The greatest variety of colors were worn, and contrasts which now would seem most repulsive were every day met with. A scarlet velvet coat, with a black collar and steel buttons, sulphur-colored breeches and blue-striped hose were considered in very good taste about 1785. Boue de Paris (brick-dust color) and London smoke were worn in both London and Paris in 1786, and in 1788, a color known by the repulsive name of beef' s-blood was the extremity of fashion. Waistcoats had all kinds of names, taken from operas, such as Figaro, Cœur-de-Lion, etc. Handkerchiefs aux adieux de Fontainebleu were worn; neither of these, however, seem to have differed materially from other waistcoats and handkerchiefs.
This was the age of cravats, made of fine lawn or baptiste richly laced, with hanging ends; peruques à la Grecque, with three buckles; the sword and plumed hat. Some persons also wore the stockinet breeches, by the side of which Adam’s fig-leaf was decent.
The following is a group altogether characteristic of that age in which the redingote, the coiffure à la Grecque, and plumed hat all appear:
None now can take an interest in all the mysteries of powder and coiffure, with their high-sounding names à la Brigadière, à la Sartine, à trois marteaux, etc., they are gone forever, and when the great Leonard fled to Russia after the execution of the king were forgotten in Paris. It will be remembered that other capitals always copied the costumes of the French capital, and that in speaking of Paris we describe the costume of Europe.
Grave reflections do not belong to the history of so frivolous a thing as costume, but any one may see that it is impossible to avoid making a comparison, not only between the costumes, but the ideas of the past and present. The decay of the luxury of the old monarchy was but the forerunner of the fall of the monarchy itself, so that rightly enough Dumourier echoed the prophecy of its ruin, made by an old gentleman-usher who saw the great Roland appear before the king with shoes with strings instead of buckles. We have brought down the history of costume to the verge of a revolution, all the terrors of which luxury survived, and there may be those who think the crisis in the midst of which France is, may pass away, and things yet a second time resume their old state. This cannot be the centre of fashion is destroyed, and cannot be again created. France has more serious things to attend to, and though all the world submitted to French dictation, it is scarcely probable that it will bow itself to another sceptre. France cannot resume her sway. In 1792 the dispersed court bore away with it all the splendor and magnificence of the past, and left a void which the republic could not fill. In 1830 noblesse, as a cast, had disappeared, but an opulent class yet remained, who had grown accustomed to dictate in fashion. In the year 1848 the revolution was more complete, and all have other things to do besides thinking of periwigs and shoe-buckles.
Among the causes which tended in the eighteenth century to modify French costume, by assimilating all classes, we must in the first place mention the influence of what is now called Anglo-mania. Even as far back as Louis XV., the young nobles had become accustomed to visit England, where they acquired new habits if not new ideas. England for a time was the sovereign of fashion, and hats were worn à la Tamise instead of à la Seine. The nobles, in imitation of the English, ruined themselves by extravagance in horses and equipages. Quarrels arose about the good looks of jockeys, and princes of the blood and dukes transformed themselves into coach-drivers. Marie Antoinette even took pride in the dexterity with which she handled the whip and reins of a pony-phaeton. The revolution has naturalized in France many political phrases, but long before that French ears and the French palate had grown used to punch, or ponche as they called it, and both sexes had become accustomed to cover up their costume with the redingote, or English riding-coat. Tea canes and hats were ultimately adopted, also from England.
The revolution in England, and the round-head ideas it evolved, had much simplified English costume, and by the Anglo-mania this simplicity was now reflected back on France, and continued to as late a day as the revolution. In 1786 the English costume was frequently seen in the streets of Paris, and contributed in a great degree to dissipate the air of pretension which yet animated French society. The English boot was adopted almost universally, and gaiters became as common as in London. The loose locks of the English sailors were also imitated, and this was a severe blow on the old costume, an important portion of which was the coiffure. The three-cornered cocked was replaced by the jockey’s round hat, a ridiculous and ungainly thing which no taste can make becoming, and no art make comfortable. The probability, however, is that it will become universal, and that some day all the world will wear this head-piece.
This mutual imitation continued until the adoption of Napoleon’s Continental system, which, as is well known, separated England from all intercourse with Europe. When peace had put an end to the long wars this system had occasioned, and Englishmen again came on the Continent, their appearance struck each other as supremely ludicrous, as the apparition of one of our own grandfathers in the gigantic waistcoat and the bag wig they wore would seem to us in a modern drawing-room.
Before, however, an universal costume had been adopted the revolution came. Fortunes were swept away, palaces lost, and the people who inhabited them dispersed. We here lose sight of powdered hair forever, for both sexes cut their hair short, and shoes with strings were universally adopted. The reign of terror came, sans-culottism was the rage. The red cap of liberty, the houppelande of red worsted, or the carmagnole usurped the place of the plumed hat and the graceful roquelaure. Open shirt collars and a knotted stick, like the Irish shilelah, were indispensible accompaniments to this dress, an admirable representation of which is to be seen in the making up of James Wallack, senior, for one of his many admirable impersonations, called David Duvigne, in that pretty two act drama of the “Hazard of the Die.” This costume is scarcely worthy of remark, except on account of the red Italian cap, a garment far more graceful than our hat, but proscribed on account of the horrors enacted by those who wore it. It, however, never was worn except in France, and we may well enough drop it here forever.