Fashion In The Time Of Jane Austen by Sarah Jane Downing Read Free Book Online

Madame Gardel, performer of the shawl dance, who would give instruction in the graces of the shawl.
    S LENDER DIAPHANOUS DRESSES meant that there was now nowhere for pockets, and the ‘reticule’ – or ‘ridicule’ as it was christened by the satirists – was born along with a coterie of new accessories. These details added interest to a simple gown and their exotic nature spoke of the wealth, connections and taste necessary to procure them, whilst the delicate movements necessary to handle them helped to display a woman’s pretty plump arms and dainty hands.
    At most points in the preceding centuries skirts had been capacious enough to be able to accommodate small bags or separate ‘pockets’ tucked away within the folds, but the slender lines and diaphanous muslins of the 1800s rendered them redundant. Clearly ladies could not simply carry their possessions, and on the suggestion that Athenian ladies had once transported their possessions in small decorative bags, the reticule became the ‘must have’ accessory of 1800.
    Muffs had grown in size when gowns grew narrower as though the soft bulk of a fur or swansdown muff drew favourable comparison to the slender silhouette. White swansdown was de rigueur for evening, whilst richer and warmer fur or sealskin would match fur-trimmed pelisses and cloaks by day. The capacious size made them handy for concealing private items like billetsdoux, and it is likely that they were used to carry various personal items even if not sanctioned to do so.
    The natural antecedent to the reticule was the knotting bag which, ostensibly to carry the accoutrements for the fashionable hobby, became something of a display item in the 1790s. It provided a pretty showcase for the ladies’ knotting and needlework talents – which Mr Bingley in Pride and Prejudice considered a great female accomplishment – and as Lady Mary Coke noted as early as 1769: ‘she had a knotting-bag, embroidered, hanging to her arm – “tho indeed” said she “I never knott, but the bag is convenient for one’s gloves and Fan.”’
    In 1799 The Times reported ‘the total abjuration of the female pocket… every fashionable fair carries her purse in her work-bag’. With the addition of longer handles and having been renamed ‘indispensables’, reticules were also featured in November that year in a fashion plate in The Gallery of Fashion . In France the knotting association was immortalised in the name, derived from reticulum (the Latin for ‘net’). ‘Reticule’ took over as the fashionable name probably because of the glamorous classical motifs of the Parisian reticules made of cardboard or lacquered tin in the shape of Grecian urns suitable for the most elegant priestess.

    White silk reticule with border embroidered with floral designs and silver spangles, and tassels on each point ( c . 1790–1810).
    Reticules could be bought from milliners ready made, but many ladies enjoyed making their own. In infinite variety reticules could match with a gown, Spencer, parasol, gloves or shoes. Usually in silk or, after 1810, increasingly in velvet, they were rectangular, lozenge shaped, or even during the Napoleonic wars shaped like the military sabretache, each with a tassel from the lowest point. Framed bags also became popular, the metalwork providing not only a secure alternative to the drawstring, but an opportunity to add moulded designs of sphinxes or classical lion masks. Within the first three decades of the century they became a major vehicle for female artistic and even, in the case of the silk reticules distributed by the Ladies’ Society for the Relief of Negro Slaves, political expression.

    Eliza Farren, Countess of Derby (after Sir Thomas Lawrence, c . 1792) wearing a furtrimmed cloak with large matching muff.
    The large picture hats of the 1790s gave way to a far less extravagant look. Hair became simple, close to the head and was often closely cropped in little curls decorated with a