La Belle Assemblée, May 1815.
“Walking Dress.”
This beautiful pelisse, called the Angouleme Pelisse, shows some of the most current fashion elements that will become an exaggerated focus in the next decade: a general bell shape, a new emphasis on the shoulders, and a loosening of the fit the sleeves. The Duchesse d’Angoulême, the daughter and only surviving child of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, was an object of fascination and enormous popularity in England, where she had lived for some time, until the restoration of the French monarchy.
The lengthy description of this dress, pelisse, and hat is effusive in its praise of Mrs. Bell, who designed the ensemble. Her name is mentioned no less than four times. I still suspect that she wrote these fulsome descriptions herself.
The print is described in the magazine as follows:
“High dress of very fine jaconet muslin, with a very full body, formed to the shape by pieces of work at the shoulders and up each side of the back. Long loose sleeve, finished at the wrist by a broad piece of work, and a trimming of narrow lace; the front is half high, with a rich lace frill, which falls back and displays a little of the neck. Over this dress is worn the Angouleme pelisse, composed of pale lemon-coloured sarsnet shot with white, and lined with white sarsnet, it is open in front so as to display the under dress; for its form we refer our reader to the Print, and shall only observe that it is at present in the highest estimation, and is considered by our fair fashionists as singularly becoming to the shape. The trimming, which we understand Mrs. Belle has just invented, is really the most beautiful that we have seen for a long time, and we have no doubt will be universally adopted in the first circles of fashion. The bonnet worn with this pelisse is in no common degree tasteful and elegant, its form is perfectly original and singularly becoming, the small front is just enough in the French style to give an air of peculiar smartness to the wearer, and the very light and elegant materials of which it is composed most powerfully recommend it to the favour of our fair readers. Mrs. Bell’s mode of inventing her own materials is, we believe, for her things being so fashionable; ladies naturally get tired of wearing silk, satin, straw, &c, and eagerly adopt materials that are perfectly novel and singularly elegant. We are induced to make this observation from the very great demand which Mrs. Bell has for the elegant trimming of which we have just spoken. White kid sandals and gloves finish this dress.
“The above dresses [including this one] were invented by Mrs. Bell, Inventress of the Ladies Chapeau Bras and Circassian Corsets, and of whom only they can be had, at her Magazin des Modes, No. 26, Charlotte-street, Bedford Square.”
