is fully documented with tailors’ patterns and illustrations. As all details were prescribed by court regulations and very little scope was left for the impulses and personal choice of the wearers, the dress may be regarded to a great extent as a uniform rather than a fashion. Modifications did take place, however, and the style continued into the 19th century. As late as 1827, a pamphlet was published in Copenhagen on the same subject.[44]
With these dress-reform books must also be included
the books on French Revolution fashions, of which that by Grasset de Saint-Sauveur is the best known.[45] When reading the descriptions of dress of the various officials, grades, and classes, one wonders whether such clothes were actually worn except on state occasions, or whether they were fanciful novelties which the French officials in their reaction against Louis XVI and his court thought would be appropriate for the new regime. The intention of this book, however, undoubtedly was serious and quite unlike the caricature
fashion plates often titled “Merveilleuse” or “Incroyable,” which amused everyone in the early years of the 19th century.
After 1800 many types of magazines flourished, and the increase in the number of lending and subscription libraries and also of public libraries fostered a new reading public. The magazines had illustrated fashion articles. Often the engravings, and later the lithographs, colored by hand, were their most attractive feature. Not that any great originality was shown; the latest Paris fashions were often adapted, with or without acknowledgment from French fashion plates of the previous season. Men’s and children’s fashions were not adapted on nearly the same scale. Possibly, men’s fashions were more static, or confined to details such as variations in tying the cravat.[46]
Figure 32.—Front and back view of a walking dress showing that embroidered muslin was worn even in winter. Here, the muslin is accompanied by a red sarcenet Highland spencer and a matching scarf lined with ermine. From La Belle Assemblée, December 1808. (Courtesy of The Cooper Union Museum.)
Three magazines are worth special mention. La Belle Assemblée, or Bell’s Court and Fashionable Magazine “addressed particularly to the ladies” was published in London from 1806 to 1868 (fig. 32). During the 1820s the plates were of less merit, but there was a later improvement. In 1809, the London print firm of Ackermann began to publish The Repository of Arts, Letters, Commerce and Manufactures Fashion and Politics. This magazine had a much wider scope, and its illustrations are of good quality (fig. 33). A special feature was the inclusion of small sample squares of new materials pasted into the text which named and described them. This feature usefully supplements industrial records of the period, which are hard to come by and difficult to handle in that those preserved are usually bulky, not too well dated, and show no distinction between fabrics made for export and those for the home market. Thirdly, from 1830 to 1898, Godey’s Lady’s Book was published in Philadelphia,
under titles which varied from time to time ([fig. 34]). This magazine is much more famous for its other contents than for its fashion articles; its plates, often copied from French engravings, are of low quality and rather crudely colored.