FESTAL DRESS, OTAHEITE.
It is surprising to find in dress, as in ornamental design, the same ideas, the same ornamental motifs, occurring to the people of countries widely separate. There is a curious dress appropriated to the young women of Otaheite who are appointed to make presents from persons of rank to each other; one of these was deputed to present cloths to Captain Cook on his last voyage. A representation of the dress is given in the engraving, which is from Cook's Geography, 1801. The proportions of the drum exceed even that of Queen Elizabeth; in general shape, however, it is similar. It is decorated round the uppermost edge with ornamental festoons of feathers, &c., and constitutes the complete dress of the lady, with the exception of a sort of chemise which appears underneath the breasts, and, presumably, covers the loins and a portion of the lower limbs.
The hoop petticoat now approaches its highest meridian; its re-appearance was duly announced by Addison, who, in No. 129 of the Spectator, relates an adventure which happened in a little country church in Cornwall: "As we were in the midst of service, a lady, who is the chief woman of the place, and had passed the winter at London with her husband, entered the congregation in a little head-dress and a hooped petticoat. The people, who were wonderfully startled at such a sight, all of them rose up. Some stared at the prodigious bottom, and some at the little top, of this strange dress. In the meantime the lady of the manor filled the area of the church and walked up to the pew with an unspeakable satisfaction, amid the whispers, conjectures, and astonishments of the whole congregation."
Between 1740 and 1745 the hoops spread out at the sides extensively in oblong fashion, resembling a donkey carrying its panniers. Indeed, the simile of the donkey was a favourite one with the caricaturists. In 1860 Punch adopts the idea, and issues a warning to ladies who would ride in crinolines on donkeys, and gives a cut of a lady in an enormous crinoline riding on a donkey, with nothing but the donkey's hind legs seen below.
PORTRAITS OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS, AND DARNLEY.
From an engraving by R. Elstracke.
A poetic description of ladies' dresses in 1773 directs: