Chemise post #3: Chemises in colors other than white
Originally published at Historical Personality Disorder. Please leave any comments there.
I hear a lot (and I mean a lot) from my friends and acquaintances who do 18th century costuming about how they would totally wear a chemise gown if it weren’t all white. Which is interesting, because judging by the historical accounts of the earliest chemise gowns, one of the reasons the dress was so shocking was because it was completely white. Think about it: This is an era that loved bright colors and heaps of surface decorations. When the chemise first hit the scene, all bright white and largely unadorned, the first thing that came to people’s minds was that it was underwear, not outerwear. The thing that made it unique and desirable was the fact that it was not dyed brightly, or trimmed excessively. The color white was well suited to Marie-Antoinette’s much-praised translucent complexion, because as I’m sure you’re all aware, not everyone can pull off white without looking ashen.
Very quickly, however, the pristine white muslin gown begins to become fashionable, and if we are to take fashion plates at face value (always a somewhat risky proposition) colors, trimmings, ostentatious hats, sashes, ruffles, embroideries, you name it, all find their ways onto the chemise.
Let’s look at some examples from 1784, which is right about the time that the chemise gown became known as the chemise à la reine:
Chemise à la reine. Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français. 41e Cahier (bis) des Costumes Français, 36e suittes d’Habillemens à la mode en 1784. MFA.org
Chemise à la reine. Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français. 41e Cahier (bis) des Costumes Français, 36e suittes d’Habillemens à la mode en 1784. MFA.org
Chemise à la reine. Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français. 41e Cahier (bis) des Costumes Français, 36e suittes d’Habillemens à la mode en 1784. MFA.org
Chemise à la reine. Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français. 45e Cahier de Costumes Français, 40e Suite d’Habillemens à la mode en 1785. MFA.org
Already the fashion plates are showing highly ornate surface treatments on the chemise, which is probably a good indication that fashionable society had taken the simple white dress favored by Marie-Antoinette and turned it into yet another opportunity to display excessive amounts of trimmings and accessories.
The interesting thing to note, however, is that our other visual resources in the period that depict the chemise dress don’t really begin to show colors or surface treatments until post-1785. So either the women having portraits painted wearing chemise gowns were behind the times, or the fashion plate artists were going over the top depicting what was being worn by fashionable society. At any rate, here’s some non-white chemise gowns as depicted in portraits:
Self-portrait in a Straw Hat, Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun, after 1782.
Madame Nicaise Perrin, JC Nicaise Perrin, c1790. Photo: Musée des Beaux Arts, Valenciennes.
Potrait of lady-in-waiting, Anna Maria Frederike von Taube by Anton Graff. Late-1780s.
Charles Peale Polk, Mary Hawkworth Riddell and daughter Agnes, 1791.
Anna Maria Aloisna Rosa Ferri, the artist’s wife, 1790-99.
Sitter & Artist are unknown, dated early 1790s.
Madame Boucher, née Gérardot, 1796.
That’s just a sampling. Other than the self portrait by Vigée-Lebrun, which is tentatively dated to the early part of the 1780s, most portraits showing colored chemise gowns date from the 1790s onward. Likewise, the couple of extant chemise gowns that aren’t white, are both from the 1790s:
Dress of dark blue-green silk, c. 1790. MFA.org
Peach colored “open robe.” Museum dates it to 1785, but I think its c.1790 based on construction details.
To sum up: Fashion plates begin showing colored chemise gowns in the mid-1780s, but extant dresses and portraits don’t show them until the 1790s. What do you make of that?
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