English Costume Part 39

A distinct change is shown in the eighth drawing of the long-tailed, full coat, the broad hat, the hair powdered, but not tied.

Number nine is another example of the same style.

The tenth drawing shows the kind of hat we a.s.sociate with Napoleon, and, in fact, very Napoleonic garments.

In eleven we have a distinct change in the appearance of English dress. The gentleman is a Zebra, and is so-called from his striped clothes. He is, of course, in the extreme of fashion, which did not last for long; but it shows a tendency towards later Georgian appearance--the top-hat, the shorter hair, the larger neckcloth, the pantaloons--forerunners of Brummell's invention--the open sleeve.

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Fourteen styles of hair and hats for men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A MAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)

The cuffs have gone, and now the sleeve is left unb.u.t.toned at the wrist. The coat is long and full-skirted, but not stiffened. The cravat is loosely tied, and the frilled ends stick out. These frills were, in the end, made on the shirt, and were called chitterlings.]

Number twelve shows us an ordinary gentleman in a coat and waistcoat, with square flaps, called dog's ears.

As the drawings continue you can see that the dress became more and more simple, more like modern evening dress as to the coats, more like modern stiff fashion about the neck.

The drawings of the women's dresses should also speak for themselves.

You may watch the growth of the wig and the decline of the hoop--I trust with ease. You may see those towers of hair of which there are so many stories. Those ma.s.ses of meal and stuffing, powder and pomatum, the dressing of which took many hours. Those piles of decorated, perfumed, reeking mess, by which a lady could show her fancy for the navy by balancing a straw ship on her head, for sport by showing a coach, for gardening by a regular bed of flowers. Heads which were only dressed, perhaps, once in three weeks, and were then rescented because it was necessary. Monstrous germ-gatherers of horse-hair, hemp-wool, and powder, laid on in a paste, the cleaning of which is too awful to give in full detail. 'Three weeks,' says my lady's hairdresser, 'is as long as a head can go well in the summer without being opened.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: {1772: A woman of the time of George III.; two types of hat; 1775: A woman of the time of George III.; 1794: A woman of the time of George III.}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WOMAN OF THE TIME OF GEORGE III. (1760-1820)

This shows the last of the pannier dresses, which gave way in 1794 or 1795 to Empire dresses. A change came over all dress after the Revolution.]

Then we go on to the absurd idea which came over womankind that it was most becoming to look like a pouter pigeon. She took to a buffon, a gauze or fine linen kerchief, which stuck out pigeon-like in front, giving an exaggerated bosom to those who wore it. With this fashion of 1786 came the broad-brimmed hat.

Travel a little further and you have the mob cap.

All of a sudden out go hoops, full skirts, high hair, powder, buffons, broad-brimmed hats, patches, high-heeled shoes, and in come willowy figures and thin, nearly transparent dresses, turbans, low shoes, straight fringes.

I am going to give a chapter from a fashion book, to show you how impossible it is to deal with the vagaries of fashion in the next reign, and if I chose to occupy the s.p.a.ce, I could give a similar chapter to make the confusion of this reign more confounded.

DRAWINGS TO ILl.u.s.tRATE THE COSTUME OF THE REIGN OF GEORGE THE THIRD

THE FIRST FORTY-EIGHT DRAWINGS BY THE AUTHOR, AND THE REMAINING TWELVE BY THE DIGHTONS, FATHER AND SON

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Five men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four men}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four men and a boy}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {A man and three women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: {Four women}]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The King.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Navy.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Army.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pensioners.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Church.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Law.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Stage.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Universities.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Country.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Duke of Norfolk.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The City.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Duke of Queensberry.]

GEORGE THE FOURTH

Reigned ten years: 1820-1830.

Born 1762. Married, 1795, Caroline of Brunswick.

Out of the many fashion books of this time I have chosen, from a little brown book in front of me, a description of the fashions for ladies during one part of 1827. It will serve to show how mere man, blundering on the many complexities of the feminine pa.s.sion for dress--I was going to say clothes--may find himself left amid a froth of frills, high and dry, except for a whiff of spray, standing in his unromantic garments on the sh.o.r.e of the great world of gauze and gussets, while the most noodle-headed girl sails gracefully away upon the high seas to pirate some new device of the Devil or Paris.