Paisley Shawls -- the History and the Beauty

Joanna here, talking about that fashion accessory of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, the shawl.

Why shawls? We wear form-fitted, sleeved outer garments mostly — coats and sweaters and parkas and anoraks and Macintoshes — in the Twenty-first Century and feel pleased and practical doing so. Why did folks spend centuries throwing loose garments around themselves that didn’t button up and had to be draped and fidgeted with in a manner that may strike us as awkward?

I think an ideal of feminine beauty was at the root of it. The drape and swirl of a shawl, the varied possibilities with all their minute adjustments were alluring to the watcher. Displaying the shawl was an art, and this length of silk or wool might well be the most expensive object a woman wore.

So let’s talk paisley, since we’re talking shawls.

Paisley is based on a repeated, teardrop-shaped design pattern called a bota or boteh – a word that means  “shrub” or “cluster of leaves” in Persian.

A decorative Persian tile from 1262. The boteh design comes from such roots

 This boteh is an ancient pattern, widespread in rugs, paintings, and tiles. It's an abstract shape that probably comes from the simplification of many sorts of feathers, fruit, flowers and so on in older designs. That is, there's no one origin. It's derived from many complexities that lost detail as they were copied and recopied.

In the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the East India Company imported these Indian designs to Europe where they became immensely popular. Soldiers returning from service in the East brought back lovely, expensive scarves of silk and soft Kashmir (cashmere) wool to their sweethearts and family. The British version of the scarves might cost more than 20 pounds. Sir Walter Scott’s French bride Charlotte Carpentier was given a Kashmir shawl in 1797 for her trousseau that cost 50 guineas, a huge sum in those days.

A fine shawl wrapping up mother and child 1825

Period portraits are full of these Kashmiri scarves gracefully swirled round the shoulders of women in flimsy low cut, high-waisted dresses. The survival of generations of scantily clad British beauties doubtless depended on these lengths of wool.

British wool and silk paisley shawl showing boteh 1810

Almost as soon as the imported scarves arrived, they were copied enthusiastically by European weavers, among them the craftsmen of the Scottish city of Paisley, so much so that the Persian design ended up named "paisley" after that city in Renfrewshire, Scotland, far, far from the exotic mountains and plains of the East.

The handlooms and, after 1820, Jacquard looms, of the misty north produced quite a good imitation of the original Indian product. But it was  not a perfect likeness. 
Throughout the import period, imported Kashmiri shawls were more expensive and preferred over the British version. The colors were more varied. Even at the height of Scots weaving they were using a mere 15 colors as opposed to the more than 40 colors used in the Eastern imports. The quality of foreign weaving superior, and the fabric itself was lighter. British shawls were made from sheep’s wool. Kashmiri scarves, from softer, more supple, more lustrous goat’s hair. And Kashmiri weavers used the “twill tapestry technique”.

Those of you in the know about weaving technique will recognize that this means the horizontal (weft) threads of the pattern do not run all the way across the fabric but are woven back and forth around the vertical (warp) threads to where the color is needed again. This is the way Europeans weave tapestries. And no, I knew nothing about weaving technique before I looked this up.

A typical Kashmiri goat. This one is named Anna

When you’re through trying to figure out what that weaving stuff means you will be asking “Why didn’t the British import Kashmiri sheep and raise their own soft goat hair? They tried in 1818, but didn’t get good hair production. Britain wasn’t cold enough, apparently.

Anyhow, the creamy ecru background of many of the scarves in those Regency portraits is the natural color of goat’s fleece. Also, the finest goat wool, like the finest sheep wool and, for all I know, the finest cat fur, comes from the underbelly of the animals. These are the little factoids that make life so cool and give you something to talk about at parties.

1802 to 1814 shawls and how to wear them

How popular was the Kashmiri shawl?
Pretty popular, as per:

“…a fine cashemire shawl, with brown background, and richly variegated border, is generally thrown over the dress, in which is united both comfort and elegance.”
La Belle Assemblé, 1806

“…over these is thrown, in elegant drapery, a long Indian shawl of the scarf kind, the colour of the palest Ceylon ruby, the ends enriched by a variegated border…”
La Belle Assemblée, 1812

(Though I’m not sure what color a “pale Ceylon ruby” would be.)

After the Regency period, in the age of many petticoats and full crinolines, scarves expanded to accommodate. We get huge scarves in this era.

Here's a big ole shawl worn over a crinoline in 1865

And here's another example of the difference between imported scarves and British ones. The British-woven scarves might weigh three pounds. The imported Kashmiri shawl of roughly the same size, five to nine ounces.

And eventually, the paisley-patterned scarf went away, as fashions will. Paisley shawls declined in popularity after the 1870s. It's likely the new fashion of bustles meant shawls no longer draped attractively. And block-printed fabrics – ever so much cheaper – became popular. This undermined the exclusivity of the paisley shawl.
So, there you have it. The shawl we all know and love from Historical Romances. How many downtrodden heroines have been sent off to fetch the cranky dowager's shawl and run headlong into the hero?

Now me, I have a fine wool shawl that lives over the back of my favorite chair all winter long. It's from Kashnir, I think, and has genuine botehs on it. When the woodstove heats my front nicely, the shawl covers my back.

Technical Topic -- Note about stays

Abigail Adams, in 1800, saw visiting Frenchwomen wearing Empire-style dresses in Philadelphia and wrote in a letter:

"The stile of dress ... is really an outrage upon all decency. I will describe it as it has appeared even at the drawing Room ... A Muslin sometimes, sometimes a crape made so strait before as perfectly to show the whole form. The arm naked almost to the shoulder and without stays or Bodice."

To me this says many respectable Frenchwomen were not wearing corsets or stays in my time period when they dressed à l'antique.
 

Keeping It Clean -- Georgian and Regency Bathing Customs

Talking about Georgian and Regency bathtubs, here, and the joys of getting clean. 

 
There is a general view that historical people were rather dirty, there being a dearth of historical folks getting up at six and grabbing a bar of soap and popping in to warble un bel dì vedremo in the shower.  I'm afraid we all feel rather smug about our acres of colored tile with the running hot and cold.

How clean were they?  The townsfolks as they merrily hung aristos from the lamposts, Ninon de l'Enclos, Voltaire, (Did you know Ninon left money in her will for the 9-year-old Voltaire to buy books?) Napoleon, Jane Austen, the kitchenmaid grinding coffee in the morning? How clean were they?

For more, follow the post over to Word Wenches, here.

Shooting your way out . . . with a flintlock

Hello folks,

A treat for you today.  I've invited an expert in antique firearms to talk about a subject near-and-dear to my heart -- pistol packing spies.

Random armed person of the Eighteenth Century

The problem with carrying dueling pistols and military ordinance in 1789 or in 1811 is that the general run of turn-of-the-Eighteenth-Century weaponry was big.
And heavy.



Not the sort of thing you could comfortably cart around in a purpose-sewn pocket in your jacket or cloak.

Not this small

Recognizing this sad fact, gunsmiths of the time made smaller weapons, intended for sneakier people.

It is those guns that I want to look at today.  So let me introduce my guest, 'Arizona'. 

Jo:  Welcome, Arizona.  We're glad to have you and your expertise with us.  Tell me about sneaky little guns in the era of the French Revolution and Regency.  These would have been ladies' guns?

Arizona:  Yes, they were.  Ladies had some firearms built specifically for them in the 1700's to early 1800's.  They were called "Muff Pistols".  These were small handguns which were easily hidden in a lady's muff, or handwarmer.  They were also small enough to hide within the voluminous clothing women wore in those days.


Jo: Did men carry them?

Arizona:  Though they were called ladies', or muff, pistols, many men carried them as they were considered to be what our small .380's and such are today.

Jo:  I notice men called them 'pocket pistols' when they carried them.  *g*  They weren't like modern guns, right?

Arizona:  These were flintlock pistols.  Percussion caps were designed in 1805, so it would be unlikely an actual percussion firearm would have been immediately available.

You will note, as you consider the various designs below, that firearms don't seem to have changed much since the early 1700's through the early 1800's.  That is true, though the "lines" of the firearms became more elegant and less "blocky". 



A little aside here, what we, today, would consider too large for one's pocket was indeed a "pocket pistol" during the period we are talking about.  Men wore greatcoats which had rather large pockets.  Thus, a pistol we would consider far too large for a pocket today would indeed fit into a man's greatcoat pocket.

Jo:  Can you show us some examples of these small Regency-era pistols?

Arizona: Here's a VERY good description of muff pistols, and the pocket type in particular.

Lady's muff pistol

 
From the 18th century small concealable pistols for self protection, were manufactured in Europe in large numbers. The picture shows a flintlock example manufactured in 1820 from Birmingham England.

While there were several notable firearms manufacturers, there were far more "cottage industry" gunsmiths who would make pretty much anything you requested.  Almost every medium to large city had several such gunsmiths.  The only comparable situation today is Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan, where everything from matchlock firearms to AK-47's are made in home workshops.  Ammunition is made in the same way.

Measuring just over 4 inches (11.8cm) these lightweight guns were intended mainly for women. As they could easily be concealed in a Ladies hand warmer, they gained the name of Muff pistols.

Like many of this type of weapon it is fitted with a sliding safety catch to prevent accidental discharge.


Jo:  Ok.  How does my heroine load her pistol?

Arizona:  The shooter loads the firearm with black powder followed by a round lead ball.

This is usually done from the muzzle end, though, with some muff pistols, you unscrewed the barrel, seated the powder and ball, then screwed the barrel back on.
The ball was normally wrapped with a cloth patch, (though a piece of paper could be used in a pinch).

Once the powder was measured and poured down the barrel and the patched ball placed on the crown of the muzzle, a ramrod was used to force the ball down to the chamber where it was tamped against the powder, creating the charge. 

On larger pistols the ramrod was in it's familiar place under the barrel, for those who have seen "Kentucky Rifles" and other muzzle loaders.  In the case of smaller pistols, such as muff pistols, they generally came in a case, with a small powder flask, some balls, and a ramrod, which was generally kept in the case.

Remember, these were not thought to be used in a battle.  Rather, they were a last ditch self protection instrument, to be used when all else had failed.  You generally wouldn't have time to reload them, thus there was no need to keep the ramrod with the pistol.


Jo:  This took a while, this business of loading a pistol?

A three-barrel flintlock pistol

Arizona: Muzzle loading firearms were extremely slow to reload. Even experts were reported to need 15 seconds to reload a smooth-bore musket, with a much longer reload time for any rifled firearm. 

So some flintlock pistols were produced with anywhere from two, three, or four to as many as 24 barrels.  (The larger capacity firearms were of later manufacturer.) 


This photo and some of the information are from the Flintlock wiki, here.

Jo:  Wow.  Not something to carry around with you like a handkerchief, those bigger guns.

Arizona:  No, they were generally pretty heavy and rather large and bulky.

Most of the flintlock pepperboxes and multi-barrel pistols were of six or fewer barrels.  This was more due to the method of ignition (powder in the pan, which could be easily ignited by sparks from another barrel) than inability to design and build such a handgun. These designs tended to be costly to make and were often unreliable and dangerous.

While weapons like double barreled shotguns were reasonably safe, weapons like the pepperbox revolver would sometimes fire all barrels simultaneously, or would sometimes just explode in the user's hand.

It was therefore often less expensive, safer, and more reliable to carry several single-shot weapons instead.

Jo:  Right.  Carry a couple guns.  This sounds like such excellent advice I will have to have Doyle give it to somebody one of these days.
You have some audio-visuals for us?

Arizona:  The first You-Tube video shows how the flintlock works. Here.

This video shows the loading and firing sequence of a flintlock pistol.  Here.
   
And this one is an excellent example of loading and firing a flintlock musket through the use of paper cartridges.  Here.



Here to the side is the firing sequence for a flintlock.


Jo:  Let me add some more excitement --
See and hear the action of a frizzen, here. 
See and hear the action of the hammer here.
See and hear the gun fire here.

And some more interesting firing of period weapons here.

Now, Arizona, you have some pictures of the actual period pistols.

Arizona:  Here is a link to a small(er) double barreled French Flintlock Coat Pistol, ca 1750.  Another link to a French "Greatcoat Pistol" here.  And another small pistol.  Here.  This one shows some of the markings a royal arms dealer would have placed on their wares.  Here.

Jo:  That's beautiful workmanship on those.  And we see how the double barrels work.

I know there are number of folks who want details on the anatomy of a flintlock and the exact firing sequence.  I've put this below the cut . . .

Delve down below the cut and you will learn the origin of phrases like, 'flash in the pan,' and, 'to go off half-cocked'.  When we talk about 'lock, stock, and barrel', the 'lock' is the flintlock.
Cool, huh?

You will also become acquainted with the word 'frizzen' -  which is not the past perfect of an unfortunate day at the hairdressers.

Regency Bling

Regency Bling

The Regency gentleman's code might be summed up as, "no perfumes, exquisitely fine linen and plenty of it, country washing . . ."
and bling. 

I went in search of Regency bling, hoping for a gold ring in the ear of at least some Regency fops. 
Alas, not so much. 

The robust and adventurous Tudors wore earrings.  The courtier Buckingham sported major rubies.  That man of action, Sir Walter Raleigh, a gold hoop.  (This picture here shows him with a remarkably fine pearl earring.)


A half century later, Charles I wore a great pearl in his ear when he mounted the block to face the axe. 
By the Eighteenth Century, however, earrings had become the province of buccaneers, exotic foreigners, and the most foppish of macaronis.

See the rest at Word Wenches  here.

Knitting the Revolution

It's a great pity to do lots of research and find stuff out and then realize you will never be able to use most of it. 

Over the last year, I learned more than I ever wanted to know about  who knit what, when and how in France in 1790. 

None of this will fit into a story. 

"Ah," says I to myself.  "I'll put it on the blog."

So if you don't care about knitting in 1794 in France,
(and who could blame you,)
you can wander off again and I will doubtless write something more interesting someday.

I don't know a great deal about knitting as a craft, I'm afraid.
When I decided Maggie needed to do some knitting in The Forbidden Rose I went out and bought some yarn and five, two-ended needles to see how it felt to knit.

I kept losing yarn off the end of the needles.
Apparently the French of 1790 didn't need the endy bits that keep the yarn from escaping.  Or perhaps using endy bits was considered unsporting.

If I'd been knitting wool, I expect it would have itched.
And if I did this all day long, I'd have really strong fingers.

Women's costume France 1795 - caps and hats

Here we are talking about the headwear of middleclass and working class women in 1794. Women's hats and caps.

(With any of these images, click on the images for a closer look. )

In the C20, adult women started going bareheaded. Before that, in Western Europe, women wore some type of head covering virtually all the time, inside the house and out -- shawls, caps and hats.

In 1794, inside, most grown women would have worn a cap. Outside, they would have worn a hat or a hat over a cap. It's hard to add this costume reality to a Historical Romance without the reader finding it strange.

Caps

Caps for our middleclass and working class woman could mean either a simple mob cap or a fancier lace cap. Even a relatively poor woman might wear a fancy lacy cap as an indulgence.

A mob-cap was a circle of cotton or linen, gathered up and held on the head with a band or ribbon. A deep ruffle ran around it, framing the face and neck.

Our famous tricoteuses are wearing mobcaps. In the period it was sometimes called the 'Charlotte Corday'.

In 1794, in Paris, a cap like this would have been ornamented with the tricolored cockade or rosette. It wasn't quite a law that women had to wear the cockade. (It was the law for men.) Women just found it a good idea.

To the left here, see a tricoteuse in a simple linen cap.

Here, we got a 1790 cap. It's English, but it's a good workingclass cap, and all these designs are very similar. See how fancy it is.

A mob cap was the simplest of caps. It was essentially unchanged for a century before 1794 and close to a century afterwards.

In France the mobcap's design would have conformed to Revolutionary ideas of simplicity and modesty. It'd be 'politically correct' in 1794.

Another simple cap -- if you zip down to the next post, the one on aprons, you'll see a Greuze portrait of a little girl asleep, wearing a simple cap of this type.

Where did women wear caps?

Inside and out.

Here's an early C18 example of women inside the house, wearing simple caps. The wealthy women at the card game wear a couple similar caps. The maid who's serving them coffee has the same cap on, basically. Hers may be a little simpler.

This Boilly painting is 1803. We got our upscale people in Paris. Mom -- see her there -- is wearing a sort of turban type cap.

Where I'm going with this picture ....

In the English upper middle class and gentry, there seems to have been something of an age distinction in the wearing of caps.

Young ladies might wear their hair uncovered, gathered in a simple fillette or band. Mature women and married women wore caps. One of the Regency Romance staples is a spinster deciding it's time to start wearing 'caps' indoors.

Did this ' young marriagable' versus 'spinster' age distinction hold true in France? The Boilly portrait would seem to indicate it might.

Women, as I said above, wore caps on the street, or hats. Sometimes wore caps under their hats.

So, how did you wear a cap and a hat all simultaneous?

On the left, Madame Seriziat in this David's 1795 portrait is doing it. here.

Her cap is a large, lacy and fancy one, but the pricniple's good for our simper women in simpler mobcaps.

Our 1790s newseller in Paris is wearing a bouffant lacy cap on the streets, not unlike the one in the David picture. Her cap is covered by a kind of scarf drawn up over her head and her cap

 

You remember where I said the mobcap was sometimes called the Charlotte Corday? Here's the lady herself in jail awaiting execution. Her bonnet is more fancy than the usual mobcap.

Midway between a hat and a cap are several sorts of fashionable turbans.

These seem to have been worn -- shaped a little differently -- by both sexes. They were popular with the 'arty' crowd. Maybe this was influenced by the same love of the exotic Orient that gave us Banyans.

I'm going to assume these turbans were made up carefully and permanently and set on the head, rather than being created de novo each time from a long swath of fabric.

Ok. Having said that women wore caps and hats about all the time, I'm going to backtrack and say . . . 'They didn't always.'

Sometimes grown women ventured out on the streets of Paris with their heads just bare. Look back up to our

newspaper seller above. That woman in the background is capless and hatless.

See the women here also. (Find it at home, here, at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.)

This to the right is a roughly 1790 print -- see the tricolour ribbon on one of those fancy, frilly hats -- that's a feature of the period.

Anyhow, we got a half dozen women sitting on the very fashionable Boulevard des Italiens. A couple of them have uncovered hair. Might be a fillet or band on the head by not a hat.

The child is wearing a simple straw hat. The other hats are pretty elaborate. Upscale.

My guess is that 'bare-headed' meant fashionable and young,

or not quite respectable.

I think modest working women had a tendency to cover up.

The next post, the one about aprons, shows us some prostitutes at the Palais Royal in a time close to our target year. You can wander down and have a look at it. Several of our filles de joie have their hair uncovered.

. . . the thin line between fashionable and indecent was always skimpy in Paris, and never thinner than in Paris of the Revolution and the Directory.

Hats

A huge favorite, the chip straw hat in the 1795 David portrait of Madame Serizat, above, is typical of the era. Natural color straw, flat crowned, with a large flat brim, wide ribbon that coordinates with the outfit, tied under the chin.

In this LeBrun self-portrait to the right, we see a variation of the straw hat. It's similar in shape to the David portrait, and of similar shape, but with a feather and no ribbon tying it under the chin. The brim is turned up a bit.A lot of these straw hats were straw-dyed-black.

Below, we got a mixed bag of fashionable hats for young ladies.

These would last about ten minutes on a modern kid methinks.


Are we richer or poorer that the average person doesn't spiffy up this much?

Women's costume 1794, France, Aprons and Pockets

We're back for another installment of the clothing of the working and middle classes in France in 1794. This one is on Aprons and 'Pockets'.


Aprons

Did somebody say apron?

We don't wear aprons these days, so it's a little hard to work out what they felt like to wear. How you handled them. In 1794, everybody in the middle and working classes seems to have gone running around in an apron, more or less continuously.

Now the rich in the C18 don't routinely wear aprons over their clothes. They sometimes show up in little lacey apron-ettes, but that's not applicable to my working folks.

It seems to me well-to-do women in the 1790-1794 period start showing up more and more with an apron on 'em as part of their day dress. Maybe they were making a political point.

So. Looking at aprons.

This one is from 'Street Cries of Paris' by Bouchardon, and dates to about 1740.
But I think aprons stayed very much the same.

We got ourselves a salad seller. Romaine lettuce, looks like.

The apron is as long as the skirt, which seems to be typical for working women. It's pulled up and the hem tucked into the waist of her skirt on the side. It's the left side, (her left,) so it's likely that's what right-handed people do.

Here's a closeup of two aprons. (Greuze, The Village Bride, 1761.)

Both mother and child have the pinned-up bib on the top. See more detail of a pinned-up bib below.


Mom has her apron tied, not in back, but on the side. Her right side. That would be easier for a left-handed person, ISTM.
I have also seen period apron strings so long they come clear around the wearer and are tied in front.

The girl holds her apron up, making a pouch, keeping her little bits in it. She takes a handful of fabric. This is going to be just an automatic gesture for anyone who wears aprons.

As long as I got the picture here , look at the caraco on the woman above. I think there's a slit in the side seam to allow access to a pocket beneath.
More on pockets below.


See how the child has her fichu tucked into the top of her apron bib. There must have been an art to tucking the fichu.

Here we got another too-early picture ... before 1771. This is market women.

The clothes are much too early to be relevant. But see how our gal on the left has her aprong converted fully into a secure pouch for carrying . . . I dunnoh. Maybe the entire Oxford English Dictionary or watermelons.

She's tucked the hem of the apron neatly into her waist at the middle, letting it gape a bit at both sides.

Note also that this is a dark blue apron. I have other examples of dark-coloured aprons in France, at least one of them in period. See the 1794 apron on the tricoteuse further below.

Here are some 1850s aprons.
I'm just wandering all over the place, timewise, ain't I?

This Millet is here only for the custom of typing the apron back behind the butt like this and making a big carryall. I'm assuming this was done in my era too.

But since you're tired of me wandering all over French history ... we got some truly period aprons coming up.

Lookit.

The next ones are early 1790s, as are the tricoteuses further on.

In the picture where our sansculotte young lady is carrying a sword, see the way the skirt is drawn up on one side and tucked in. It's on her left side. Right-handed sansculotte?
Visit that bottom print at home here,

In other news, in these three prints, note the mid-length hair, worn undressed and loose under the cap. Note the sabots. Note the striped material of the skirts.

Our lady above, on the upper left has a little basket on her arm and what looks like a bag slung at waist level. I think the basket is to hold yarn. We see the same thing in the Greuze painting below. The little pouch on the side of her seems to be an exterior pocket. I've seen these from time to time.



And here we got Les Tricoteuses Jacobines by LeSueur, which is, of course, smack dab in period.

Our knitters have specialized aprons. Little pockets on the right, (their right,) side of the skirt.

And here is the dark apron I mentioned. So they weren't all white, even among our working class gals.
One way we know they are working class is the length of their skirts. See our gal on the right? Short skirt = laboring class.

Find our tricoteuses here.

Below is a rather interesting take on that 'tricoteuse apron'.

This is the Palai Royale, a noted haunt of prostitutes.

See the madame in the back offering the pretty young knitter to that unpleasant fellow? Her pocket says she's a working girl and gives the impression of an innocence she's about to sell.

Find it here.

Now ... here is Greuze, La Tricoteuse Endormie.
Let us all pause to go aaaaaawwww.

Ahem. Back to business.

This apron shows how the bib attaches. See how one side has come unpinned?

Purely by the by, see those four needles in the knitting? I have tried to knit with four needles. I will blog about that.

And we got that basket the 1794 knitters carry to hold their ball of yarn when they don't have a pocket in their skirt..


Moving on to the fascinating subject of 'pockets'.



'Pockets'

These were not the sewed-in feature we are used to. They were a little bag tied at the waist, under the skirt. Often this was two pockets, tied separately, and worn one on each hip.

This makes comprehensible the nursery rhyme:

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it.
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.

which has worried and puzzled generations of readers.

We have some early C18 pockets here, from the V & A.

These are linen, sewn with linen thread, embroidered in coloured silks, with silk ribbon and linen tape

A couple more below.

Find them in detail here.

These are from Meg Andrews, Antique Costume and Textiles. Her site is here. These pockets are white cotton, marcella quilted, joined on a wide 2 inch band. They tie with tapes. There's a different design on the two pockets. Odd, what.

Here's a pair of 1796 pockets -- exactly in era. These are embroidered linen.



They belong to the Met, which welcomes you here.

You're wondering how folks got into their pockets in 1794?


Folks got into the pockets by reaching through slits in the seam of their skirt. The caraco in 1794 wouldn't have been long enough to interfere with access, so they could just go through that skirt.


Lookit here where you see just exactly those slits.


They're doing the other thing they did with these pocket holes, which is they pulled a hank of skirt up through them to shorten the skirt. Fashionable women did this for 'the look'. Working women did it to get the skirts out from underfoot.

Or for the look, I guess. And this print is from Yale. Find it Here

Here you get a look at the slit in the side of the skirt where our young lady could reach in and get to the pockets. See this picture, here. Click at the site for a closer look.

Women's costume 1794 France, shifts and nightshifts

Consider Shifts

A shift is what we'd call a 'slip' in the US. The shift lay next to the skin and protected the wearer from the roughness of the outer garments . It protected the expensive outer garments from the body. It was cheaper to replace than the outer clothing, and the shift was washable.

The shift, for all of the Eighteenth Century is a simple garment, cut loose, straight, and ungathered, going to about the knee. It closed at the neck with a drawstring or was bound with a band.

Here to the right is an extant shift in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Drawstring neck. The little ruffles on the sleeve, IMO, would have been intended to show beneath a tight-fitting sleeve on the dress or caraco. This is made in England or France, late C18 to early C19.

The early C18 shift might be somewhat fuller than this example above. After 1785-ish, when the round gown and dresses of thin fabric became popular, the shift began to be cut closer to the body so as not to disturb the line of the dress -- something that wasn't a problem with the robe à l'Anglais or the simple jupe and caraco. The sleeves of the shift, which had been longer and fuller in the first half of the Eighteenth Century, became close fitting or short.

Here's an example of a modern reproduction mid-C18 shift being worn.

A difference between how we regard underwear in C21 and Eighteenth Century is that a shift -- underwear -- was often intended to be seen. It was meant to show beneath the jacket or vest or the neckline of the dress.

See , to the right.

(This is a screen capture from the latest remake of The Scarlet Pimpernel, included here under Fair Use for comment and review.)

I wouldn't go to the stake on the details of this. It looks fairly fancy, compared to the extant examples. Anyhow, what you got here is a C18 chemise being worn over front-fastening stays, and showing at the top.

(The opening scene of the movie, btw, is her getting dressed in petticoat, caraco and jupe, which is interesting to watch. Reminds me of the dressing scene in Les Liaisons Dangereuses. )

The neckline of the dress or caraco was cut low by our standards. This means the shift underneath was cut low too. The neckline of the shift tended to come just an inch or so above the stays, as it does in the picture above.

This left the heavy work of concealing the bosom to the fichu.

Here we got a caricature from just after 1794. This is not reliable as to what was actually worn, but it does illustrate a point about the length of the shift.

The shift wasn't a full-length garment down trailing in the mud and showing lace at the bottom when the dress blew up in the wind. A petticoat or underskirt might do that, but not the shift. The shift was short. You wouldn't see a shift if you raised your skirts some to step over a puddle.

Below we got us some delightful pictures of an extant shift from Vintage Textile which is at home here. This particular shift is listed as 1820 to 1830, but it's similar to what you would have seen in 1790s.

Vintage Textile says of the shift above:

Our chemise is fashioned from coarse linen and is completely hand sewn.

With time and multiple washings, the linen has whitened and softened. The neckline and sleeve edges are trimmed with hand-embroidered scallops. The chemise has a hand-embroidered, monogrammed "AF" in front.

Chemises, particularly in pattern catalogues, are picture flat so that you can see how they are cut. The triangular side panels in the flat pictures give the impression that the chemise stands out from the body on the side. In fact these side panels push the front and back into graceful bias folds.

A late-C18-to-early-C19 shift would be made of linen or cotton. In 1794, it would probably linen for the middle and lower class. Good quality cotton was still a luxury material in France.

There was a slow movment towards cotton for underclothing as cotton got cheaper in the early C19. Perception of linen in shirts and underwear changed. By the time we get to Beau Brummel ... linen was a more upperclass/stylish fabric than cotton. In 1794, linen would probably have been the fabric of choice, but without the same class

The English word 'shift' fell into disfavor after 1800. 'Shift' became regarded as old-fashioned and somewhat coarse. The snazzier French 'chemise' sneaked in to take its place. That's what we did in English for a century or two ... tossed out perfectly good English words and invited French hussies in.

Nightclothes

WARNING: Partial nudity below.

Women's nightclothes closely followed the design of the shift. In fact, one could be used for the other, pretty much.

There are differences The examples of nightshifts I've come across seem to have 3/4 or long sleeves and the shifts of late C18 don't. The nightshifts are often mid-calf length or longer, rather than more knee-ish. So the nightshifts were a specialized garment, similar to but not identical with the shift.

Note the low neckline on these nightshifts below. If that neck isn't tied up carefully with its ribbon or drawstring, the breasts get loose and go showing themselves.

The nightshifts are longer than the shift, but still only mid-calf length. You heroine wouldn't need to hold her hem up as she crept down the stairs, trembling, with a candle in her hand, investigating the noise.

Considering England's -- or France's -- climate, your heroine would be an idiot if she didn't put on some kind of a robe or peignoir so she don't get all clammy and freezing even before the villain has a chance to kidnap her.

The hero seeing your heroine in her nightshift takes on a whole new meaning when you stop picturing it as a floor-length, high-necked Victorian nightdress with 57 little pearl buttons up the front.

This is Baudouin, Le Lever. A bit before our period.

Wheatly gives us Mrs Wheatly Asleep. Close to the 1790s I think. The night cap Mrs. Wheatly is wearing -- see how fancy -- is part of the whole going-to-sleep ensemble.

Here's Blanchet, Perils of Love: Julia Seeks Solace with her Cat above. Again, a bit before 1794, but probably similar to what women were wearing in the decade.

This is Regnault, La Nuit.

And Boucher's famous L'Odalisque is wearing a 1745 shift. It's here, click at the site for a closer view. See the low neckline, mid-length sleeves, and the not-too-long length.

Admittedly, these particular nightshifts are painted largely for an excuse to show off skin, but it does look like nightshifts dipped low at the neck.

Night shifts, like shifts, were white or just off-white, made of cotton and linen.
Not silk. Sorry.