Fashion In The Time Of Jane Austen by Sarah Jane Downing Page B
Authors: Sarah Jane Downing
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‘Buffon’ gave modesty to the décolletage and brought interest upwards to the face, which was framed prettily by a coiffure of natural curls and topped by a large picture hat.
‘Court Dress’ ( The Gallery of Fashion , July 1798). A gold overdress is worn over a spangled-satin petticoat. ‘Full dress’ was the most formal, the most ornate, and had the lowest décolletage. It was also the correct wear for attending Court, where it was worn with a headdress of upright ostrich to feathers, and before the Regent took the throne in 1820, old eighteenth-century hoop.
Mr and Mrs Hallett (after Thomas Gainsborough, 1785). Although Mr Hallett is not as fashionable as his wife, with her Buffon and picture hat she gives a beautiful depiction of the softer style à l’anglaise .
Jane was making her debut at the Basingstoke assemblies in 1792 just as fashions were becoming more changeable and responsive to what was going on in the world. Already an accomplished writer, having just completed A History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian , she was probably still more aware of other people’s fashions than her own.
Journal des Dames (1790). Inspired by the English redingote, the dress of lavender grey silk is worn over a white muslin petticoat with a Buffon and blue scarf crossed and tied as a sash.
Although film adaptations of Jane’s books usually set the costumes in the 1800s, her initial drafts of the novels that later became Pride and Prejudice , Sense and Sensibility , and Northanger Abbey were written between 1795 and 1798 and would have been set in the clothes of the day, if only in her imagination.
Jane has been criticised for writing little about the tremendous events that marked her era, but it was considered unseemly for ladies to discuss such matters. Yet, they arrived nonetheless, translated into garments and muslins that defined the era were born of the French Revolution, the neoclassical details were inspired by the political desire to emulate the democratic republics of the ancient world, and the military flourishes a response to the protracted period of war in which proportionately more British servicemen died than during the First World War. Fashion’s dramatic response was to make women reed-slender, their waistlines clinging to their bosoms as though for comfort, their silhouette sleek and etiolated, whilst male fashions took on the lean and statuesque lines of a Grecian hero or Olympiad.
Jane’s era was defined by the people who were willing to take their voice and speak out, and those who would use their ideas and talents to make a life for themselves as she herself did. Jane’s works seem very conventional from a twenty-first-century perspective, as do the fashions, but taking the timeframe of Jane’s major writing period from 1791 to her death in 1817, this book will show that it is a unique moment in fashion unequalled in its daring nudity, cropped hair and masculine styling until the jazz age nearly a century later.
Evening full dress ( La Belle Assemblée , January 1810). Fashions became undeniably sexy, foretelling those that would appear at the time of the First World War.
Engraving of the Rice Portrait (Ozias Humphrey, c . 1792–3), thought to be of a young Jane Austen, once held within the Austen-Knight family collection.
In defiance of the French Revolution, both men and women wore their hair à la Victime , with the front brought forward in a tousled fringe; this was later modified as the Titus coiffure.
THE RISE OF ENGLISH FASHION
Portrait of Pierre Seriziat (Jacques Louis David, 1795). The cut-away redingote, formhugging suede buckskins, top boots, tall hat and pristine neckcloth spoke of a bolder, faster lifestyle more natural in the fresh air of the countryside.
F OR MALE FASHION it was the ‘battle between broadcloth and silk’ as Balzac had termed it in 1798, and the broadcloth had triumphed. Gone were the old prim white stockings and buckle
‘Court Dress’ ( The Gallery of Fashion , July 1798). A gold overdress is worn over a spangled-satin petticoat. ‘Full dress’ was the most formal, the most ornate, and had the lowest décolletage. It was also the correct wear for attending Court, where it was worn with a headdress of upright ostrich to feathers, and before the Regent took the throne in 1820, old eighteenth-century hoop.
Mr and Mrs Hallett (after Thomas Gainsborough, 1785). Although Mr Hallett is not as fashionable as his wife, with her Buffon and picture hat she gives a beautiful depiction of the softer style à l’anglaise .
Jane was making her debut at the Basingstoke assemblies in 1792 just as fashions were becoming more changeable and responsive to what was going on in the world. Already an accomplished writer, having just completed A History of England by a Partial, Prejudiced and Ignorant Historian , she was probably still more aware of other people’s fashions than her own.
Journal des Dames (1790). Inspired by the English redingote, the dress of lavender grey silk is worn over a white muslin petticoat with a Buffon and blue scarf crossed and tied as a sash.
Although film adaptations of Jane’s books usually set the costumes in the 1800s, her initial drafts of the novels that later became Pride and Prejudice , Sense and Sensibility , and Northanger Abbey were written between 1795 and 1798 and would have been set in the clothes of the day, if only in her imagination.
Jane has been criticised for writing little about the tremendous events that marked her era, but it was considered unseemly for ladies to discuss such matters. Yet, they arrived nonetheless, translated into garments and muslins that defined the era were born of the French Revolution, the neoclassical details were inspired by the political desire to emulate the democratic republics of the ancient world, and the military flourishes a response to the protracted period of war in which proportionately more British servicemen died than during the First World War. Fashion’s dramatic response was to make women reed-slender, their waistlines clinging to their bosoms as though for comfort, their silhouette sleek and etiolated, whilst male fashions took on the lean and statuesque lines of a Grecian hero or Olympiad.
Jane’s era was defined by the people who were willing to take their voice and speak out, and those who would use their ideas and talents to make a life for themselves as she herself did. Jane’s works seem very conventional from a twenty-first-century perspective, as do the fashions, but taking the timeframe of Jane’s major writing period from 1791 to her death in 1817, this book will show that it is a unique moment in fashion unequalled in its daring nudity, cropped hair and masculine styling until the jazz age nearly a century later.
Evening full dress ( La Belle Assemblée , January 1810). Fashions became undeniably sexy, foretelling those that would appear at the time of the First World War.
Engraving of the Rice Portrait (Ozias Humphrey, c . 1792–3), thought to be of a young Jane Austen, once held within the Austen-Knight family collection.
In defiance of the French Revolution, both men and women wore their hair à la Victime , with the front brought forward in a tousled fringe; this was later modified as the Titus coiffure.
THE RISE OF ENGLISH FASHION
Portrait of Pierre Seriziat (Jacques Louis David, 1795). The cut-away redingote, formhugging suede buckskins, top boots, tall hat and pristine neckcloth spoke of a bolder, faster lifestyle more natural in the fresh air of the countryside.
F OR MALE FASHION it was the ‘battle between broadcloth and silk’ as Balzac had termed it in 1798, and the broadcloth had triumphed. Gone were the old prim white stockings and buckle
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