What is fashion?

Fashion is something we deal with everyday. Even people who say they don’t care what they wear choose clothes every morning that say a lot about them and how they feel that day.

One certain thing in the fashion world is change. We are constantly being bombarded with new fashion ideas from music, videos, books, and television. Movies also have a big impact on what people wear. Ray-Ban sold more sunglasses after the movie Men In Black. Sometimes a trend is world-wide. Back in the 1950s, teenagers everywhere dressed like Elvis Presley.

Who dictates fashion?

Musicians and other cultural icons have always influenced what we’re wearing, but so have political figures and royalty. Newspapers and magazines report on what Hillary Clinton wears. The recent death of Diana, the Princess of Wales, was a severe blow to the high fashion world, where her clothes were daily news.

Even folks in the 1700s pored over fashion magazines to see the latest styles. Women and dressmakers outside the French court relied on sketches to see what was going on. The famous French King Louis XIV said that fashion is a mirror. Louis himself was renowned for his style, which tended towards extravagant laces and velvets.

Clothes separate people into groups.

Fashion is revealing. Clothes reveal what groups people are in. In high school, groups have names: “goths, skaters, preps, herbs.” Styles show who you are, but they also create stereotypes and distance between groups. For instance, a businessman might look at a boy with green hair and multiple piercings as a freak and outsider. But to another person, the boy is a strict conformist. He dresses a certain way to deliver the message of rebellion and separation, but within that group, the look is uniform. Acceptance or rejection of a style is a reaction to the society we live in.

Fashion is a language which tells a story about the person who wears it. “Clothes create a wordless means of communication that we all understand,” according to Katherine Hamnett, a top British fashion designer. Hamnett became popular when her t-shirts with large messages like “Choose Life” were worn by several rock bands.

French Fashion History

Regency Fashion History
1800-1825 Costume History

This page is about Empire dress and its influence on C19^th Regency Fashion. Using fashion plate imagery, the page follows the changes in the female fashion silhouette from the late 1790s to 1825. The bulk of this epoch covers the era of fashionable Regency Dress, an era beloved by Jane Austen and costume re-enactment fans.  Regency accessories and Romantic fashions are on their own pages. Go to Regency Accessories – Romantic Fashion Era

French Influence on Early C19^th Fashion

Bonaparte’s Influence on Fashion 1804

Napoleon Bonaparte was crowned Emperor in 1804 and was keen to make France a leader of fashion and innovator of design and craft skills.  During the French Revolution the French textile industry had suffered and unlike in England, use of textile machinery had been non existent.  Emperor Napoleon stopped the import of English textiles and he revived the Valenciennes lace industry so that fine fabrics like tulle and batiste could be made there.

To make women buy more material he forbade them to wear the same dress more than once to court.  Ladies dresses had extra fabric gathered into the back and trains were seen again for evening.  Bonaparte also had fireplaces at the Tuileries blocked up so that ladies would wear more clothing.

Bonaparte was following a long tradition of promoting the French economy through fashion. Empress Josephine was a great fashion leader. She was an ideal model for the slender fashions of the day.  Many of her Regency fashion dresses were designed by Leroy.

Bonaparte did not ignore men’s rôle in the revival of the textile economy and he enforced male military officials to wear white satin breeches on formal occasions.

Above Left - Josephine in Full Regalia.
Right – Post French Revolution simplified dress – Full skirt raised waist Empire dresses from the late 1790s.

You can read more about how Louis XIV promoted fashion in an earlier era when he sent fashion dolls to European courts. See the section called Fashion Dolls.

(more…)