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.”