That silly and affected nomenclature for the dress fabrics was in use then as it is still, is apparent from Hannah More’s remark, “One lady asked what was the newest colour; the other answered that the most truly fashionable silk was a soupçon de vert, lined with a soupir etouffée et bradée de l’espérance; now you must not consult your old-fashioned dictionary for the word espérance for you will there find that it means nothing but hope, whereas espérance in the new language of the time means rose-buds.”
The most particular description of a dress Jane ever gives is almost minute enough to be followed by a dressmaker: “It is to be a round gown, with a jacket and a frock front, to open at the side. The jacket is all in one with the body, and comes as far as the pocket holes—about half a quarter of a yard deep, I suppose, all the way round, cut off straight at the corners with a broad hem. No fulness appears either in the body or the flap, the back is quite plain—and the side equally so. The front is sloped round to the bosom and drawn in, and there is to be a frill of the same to put on occasionally when all one’s handkerchiefs are dirty, which frill must fall back. She is to put two breadths and a half in the tail, and no gores—gores not being so much worn as they were. There is nothing new in the sleeves; they are to be plain, with a fulness of the same falling down and gathered up underneath. Low in the back behind, and a belt of the same.”
It is of course most obvious that the ludicrous fashions and enormous erections, which were carried by the leaders of fashion, did not affect quiet country girls; just as in our own time the distorted sleeves or ever-changing skirts, and all the vagaries of the smart set, are known and seen by hundreds who daily go about in perfectly simple clothes which yet can not be called unfashionable because they conform in main points to the dictates of the fashion of the moment without going to excess.
Two more characteristic quotations from the letters must be given—
“How do you like your flounce? We have seen only plain flounces. I hope you have not cut off the train of your bombazine. I cannot reconcile myself to giving them up as morning gowns; they are so very sweet by candlelight. I would rather sacrifice my blue one for that purpose; in short I do not know, and I do not care,” and in the following year, “I have determined to trim my lilac sarsenet with lilac satin ribbon just as my chine crape is. Sixpenny width at bottom, threepenny or fourpenny at top. Ribbon trimmings are all the fashion at Bath. With this addition it will be a very useful gown, happy to go anywhere.”
In one small point the lady of the eighteenth century resembled her successor of to-day.
The Times of November 9, 1799, notes: “What is still more remarkable is the total abjuration of the female pocket ... every fashionable fair carries her purse in her workbag, and she has the pleasure of laying everything that belongs to her upon the table wherever she goes.”
Hoops were worn in Court dress long after they were abandoned elsewhere, someone describes them as the “excrescences and balconies with which modern hoydens overwhelm and barricade their persons.” Apart from this survival at Court, dress was generally long and clinging.
At one of the Drawing Rooms of 1796 crape was all the fashion; Princess Augusta was dressed in “a rich gold embroidered crape petticoat in leaves across, intersected with blue painted foil in shaded spots, having the appearance of stripes from top to bottom; ornamented with a rich embroidered border in festoons of blue shaded satin and gold spangles. Pocket holes ornamented with broad gold lace, and blue embroidered satin bows; white and gold body and train.” There are many other costumes described at the same Drawing Room, from which we gather that the hair was dressed very full and high, and quite off the ears, and that bandeaus of gold or silver lace, or black velvet embroidered with gold, were run through it. Gold and silver artificial flowers were also very commonly worn, and some ladies had plumes. There were also a few caps. “The ladies all wore full dress neckerchiefs with point lace, sufficiently open to display irresistible charms.”
Men’s dress of the same period was most magnificent, and perhaps the feature of it that would strike one most in contrast with modern fashions, would be its variety of colour; coats and waistcoats were always coloured, black was only donned for mourning. Gold and silver lace and figured brocades, with lace cuffs and ruffles, were essential to a beau. Horace Walpole notes at the wedding of a nephew that, except for himself, there wasn’t a bit of gold lace anywhere in the dress of the men, and he considered it altogether as a very poor affair.