Image
French
Dress, ca. 1817
Description
Maker
Culture
Title
Dress
Year
ca. 1817
Medium
Silk twill with self-weft-float patterning, padded silk-satin
Materials/Techniques
-
Materials
Techniques
Dimensions
-
123.2 cm (48 1/2 inches) (center back length)
Type
Credit
-
Gift of William Ely
Object Number
-
37.339
About
This restrained silk dress hovers between Empire and Romantic styles. The high waist, defined just under the wearer’s bust, is a signature of Empire-era dress, popular between 1790 and 1815. The dress’s heavier-weight silk twill, its open bateau neckline, and its corded silk-satin trim at the cuffs and hem all move toward the Renaissance Revival look of Romantic-era dress popular in the 1830s.
At the hem, motifs of abstracted cyprus trees and palmette designs evoke the patterning found in imported textiles—in particular the Kashmiri wool shawls Napoleon’s soldiers accessed through new trade streams and brought back to France.
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Exhibition History
Exhibition History
Use
The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Dress with the accession number of 37.339. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.
Feedback
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