It was a complete revolution, and it came almost without transition, the gay and gallant costume of the eighteenth century was aban-
Head-dress worn at home.
doned for a series of new inventions which imparted totally different lines to the form,
"Adieu paniers, vendanges sont faites." The well-known phrase, applicable at some time to all earthly things, was never more appropriate. The enormous paniers ceased to exist, at first they had been replaced by elbow-paniers (cl comic), consisting of a roll attached to two short pieces of padding, worn on either side, and serving as a supjJort for the elbows, and a third roll at the back—in short a bustle. But this compromise was soon rejected, and wonjen in almost flat skirts approached little by little to the ' sheath ' gown, and the too simple apparel of the Revolution.
Marie Antoinette, jjlaying at farming at Trianon, brought a touch of peasant costume into fashion, of course it was peasant costume of the comic opera kind, shepherdess dress in the sense of Florian or ' Le Devin du Village.' Straw hats, aprons, short jackets, and bed-gowns made their appearance,
Léonard reigned over heads, and ruled them after his fancy ; in other things Mile. Rose Bertin, the great purveyor of fashion to the Queen (she was called her " Minister of Modes"), was the supreme arbiter of taste at the Court of Marie Antoinette.
Rose Bertin issued orders and made decrees.
she invented and composed ; the ladies declared everything that came out of her hands to be a marvel, and their husbands com[)lained of
A large hat.
the magnitude of her charges—as husbands always do.
About 1780 there came a turn of the tide of fashion, and new shapes were demanded.
Polish and Circassian gowns, which had nothing either Polish or Circassian about them, were invented ; these gowns were short at first, and looped up on paniers, afterwards they were lonsj and flowing.
The tendency towards ' negligent ' fashion increased, 'Lévite' gowns^ came in, and gave rise to a disturbance in the Garden of the Luxembourg. A certain countess appeared there in a ' Monkey-tailed lévite,' that is to say a gown with a curiously cut and twisted train ; she was followed by a mocking crowd, and the guard had to be called to her rescue.
After the ' Lévites,' came ' negligent,' and ' half-negligent,' ' chemise,' ' bather's,' and ' undress ' gowns.
The fashionable colours for these oddly-named garments were—
' Canary's tail,' ' agitated nymph's thigh,' ' carmélite,' ' dauphin,' ' newly-arrived people,'
1 A ' Lévite ' was a long straight frock-coat, like that worn, by priests ; the ' Robe-lévite ' imitated it, with the train added. The word is obsolete.
PROMIA'ADI-: I'AKISIIIW'H 1790.
' lively shepherdess,' * green apple,' ' stifled sigh.'
Lévite Eobe.
A flea had somehow come to Court, the guard at the gates of the Louvre notwithstanding—immediately there was a ' flea ' ('pitcc) series ; 'flea-belly/ 'flea-back,' 'flea-thigh,' 'old flea,' ' young flea/ etc.i
The flea-colours suddenly gave place to another tint which was also of courtly origin, but bore the more seemly name, ' hair of the Queen,' ^ conferred upon it by the Comte d'Artois. On the instant every stuff had to be ' hair of the Queen ' colour.
The dress in which women rode on horseback, called ' Amazone/ was not, in the eighteenth century, the gloomy black garment inflicted upon the world by modern taste, and aggravated by the hideous tall hat.
Morcau the ycunger, whose series of engravings in Lo Monument de Costume shows us the whole of the society of his time, in the midst of its fêtes, its ceremonies, and its pleasures, in the salon, in the boudoir, in country-houses, at the Court, at the opera, in the Bois de Boulogne,
^ The King, Lonis XYI., is said to have bestowed this name on the new colour. 2 Cheveu de la Reine.
everywliere, has drawn the line ladies of 1780 in riding-dress, with long skirts and belts, English over-coats and little waistcoats, and large hats perched atop of the powdered
Au 'Amazou,' after the younger Morean.
Cadogan ^ plait which is familiar to us in these latter days.
The riding-habits of the eighteenth century ^ See note, Apj^endix, p. 264.
were very becoming, and admitted of great variety ; certainly the crowd in the Avenue of the Champs-Elysées did not then present the gloomy aspect which it wears at present even on the finest spring days.
Was it in reprisal for the war in America, that the monarchy was invaded by British fashions during the last years of its existence ? The shapes were new, and, both in general outlines and in detail, the preceding fashions were disregarded. Dress assumed unceremonious airs and an English ' cachet,' which implied a new régime. The ' only wear ' included vests, jackets with waistcoats, ' frocks ' with big buttons or laced, and ' driving coats ' with large lapels and triple collars, tight to the figure and very long at the back. The large and showy buttons of the vests were in metal of every kind and shape, and sometimes adorned with little pictures ; there are curious samples of these in various collections.
Women as well as men of fashion wore two watches with two long' chains hançrino- from the waistcoat ; they also wore cravats, Cadogans, and
Eoglish fashions.
' clubs ' like men, and carried long canes, while men took kindly to the women's big muffs. And the fichu ! All women wore, with every
kind of dress, large fichus, which swelled out the chest to an unnatural extent above the long and horribly-squeezed waist.
These costumes hoisted all the colours of the rainbow, the lightest, the brightest, the strangest ; there were satins, silks, and cloths of lemon colour, pink, apple green, canary, shot Indian silks, muslins, either plain or striped, of every possible tint. Stripes had an immense success in 1787. During the summer of that year, men, women, and children, all wore striped costumes.
Head-dressing also joined the revolutionary movement. The birth of the modern bonnet was at hand, head-costume, as understood by the nineteenth century, was about to develope itself. Women were still powdered, and still wore an immense quantity of hair in enormous wigs which bulged out around their faces, in tlie style of the masculine peruke, with big curls hanofiuCT at either side of the neck and down the back, or, like men, a thick club or Cadogan behind the head. Hats were of extraordinary shapes and dimensious, with immense brims, and enormous crowns laden with an extravagant quantity of trimming. A frigate in full sail
The bounet-hat.
was no longer worn on tlie head, but a boat, keel upward, put on sideways, and big enough to serve as an umbrella on occasion, was the height of fashion.
The bonnet-hat, and the demi-bonnet, a little smaller, but of the same height, were trimmed with bows of ribbon, ruches, and tufts of cock's feathers. The turban-hat, a tall Janissary's cap, was striped, plumed, and trimmed with a gauze scarf; the hat, called for the sake of the satirical pun, ' à la Caisse d'escompte,' because it was ' sans fonds,' was made of open straw, the hat which came into fashion after ihe affair of the Necklace, and was called 'Cardinal sur la paille ' (à propos of Cardinal de Rohan), made of straw edged with ribbon of Cardinal red. The big hat ' à la Tarare/ the ' Basile,' invented after the success of Beaumarchais, and many other fashions à la Figaro, the ' Widow of Malabar,' the Montgolfier cap, the ' Fixed Globe,' the ' Balloon '— these latter in honour of the first aerostatic experiments which made the sensation of the moment—preceded tlie cap 'of the Three Orders,' with which the long series of revolutionary fasliions began, on the Assembly of the States-General.