Ackermann’s Fashion Plates March 1811

 

Arbiter Elegantarium notes that he’s not had need of commenting on the current state of fashion in recent issues, as mourning for Princess Amelia still continues. The mourning period is likely to be lifted soon, he states, and anticipates the bloom of color in spring with pleasure, both for the variety they will offer, and the likelihood of witnessing extremes, which will provide him with “sufficient subject for animadversion.”  Ah, how AE loves to censure the foibles of the fashionable world…

 

 

 

*Plate 18 recommends adorning oneself with a necklace and earrings of  pearl, or “Mocho stone.” I hadn’t heard of the latter, but a check of Thomas Sheridan’s A Complete Dictionary of the English Language revealed it to be: “nearly related to the agat kind, of a clear horny grey, with delineations representing losses, shrubs, an beaches, in the substance of the stone.” Or, in modern parlance, dendritic agate.

 

Dress goods dominate this month’s fabric samples, with a bright “permanent morone printed cambric” (morone = crimson or maroon), and two figured shot-sarcenets, one dark green, one creamy white. The abstract figures of sample 4 seem quite modern, don’t they?