Ladies Dress As It Soon Will Be

With his gift for envisioning the worst case example of any tendency, whether political or social, Gillray here portrays what he sees as the logical extension of women's dress (or undress) if it continues to be influenced by Grecian, neo-classical, and French republican ideals. Not surprisingly, the print was included among the "Suppressed Plates" of the 1850 Bohn Edition of Gillray's Works.

Ladies Dress As It Soon Will Be

Ladies Dress As It Soon Will Be [January 20, 1796]
© Trustees of the British Museum

As Amelia Rauser and others have argued, in the early 1790s, a confluence of factors both inside and outside of British circles led to a style in which women were made to look like Grecian statues wearing clinging, form-revealing muslin dresses and very little else.

One "source" for this look was the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum which uncovcered paintings, sculptures, and vases showing women dressed in thin and flowing robes. Sir William Hamilton was a major collector of these vases, and his wife, Emma Lady Hamilton, obviously modeled her dress on that classical style when performing her famous "Attitudes" for visiting dignitaries as shown below.

Drawings Faithfully copied from Nature at Naples.

Frederick Rehberg
Drawings Faithfully copied from Nature at Naples. . . Plate 6 [1794]
© Trustees of the British Museum.

The style was picked up by fashion mavens in France such as Mme Talienne and Juliette Récamier, and its simplicity was itself part of a rebellion against the full and formal style of the ancien regime. If one looks at British Fashion magazines like The Gallery of Fashion (1794-1803), however, one can see that in 1796 Gillray's depiction was a substantial exaggeration of what British ladies were really willing to wear. But it was not far off from the styles flaunted by their French counterparts a few years later.

Portrait de Juliette Récamier

François Gérard
Portrait de Juliette Récamier, née Bernard (1777-1849)
[1802-1805]
© Library of Congress

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