Description: "Variety of the genteelest Dresses of 1772." Fashion engraving from a ladies pocketbook or almanac, such as The Ladies Most Elegant and Convenient Pocket Book of 1773 or similar publication. Fashion engravings, or plates, were an important visual and textual way of communicating current fashions in Europe and America in the 18th and 19th centuries. Rather than predict future fashions, these images (which sometimes had acconpanying text) usually showed examples of fashions current at the time of publication. This example depicts the fashions of women and girls. The middle woman wears a calash, or retractable bonnet, a type of headwear used in tandem with increasingly high and elabroate hairstyles. The woman on the right wears her skirt pulled or drawn up, in a style known as retrousee.
Link to share this object record: https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2016.12.3 |