Morning Walking Dress, August 1818

Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, August 1818.

“Morning Dress”

This morning dress is clearly an outdoor dress, complete with pelisse and bonnet, so could more properly be called a Morning Walking Dress. However, the fabric of the pelisse — lutestring — is a fine glossy silk more often seen in evening wear. So this is a very elegant morning ensemble.

The bonnet is an example of the heights to which the crowns rose during this period, even though it is described as a “moderate” size.

The print is described in the magazine as follows:

“A high dress composed of jaconet muslin: the body ha a little fullness in the back; the fronts are plain, and wrap across in the style of a fichu. A row of richly worked trimming, headed with a doudle rouleau of muslin, through which a coloured ribbon is run, ornaments the back between the shoulders, and goes down on each side of the front. Instead of a collar, the body is ornamented at the throat by a single row of work, headed by a rouleau of muslin. The skirt is of an easy fullness; it is richly embroidered round the bottom in a light pattern of branches of leaves placed upright. Over this dress is worn a pelisse composed of pearl-coloured striped lutestring, trimmed round with a row of light embroidery in a wave pattern of pearl-coloured silk. The body is made plain, tight to the shape, and the waist is of a moderate length; it has no collar, but is finished at the throat by a frill of pointed blond. Plain long sleeves, embroidered at the wrist to correspnd with the skirt of the pelisse. Head-dress, the Clarence bonnet, compoised of blond intersected with pipings of pale pink satin, and ornamented with a full garland of moss and damask roses and bluebells. This bonnet is of a French shape, but it is a moderate and becoming size: it is tied under the chin with pale pink satin ribbon. Lemon-coloured gloves, and pale pink slippers.”

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