Diploma Lecture Series 2012 Absolutism to enlightenment: European art and culture 1665-1765

Fashion revolution: dress in the 18th century

Professor Peter McNeil

8 & 9 August 2012

Lecture summary: In the eighteenth century clothing introduced and worn at court ceased to be the principal motor of fashionable dress, which became more accessible to the populace of industrializing west Europe. The strict codification of dress backed by sumptuary laws asserting an unchanging social structure, was completely undone by social, philosophical, scientific, political and economic change. Rising incomes, the spread of literacy and print culture, the introduction of new cottons and cheaper techniques of production and printing meant that more types and numbers of garments and fabrics entered the wardrobes of the bourgeoisie, as well as artisans, tenant farmers, mechanics and the servant class. The consumer appears for the first time as a social character. People were more than citizens, tax-payers or identified by their occupation: what they consumed came to communicate their identity. Shops increased in number and were frequented by all social classes. The luxury trades and the ‘appearance industry’ (clothing, wigging, make-up, deportment) were a central feature of the economy, employing close to one third of the masters in a city. The idea of fashion as the aspiration to something new, in replacement of what one already owns, emerged.

Components of Dress:

grand habit - female court dress = skirt, petticoat, mantua (mantle), apron, whaleboned bodice (corps de robe), stays, lappets (headdress)

sacque or robe à la française - panels from shoulder, formal dress

robe à l'anglaise - fitted at back (informal, not court dress, began to be worn at some court events at the end of the century)

habit à la francaise - men's suit

coat (justaucorps), skirted waistcoat (veste), waistcoat without skirts (gilet), breeches

dressing or wrapping gown - banyan (English term, for men's wrapper)

French Guilds ( a selection of the more than 30 involved with clothing):

1. dyeing - du grand teint (expensive); du petit teint (cheaper)

2. linen draper- linger

3. mantua maker - from 1675, a female guild

4. tailor - male guild

5. mercer - high status dealer

6. modiste - retailer - full title marchandes de modes, plumassières et fleuristes - after 1776

Proudly sponsored by

7. fripier - second hand, cleaning and repairs

8. en vieux - old clothes; street vendors, second hand, clandestine at times

9. laundress

French proverbs relating to dress:

New breeches don't go with old doublets.

He who is not accustomed to wearing drawers hurts himself on the seams.

She who neither sews nor patches needs a large income.

For every wash a tear.

Only wash clothes which are lousy.

Le goût grec (neoclassical dress, in the 'grecian taste'):

La chemise à la reine - muslin tube

pouf à la circonstance - soft headdress related to contemporary events

fichus menteurs - 'lieing handkerchiefs', to stuff above bosom

egret - heron plume = aigrette

Key dates and expressions:

Louis XIV, r. 1643-1715 [Louis XIV style c1670-1720]

Régence (French Regency not the English one, often mixed up today), 1715-1723

Louis XV, r. 1723-1774

Louis XVI, r. 1774-1792

1748: discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum

chinoiserie - in the 'chinese' manner

chair types; bergère (arm-chair), chaise-longue or duchesse, duchesse brisée (armchair and stool)

Faubourg St-Antoine - area of Paris outside jurisdiction of the guilds

trompe-l'oeil - trick the eye (illusionism)

Louis XV's royal mistresses:

Mme de Pompadour, died 1764

Jeanne Bécu, comtesse du Barry, from 1769

marchand-mercier - an élite merchant who often coordinated the various guilds in creating decorative arts.

French words related to fashionability incorporated into English: etiquette 1750; fête 1754; rouge 1753; ennui 1758; monde (society) 1765; chignon 1783; bandeau 1790.

à la polonaise - looped skirt

chiné =ikat weave Slide list:

*1. Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Henry Dawkins, c1750, pastel, National Portrait Gallery London

*2. François-Hubert Drouais, Portrait of Madame de Pompadour, 1763-64,oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

3. François Boucher, Le Petit Déjeuner (The Breakfast), 1739, oil on canvas, 82 x 65cm, Louvre.

4. François Boucher, Portrait of Marie-Louise O'Murphy 1751, oil on canvas, Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne

5. Antoine Watteau, Fête champêtre (Pastoral Gathering), 1718-21, oil on oak panel, Art Institute of Chicago

6. Antoine Watteau, L'Enseigne de Gersaint, 1720-1, oil on canvas, Charlottenburg, Berlin

*7. Men’s suit, silk, c1770 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

*8. Robe de cour, French, Cabinet des Modes c1780, coloured engraving

9. English court dress, blue silk brocaded in silver, c 1750, Victoria & Albert Museum

10. François Boucher, Madame de Pompadour, 1759, oil on canvas, Wallace collection

11. English Sack Back dress, c1760, details, Victoria & Albert Museum

12. Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Portrait of an Actress in Oriental Dress, 1778, Los Angeles County Museum

13. Robe à l’anglaise. French. Muslin, silver thread. Metropolitan Museum of Art

14. Alan Ramsay, Robert Wood, 1755, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery, London

15. Jean-Baptiste Perroneau, Mme Legrix [?], pastel, National Gallery London

16. Alan Ramsay, Lady Helen Wemyss (Dalrymple), 1754

*17. Jean-Baptiste Perroneau, Jacques Cazotte, pastel, National Portrait Gallery London

18. Beaumont, Encyclopédie perruquière, Amst. and Paris, [Encyclopedia of Wigging], 1751/1761

19. Philibert-Louis Debucourt, The poorly defended Rose, c1780, print

20. English linen dress c1780, appliqué floral chintz attached with gold thread and sequins, Metropolitan Museum of Art New York

21. E-L. Vigée-Lebrun, Portrait of Geneviève Sophie le Coulteux du Molay, 1788, Nissim de Camondo Museum, Paris

22. Thomas Gray, Etui, steel, English c1770

23. Richard Mique and the frères Rousseau, Marie Antoinette’s Bathroom, Versailles, c1770

24. Galerie des modes et des costumes français (1778-1787): print, 1778

25. Wright of Derby, Mr and Mrs Thomas Coltman, c1770-72, oil on canvas, NPG London

26. James Cox, automaton clock, made for export to the Chinese market, c1765, Beijing

27. Jean-Henri Riesener, mother of pearl desk for Marie-Antoinette, Château de Fontainebleau

28. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, oil on canvas, 1783

29. Johann Zoffany, Mrs Oswald, oil on canvas, National Portrait Gallery London

30. Louis-Léopold Boilly, Passez Payez (Pass and Pay) or L’Averse (The Cloudburst), c1803, Louvre

31. ‘Conceit’, in Henry Siddons, Practical Illustration of Rhetoric and Gesture, London, 1807, engraving.

Reference: Boucher, François, A History of Costume in the West, trans. John Ross, new ed. , London, Thames and Hudson, 1987 [1st ed. 1966] Ettesvold, Paul M. , The Eighteenth-Century Woman. An Exhibition at the Costume Institute, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 1981 Freshman, Phil et al. (eds), An Elegant Art. Fashion & Fantasy in the Eighteenth Century, exh. cat. , Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Harry N. Abrams, Los Angeles and New York, 1983 Hollander, Anne, Sex and Suits, New York, Kodansha, 1995 [1st pub. Knopf, 1994] Martin, Richard, The Ceaseless Century. 300 Years of Eighteenth-Century Costume, exh. cat., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 9 September-22 November 1998 McNeil, P.K. & Riello, G., The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives, Routledge, London and New York 2010 McNeil, P.K., Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Volume 2: The Eighteenth Century, Berg, Oxford and New York 2009 McNeil, P.K. & Riello, G., Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers, Berg, Oxford and New York, 2006 Ribeiro, Aileen Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715-1789, London, B.T. Batsford, 1984 Ribeiro, Aileen, The Art of Dress. Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995 [well-illustrated scholarly study using paintings as the principal source] Sargentson, Carolyn, Merchants and Luxury Markets. The Marchands Merciers of Eighteenth-Century Paris, London, Victoria and Albert Museum, 1996

Maurice Quentin de la Tour, Henry Dawkins, c1750, pastel, National Portrait Gallery London

François-Hubert Drouais, Portrait of Madame de Pompadour, 1763-64,Oil on canvas, National Gallery, London

Men’s suit, silk, c1770 Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Robe de cour, Cabinet des Modes c1780

Jean-Baptiste Perroneau, Jacques Cazotte, pastel, National Portrait Gallery London

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