The modern terms so vaguely used are shocking, and the descriptive names given to colours by dress-artists are horrible beyond belief—such as Watteau pink and elephant grey, not to speak of Sèvres-blue cherries.
However, the female mind delights in such jargon and hotch-potch.
Let me be kind enough to translate our William and Mary fashion language. ‘Weeds’ is a term still in use in ‘widow’s weeds,’ meaning the entire dress appearance of a woman. A ‘figuretto gown looped and puffed with the monte-la-haut’ is a gown of figured material gathered into loops over the petticoat and stiffened out with wires ‘monte-la-haut.’ The ‘échelle’ is a stomacher laced with ribbons in rungs like a ladder. Her ‘pinner’ is her apron. The ‘commode’ is the wire frame over which the curls are arranged, piled up in high masses over the forehead. The ‘top-not’ is a large bow worn at the top of the commode; and the ‘fontage’ or ‘tower’ is a French arrangement of alternate layers of lace and ribbon raised one above another about half a yard high. It was invented in the time of Louis XIV., about 1680, by Mademoiselle Fontage. The ‘rayonné’ is a cloth hood pinned in a circle. The ‘meurtriers,’ or murderers, are those twists in the hair which tie or unloose the arrangements of curls; and the ‘crève-cœurs’ are the row of little forehead curls of the previous reign. A ‘muffetee’ is a little muff, and a ‘chapeau-bras’ is a hat never worn, but made to be carried under the arm by men or women; for the men hated to disarrange their wigs.
‘Plumpers’ were artificial arrangements for filling out the cheeks, and ‘watchet’ eyes are blue eyes.
The ladies have changed a good deal by the middle of this reign: they have looped up the gown till it makes side-panniers and a bag-like droop at the back; the under-gown has a long train, and the bodice is long-waisted. The front of the bodice is laced open, and shows either an arrangement of ribbon and lace or a piece of the material of the under-gown.
Black pinners in silk with a deep frill are worn as well as the white lace and linen ones.
