"The items of a fashionable Taylor's bill are not a little curious at present:—Ditto, to pasteboard for your back; ditto, to buckram for your cape; ditto, for wool for your shoulders, and cotton for your chest. Shakespeare talks of Nature's Journeymen who make men indifferently, but our Journeymen Taylors make their customers of any form and dimensions they think proper."—(Times, Sept. 6, 1799.)
"A Jean Debry" (Mr. Skeffington.)
French Tailor fitting John Bull with a "Jean de Bry"
Modern Costume.
"The Long-toed Shoe which now figures in Bond Street was regulated by an Act of Parliament so long ago as the reign of Edward III. No person under the rank of a Knight then had a right to advance his toe more than four inches beyond the natural extremity.... If ever, in some centuries to come, the little hat, stuffed coat, and long-toed shoe of a modern fine Gentleman should be discovered in some Museum of Antiquities, or to survive upon the Stage, they would no doubt give birth to many learned doubts and extraordinary speculations. By the size of a pair of modern Leather Breeches, it will naturally be inferred that the present race of men were of a Colossal form. When we suppose in the same collection a pair of our Hussar Boots to have escaped the ravage of time, will not our descendants enquire by what descending scale of rapid decay and diminution mankind is hastening into the pigmy state, or the dwarf? Our Coats too, in which the Cotton, the Wool, the Tow, and all the et cetera of quilting, which now form one half of our bulk, will then only seem the remains of the art of the virtuoso: and the curious stuffing he has devised to represent the gigantic proportions of the wearer. It ought, however, to be known, for the honour of this commercial nation, that it is to the spirit of justice and liberality of our tradesmen, that this extraordinary augmentation of our bulk is to be attributed. Having doubled the price of every article upon us, they have very fairly given us double measure, both in our Coats, Boots, and Breeches. The Hatter, I am sorry to say, is not entitled to the same commendation, for he has of late years perpetually diminished and circumscribed the little brim he allows us, in the exact proportion that he has advanced the price of it, so that the scarcity of felt is like that of bread, the less you have, the more you are to pay for it. I paid a guinea and a quarter for the last I bought, and I was ingenuously told that by the time a hat cost two guineas, it would exactly be the size and the weight of one. All these tradesmen, in a fairer sense than the hatters, make the most of their customers: but he to whom the nobler part of man, the head, is committed, diminishes in the most scandalous manner the protection it requires...."—(Times, Sept. 20, 1799.)
Brobdignag.
WOMEN'S DRESS.
The earliest Lady's fashion book I can find in the British Museum, is "The Lady's Monthly Museum," &c. "By a Society of Ladies,"—and it was published in 1799—or just the last year of which this book takes cognizance. But, luckily, the satirical prints supply the want, in a great measure, although they are somewhat exaggerated. From them we are able to see pictorially what might be hard to describe, and may be perfectly certain that they represent "the very last thing out" at their date of Publication. If, then, we have very little written about female attire, in 1788, and the next year, or two, we must be content with viewing the veræ effigies of the belles of that time.