1810 French Gentleman. Riding outfit of double-breasted brown coat, tight pants with a side button decoration, jaunty black hat, gloves, and a crop. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien.
In the early 1800s, men no longer wore complicated styles and extravagant fabrics. Men’s fashion simplified and became more conservative. A well cut tailcoat, vest, pantaloons and an immaculate cravat of beautiful white linen in the style of George Bryan, or Beau, Brummell. Clothes were a status symbol and indicated a man’s social position. These clothing items were the sort worn by Jane Austen’s male family and friends.
The London To Louth Royal Mail, England, U.K. Print by Charles Cooper Henderson. (1803-1877)
How did Jane Austen and her family? Did they go by stagecoach? The dreadful condition of British roads caused great apprehension to all classes of travelers. Making a journey anywhere in the country was a big undertaking and often a gentleman composed his last will and testament before his departure. Traveling in vehicles was only possible during the day or on the nights with very bright moonlight with few vehicles attempting road travel in winter and any travel on a Sunday was frowned upon. books2read.com/SuziLoveTravel
Description of Stage Coach Travel in England. via 1815 Journal Tour of Great Britain. “The gentlemen coachmen, with half-a dozen great coats about them, immense capes, a large nosegay at the button-hole, high mounted on an elevated seat, with squared elbows, a prodigious whip, beautiful horses, four in hand, drive in a file to Salthill, a place about twenty miles from London, and return, stopping in the way at the several public-houses and gin-shops where stage-coachmen are in the habit of stopping for a dram, and for parcels and passengers on the top of the others as many as seventeen persons. These carriages are not suspended, but rest on steel springs, of a flattened oval shape, less easy than the old mode of leathern braces on springs. Some of these stage coaches carry their baggage below the level of the axletree.”
1800s White Evening Dress. Long train on the dress, gold sash, evening hair style, and carrying a fan. via The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Definition Empire Style Dress: Named after the First Empire in France. Empire dresses had a low neckline and skirts started directly under the bust and flowed into the classical relaxed wide styles of Greece and Rome. This style of dress is associated with Jane Austen and her contemporaries as a high-waisted dress was worn most days. Cotton, silk or taffeta were the popular fabrics. Only the very wealthy could afford white dress in this style as the cottons were imported from India and had to be carefully cleaned, usually by a lady’s maid.
The type of dress worn across Europe in the early 1800s. This sort of high-waisted dress would have been worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries in England. The Empire waist gown defined women’s fashion during the Regency Era. ‘Empire’ is the name given in France to the period when Napoleon built his French Empire. High-waisted, loose gowns were adopted by the aristocracy as a symbol of turning away from the fussy, elaborate and expensive clothing worn in the 1700s.
1820 Lapdesk, English. Exterior covered in metal with a lacquer finish and edged with stamped and gold lacquered brass strips. Interior veneered in kingwood with plush velvet writing surface. walpoleantiques.com
