The Clothing Style
The style of clothing on these plates was popularized in the Post-Revolution eras of the Directory and Consulate. The high waisted, loose and sheer dress, paired with flats ( figures at bottom), was inspired by ancient Greek sculptures available for public viewing after the Revolution (figure top left)and Neoclassical ideals underpinning the political aspirations of the French Revolution (figure top right). Eyewitness accounts of women in public wearing thin, muslin dresses without corsets have been documented in Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s The New Paris (1797), a pioneering series of works of urban spectatorial literature. Mercier was also a publisher of one of the earliest journals aimed at the female readership. According to art historian Susan Siegfried, the journalist Albertine Clément-Hemery (1778-1855) claimed in her Memoir of 1793 and 1794 (pub. 1832) that young female art students first fashioned the Greek styled outfits as costumes in their studios and paraded their creations in public as a performance of social and political identity in the Post-Revolutionary era. This experimental style caught on with urban middle-class women in the relatively socially permissive decade between the Terror and the enforcement of the Napoleonic Code. The printing industry, the women’s journals, the urban spectatorship, the fashion plates, and the emerging consumer culture all served to popularize this style of clothing which radically altered the fashion landscape (figure middle left: before the Revolution, figure middle right: after the Revolution).