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French

Dress, ca. 1817

Description

Maker

  • Unknown

Culture

French

Title

Dress

Year

ca. 1817

Medium

Silk twill with self-weft-float patterning, padded silk-satin

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • silk

Techniques

  • twill weave,
  • weft-float patterning,
  • weft float patterning,
  • satin weave

Dimensions

123.2 cm (48 1/2 inches) (center back length)

Type

  • Fashion,
  • Costume

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

Ceremonial Costumes

September 13 - October 14, 1973

Related

France Probably

Women's shoes, ca. 1817

More objects +

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

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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