In my last post we went through the glory years of Regency fashion (and the first years of the Darcys' marriage!). But while the dresses of the later half of the 1810s were quite lovely, they signaled a transition into fashion that was going to go to extremes, first with sleeves and then with skirts.
This dress from the fashion museum at Bath shows the transition still underway. It features lots of trim, puffier sleeves, and a lower waistline with ruching at the bosom. The ruched area tapers towards the waist, a trend that will evolve to eventually form a point, for the next few decades will be all about accentuating the waist in various ways.
1824
embroidered cotton dress, Fashion Museum Bath. As the museum notes, this dress
is hand-embroidered but by the end of the decade, machine embroidery had been
invented and was in use.
At the beginning of the decade, undergarments were still very similar to what had been worn in the previous two decades. As this 1824-25 portrait below shows very clearly, it was still the fashion to separate the breasts, and stays were still constructed in order to do that.
Harriott
West, Sir Thomas Lawrence; as part of separating the breasts it was popular to
put a brooch between them, as she wears in the painting
Petticoats and pantalettes continued to provide additional layers below the outer dress, although as you can see we're moving away from those more transparent fabrics so they become less necessary for that purpose.
1820
half petticoat, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
As the decade continued, the petticoat took on a new purpose: to help provide shape for the dress. As the example below shows, sleeves on the petticoat helped provide volume for the increasingly puffier sleeves of the outer dress.
1822
petticoat with sleeves, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Aside from the other trends I've noted, you may have noticed some geometric patterns in the trim of some of the later gowns I've shown, and this continued to extremes. These zigzag designs were called "vandykes," a misspelling of the Dutch portrait painter whose subjects sometimes wore similarly geometric lace collars. The gown below shows an extreme example of this.
1824-25
taffeta dress, DAR Museum, Washington DC
The dress below shows a bit of vandyke trim, as well as the increasing sleeve size and extreme emphasis on a narrow waist that was coming in by the end of the decade.
1829
wedding dress, Gloucester Life Museum
Sleeves would go to even greater extremes, though, for this was the era of leg of mutton sleeves.