Ackermann’s Repository of Arts, September 1813.
“Promenade Dress”
It has always seemed rather amusing to me that this print is titled a Promenade Dress, which typically indicates that it was meant to be worn during the late afternoon when fashionable society promenaded (or drove or rode) through Hyde Park. Yet this young lady is seated, alone, reading a book! Perhaps she had become bored with the preening and posing of her peers and found a quiet bench to escape the crowds. Or perhaps she simply had a good book she could not put down.
The print is described in the magazine as follows:
“PROMENADE COSTUME. A white jaconet muslin high dress, with long sleeves and collar of needle-work; treble flounces of plaited muslin round the bottom; wrist and collar confined with a silk cord and tassel. The hair disposed in the Eastern style, with a fancy flower in front or on the side. A Vittoria cloak, or Pyrennean mantle, of pomona green sarsnet, trimmed with Spanish fringe of a corresponding shade, and confined in graceful folds on the left shoulder. A whote lace veil thrown over the head-dress. A large Eastern parasol, the colour of the mantle, with deep Chinese awning. Roman shoes, or Spanish slipper, or pomona green kid, or jean. Gloves of primrose or amber-coloured kid.”
