Fashion In The Time Of Jane Austen by Sarah Jane Downing Page A
Authors: Sarah Jane Downing
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Jane was fourteen in the year the Bastille was stormed marking the beginning of the period of turbulence that would launch democracy as a new force in the world. She had a direct link with the tragedies of the Revolution through her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, who had been married to the Comte de Feuillide before marrying Jane’s brother in 1797. Eliza was in England in February 1794 when she heard that her husband had met la guillotine , news that would make the horror of the Revolution shockingly real to all the Austen family.
The Angler’s Repast (George Morland, c . 1789). Rousseau’s ideas about nature became very influential, and as the closest acceptable thing to nature, the English country gentleman unexpectedly found himself a style icon.
A very rare fashion plate from a dressmaker’s journal of 1817, giving an embroidery pattern as well as fashions for the upcoming season that would be recreated to order for customers.
Before the Revolution Eliza had enjoyed an illustrious lifestyle in France with the Comte, and frequently wrote to tell her cousins of visiting Marie Antoinette at Trianon, including full details of the queen’s gowns. Jane enjoyed her keen and witty observations, later using Eliza as inspiration for her novel Lady Susan . Marie Antoinette had a major role in changing fashion away from the tightly corseted ornate gowns with vast skirts over pannier hoops, which she reputedly loathed wearing, to the simpler style à l’anglaise . Rousseau’s love affair with the English political system also encouraged the adoption of English fashions, as their studied casualness was regarded as elegantly democratic.
‘Morning Dresses’ ( The Gallery of Fashion , April 1797). Heideloff was a miniaturist in Paris before the Terror and his beautiful illustrations for The Gallery of Fashion revolutionised the fashion press.
Having been forced to flee from the Terror, many of Paris’ finest modistes and their clients arrived in London and quickly it became the new fashion capital. Amongst them was Nicolaus Wilhelm Von Heideloff who founded The Gallery of Fashion in 1794; its beautiful illustrations were inspirational and the fashion press soon took over as the premier conduit for fashion intelligence, encouraging a faster turnover of more diverse styles. Prior to that, fashions were rather charmingly delivered from Paris to the Courts of Europe by les grands courriers de la mode , life-size mannequin messengers dressed in every detail of the latest fashions, which would be tried on and taken apart so that patterns could be taken from them.
Women who participated in London society or who visited the fashionable centres were prevailed upon to relay every scrap of detail about the outfits of the most fashionable ladies they had seen. Like Mrs Gardiner in Pride and Prejudice , whose first duty upon arriving at the Bennet household was to ‘distribute her presents and describe the latest fashions’, they were undoubtedly pleased to do so with a sense of one-upmanship – but probably only after they had already commissioned their own dressmakers to start work!
Jane Austen herself regularly included fashion news in her letters when she was in Bath or London: ‘I am amused by the present style of female dress; – the coloured petticoats with braces over the white Spencers & enormous Bonnets upon the full stretch, are quite entertaining. It seems to me a more marked change than one has lately seen.’
With improved awareness of fashion it was increasingly important for young ladies to be fashionable as well as beautiful and well dressed. This important period marked the transition away from the old wide hooped silhouette, which remained reserved strictly for wearing at Court, to the modern vertical silhouette. For some years gowns were becoming narrower, with a rising waistline, and simpler, often taking inspiration from the masculine redingote or greatcoat. A puff of muslin known as a
Jane was fourteen in the year the Bastille was stormed marking the beginning of the period of turbulence that would launch democracy as a new force in the world. She had a direct link with the tragedies of the Revolution through her cousin Eliza de Feuillide, who had been married to the Comte de Feuillide before marrying Jane’s brother in 1797. Eliza was in England in February 1794 when she heard that her husband had met la guillotine , news that would make the horror of the Revolution shockingly real to all the Austen family.
The Angler’s Repast (George Morland, c . 1789). Rousseau’s ideas about nature became very influential, and as the closest acceptable thing to nature, the English country gentleman unexpectedly found himself a style icon.
A very rare fashion plate from a dressmaker’s journal of 1817, giving an embroidery pattern as well as fashions for the upcoming season that would be recreated to order for customers.
Before the Revolution Eliza had enjoyed an illustrious lifestyle in France with the Comte, and frequently wrote to tell her cousins of visiting Marie Antoinette at Trianon, including full details of the queen’s gowns. Jane enjoyed her keen and witty observations, later using Eliza as inspiration for her novel Lady Susan . Marie Antoinette had a major role in changing fashion away from the tightly corseted ornate gowns with vast skirts over pannier hoops, which she reputedly loathed wearing, to the simpler style à l’anglaise . Rousseau’s love affair with the English political system also encouraged the adoption of English fashions, as their studied casualness was regarded as elegantly democratic.
‘Morning Dresses’ ( The Gallery of Fashion , April 1797). Heideloff was a miniaturist in Paris before the Terror and his beautiful illustrations for The Gallery of Fashion revolutionised the fashion press.
Having been forced to flee from the Terror, many of Paris’ finest modistes and their clients arrived in London and quickly it became the new fashion capital. Amongst them was Nicolaus Wilhelm Von Heideloff who founded The Gallery of Fashion in 1794; its beautiful illustrations were inspirational and the fashion press soon took over as the premier conduit for fashion intelligence, encouraging a faster turnover of more diverse styles. Prior to that, fashions were rather charmingly delivered from Paris to the Courts of Europe by les grands courriers de la mode , life-size mannequin messengers dressed in every detail of the latest fashions, which would be tried on and taken apart so that patterns could be taken from them.
Women who participated in London society or who visited the fashionable centres were prevailed upon to relay every scrap of detail about the outfits of the most fashionable ladies they had seen. Like Mrs Gardiner in Pride and Prejudice , whose first duty upon arriving at the Bennet household was to ‘distribute her presents and describe the latest fashions’, they were undoubtedly pleased to do so with a sense of one-upmanship – but probably only after they had already commissioned their own dressmakers to start work!
Jane Austen herself regularly included fashion news in her letters when she was in Bath or London: ‘I am amused by the present style of female dress; – the coloured petticoats with braces over the white Spencers & enormous Bonnets upon the full stretch, are quite entertaining. It seems to me a more marked change than one has lately seen.’
With improved awareness of fashion it was increasingly important for young ladies to be fashionable as well as beautiful and well dressed. This important period marked the transition away from the old wide hooped silhouette, which remained reserved strictly for wearing at Court, to the modern vertical silhouette. For some years gowns were becoming narrower, with a rising waistline, and simpler, often taking inspiration from the masculine redingote or greatcoat. A puff of muslin known as a
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