rose “French”?] This ball gown also features a triple-trimmed hem: closest to the hem is a “rich rollio of intermingled gauze and satin”; in the middle is a “wreath of fancy flowers” [perhaps including some French roses?]; white satin swags topped by small bows serve as the third band of adornment. Trimming “uncommonly tasteful and striking,” opines our columnist.

Ackermann's October 1816, plate 23: Ball Dress

Vol. II, no. x (2nd series), Plate 22

Highlights from the general observations on Fashion and Dress include:

• Current trends in trimming for promenade dresses (“about a half a quarter in breadth; it is disposed in bias flutings,, and finished at both ends with pipes”) is deemed “in very bad taste” by our columnist: “it is formal, and not at all novel, and has no other recommendation than being fashionable.”

• Walking dresses current feature trimming of two or three flounces, lightly embroidered in colours. “”We do not mean an intermixture, but various shades of the same colour: evening primrose, dark blue, and green are most in favour”

• Gloucester bonnets and spencers still remain popular

Ackermann's October 1816 fashion plate text

• Collars are “entirely exploded, and ruffs continue to be an indispensable part of walking or carriage dress”

• Morning dresses, with their triple fall of work at the wrist, “have, at a distance, an uncommonly ludicrous effect; the trimming being pointed, and worked in holes, has the appearance, specially when there are so many falls of it, of being actually in rags.” Ah, what the élégantes will wear, all in the name of fashion!

• Clear muslin bodices, made half-high, are all the crack for dinner dress; back bodices have become wider, after decreasing a bit over past months

• Being on the short side myself, my sympathies were engaged by this tidbit: “Dresses are still trimmed very high, which is a great disadvantage to under-sized belles”

Fashionable colors of the month are:

Pomona green

Dark and azure blue

Evening primrose

Peach-colour

lavender

October’s Needle-work patterns:

Ackermann's October 1816 Needle-work patterns

Stripes! I can’t remember a previous gown featured in Ackermann’s Repository that featured stripes to the degree that plate 16’s half dress does. Not only is the gown itself made of striped sarsnet, the slippers that accompany it are, too! But in 1816, stripes alone are not enough to adorn even a simple day dress; the candy striped concoction here features two flounces of lace with headings, and bows of Pomona green above the highest flounce. Similar bows run down the top of each sleeve, too. I think I would have preferred a striped dress to be weighted down with less adornment—would you?

Ackermann's Repository September 1816, plate 16: Half Dress

2nd series Vol II, no. ix, plate 16

Plate 17 features a plain white evening dress—at least, plain in terms of its fabric, British net over a sarsnet slip. But the dress features as many embellishments as its companion day dress. A double flounce of lace, a wreath of roses, and a rollio of white satin above the roses bring the skirt trimming almost to knee-height; a companion bouquet of moss roses “shades” the bosom, while a quilling of blond lace frames the bodice. Even more detailed are the dress’s short and full sleeves, which are “divided into compartments by rollios of satin.” (FYI, a “rollio” is a type of rolled trimming, used for decoration; according to Cunnington’s Dictionary of English Costume, fabric is “rolled into a very narrow tubular shape”). Pearls are the jewelry of choice for this gown. Was it made for a very young lady?

Ackermann's September 1816 Fashion Plate 17: Evening Dress

2nd series, Vol. II, no. ix, plate 17: Evening Dress

Ackermann's Fashion Plates September 1816 descriptions

General observations on British Fashion and Dress include the following:

• The Gloucester bonnet and spencer are in vogue for carriage dress

• The cold weather has led ladies to wrap themselves in silk scarves and shawls, laying aside muslin pelisses as not warming enough

• Lace is not so generally worn in morning dress as in the past (although the columnist’s adumbrations against it suggest this may be more of a recommendation than an actual observation)

• Silks striped of the same color are popular in dinner dress, as are gowns of shot sarsnet

• The Gloucester robe is an “elegant novelty” in full dress

The prevalence of “Gloucester”-named apparel stems, I’m guessing, from the July 1816 marriage of the Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh (1776-1834), nephew of George III, to King George’s fourth daughter, Princess Mary.

Fashionable colors for September echo those of August, with the addition of Pomona green and lavender.

This month’s magazine also includes fashion news from France, where the bad weather experienced in England had turned fine only a few weeks earlier. Worked muslin is in fashion for promenade dresses, unlike in colder England, and white is the most commonly seen in evening dress. The author mourns poor French taste in not matching bonnet linings with trim or ribbons:

“for example, you see a bonnet lined with blue, trimmed with green, and perhaps ornamented with a bunch of different coloured flowers; at present, blue, rose-colour, and green are favourite linings; but, I think, plaid silk is still more than any thing in request, and some of our most distinguished fashionables have sported bonnets entirely composed of it” (180).

Luckily for French fashion, reports the correspondent, the Duchess of Berri (mother of the current heir to the French throne) sets the French style with her notable taste in dress.

Ackermann's September 1816 French Female Fashions description