Evening gown, French, c1805-10. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute, New York.
Behind the tenth window of my advent calendar there is this rather beautiful French gown from around 1805, which may well have been worn by one of the sophisticated denizens of Napoléon’s court. I’ve seen several dresses that were worn by Empress Joséphine over the years and this gown is definitely comparable when it comes to embroidery, elegance and fineness of materials to those worn by the extremely chic Empress herself.
However, there is no suggestion of an exciting Imperial provenance in this dress’ history, alas. Though I think that in a way this demonstrates what a great leveller the late eighteenth century French trend for simple, flowing white cotton and muslin gowns actually was if the gowns worn by an Empress, one of her ladies in waiting and a more ordinary bourgeois lady were probably almost identical. Poor old Marie Antoinette was definitely ahead of her time when she donned That Dress for her portrait by Madame Vigée Lebrun and caused a massive ruckus.
Marie Antoinette en Gaulle, Vigée Lebrun, 1783. Photo: Schloss Wolfsgarten.
Anyway, the choice of this particular dress was inspired by the awful day that I am having. As Withnail would say, I would appear to have drifted into the arena of the unwell of late and am currently lying on my sofa swigging weak squash and watching the Romola Garai Emma, which I am enjoying rather more than I had expected to. I actually watched the first episode when it was shown but wasn’t impressed (I think I was also a bit bored and fed up with all the incessant Jane Austen remakes, which I’ve now started feeling are at the expense of Georgette Heyer) so didn’t watch any more – however, either I was being overly hasty or my tastes have changed as I really enjoyed it this afternoon. It was perfect undemanding fodder for a poorly day at home.
Muslin dress, c1813-20. Photo: Bath Fashion Museum/Melanie Clegg.
Anyway, although the costumes in this version of Emma weren’t as lavish as some I have seen in recent Jane Austen adaptations they were not without charm and seemed calculated to give a fresh, summery, youthful feel to the production. I was therefore inspired to look for something from the same period for my advent calendar – although proper full on evening dresses from the early nineteenth century are relatively rare due to the fragility of the material involved as demonstrated by this photo of me handling one of the muslin gowns in the Bath Fashion Museum a couple of years ago, where you can clearly see just how transparent the average muslin gown actually was and why it was considered so shocking when young ladies didn’t wear proper underthings beneath!
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