- Female Fashion 1796 - bassenge.com
Male and female dress during the late 18th century and early 19th century were both influenced by the political climate of the time. But unlike male modes of dress female costume changed radically in the forty-two years spanning Jane Austen’s lifetime from 1775 to 1817.
The Late Eighteenth Century
Typical female dress throughout the 18th century consisted of sack and negligee dresses made of rich silks, caps, huge breast and sleeve bows, decorative aprons, kerchiefs and ruffles, and high heeled shoes. These dresses hung from the shoulders and were draped over wide hooped petticoats. Court dress tended to be highly elaborate with very wide hooped petticoats.
By the second half of the 18th century dresses were no longer supported by hoops and had softer less ostentatious fabrics rather than the brocades and silks prevalent earlier in the century. Women would even wear skirts and tailored jackets influenced by male military fashion.
Women generally wore hair very large and piled high with the help of a padded triangle in which the hair would be frizzed and fixed with large curls pomaded and powdered. Hats tended to be large balloon hats or even adapted tricornes.
Throughout the 18th century the vogue in fashion tended to the ornamental and expensive.
The French Revolution
The French Revolution promoted a new aesthetic in fashion. Clothing for men and women became simplified. Fabrics tended now towards uncomplicated cotton which in France was more in line with the republican attitudes and in England with the technological advances in the milling of cotton fabric. The large workforces in the factories could generate the amounts of cotton in demand.
In France, the revolutionary attitude shunned the corseted, hooped, extravagant dresses associated with the ancient regime and opted for the more pragmatic fashions of the working classes. In England, the short-waisted gowns arrived from France with large ribbons and sashes tied directly underneath the breast. These dresses were made of simple fabrics, cotton or linen gauze.
The Early 19th Century
By the 1790s social revolution began to affect female dress. Clothing became plainer and the fabrics less extravagant as women demanded more freedom from the restrictive fashions of the 18th century. The higher-heeled and frilled shoes gave away to the lighter, lower heeled slippers. Colors gave way to pale colors and whites and additional ornamentation was considered ostentatious. Women on both sides of the Channel would be influenced by the clothing on Greek and Roman statuary recently unearthed at Pompeii and other archaeological sites in Italy.
The high tax on hair powder now began to effect female hairstyles as well as that of men. The piled and powdered wigs fell out of favor. Women began to wear their hair in more simple and natural styles.
Women’s Fashion in Jane Austen
In Jane Austen’s novels the female fashion would have depended on when they were written. The lades in the earlier novels of Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice all written before 1800 would have worn the earlier fashions. Marianne and Elinor Dashwood, Elizabeth Bennett and Catherine Morland all would have worn the round dresses with a raised waistline and the chemise dresses of the late 18th century. Their hair would have been curled and adorned with feathers or the balloon cap popular at the time.
Our heroines of the later novels, Emma Woodhouse in Emma, Fanny Price in Mansfield Park and Anne Elliot in Persuasion would have favored the neoclassical fashions popular during the Regency and Empire of Napoleon. The high-waisted chemise dress made of light transparent muslin far removed from the artificiality of the previous generations in the 18th century.
See Male Fashion in the Time of Jane Austen
Sources: Fashion: A History from the 18th to the 20th Century (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc., by arrangements with TASCHEN GmbH, 2006); Ashelford, Jane. The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society 1500-1914 (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1996); Le Faye, Deirdre. Jane Austen: The World of Her Novels (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2002)
Marilynn Doore - I aspire to Miss Jane Austen's advice given to her niece: to be patient, get on with it, think of your readers, and take inspiration from ...
