Top Hat Styles Chart during the 1800s, from the Regency Era through to the Victorian years. Most popular style was cone shaped and tall in height. Originally made of beaver and very short but later from silk and taller. Tall crown, widens at top, narrow brim turns up slightly at sides.
1809 Blue Redingote, French. Back view of walking coat with military style trim, upstanding collar, white hat, black shoes and a handkerchief. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien.
Redingotes or Pelisses were needed to cover the flimsy dresses made of lightweight fabrics of the Regency years to provide warmth and some protection from windy conditions when gowns might lift and cause modesty issues. Jane Austen and her contemporaries often walked to places and so would have needed the warmth of a Pelisse or coat in the cold British winters.
In Europe, a Redingote was a coat or robe like garment worn both indoors and out, indoors left open to reveal a dress while the outdoor version was made of heavier materials and of darker colors than the type worn indoors. The name comes from the term ‘riding coat.’
1804 January London Full Evening Dresses, English. White evening dress has a white tunic overlay and worn with long white gloves, a long necklace, and with an evening hairstyle that leaves dangling curls around her neck. Other evening dress has a tunic trimmed with orange cord, short sleeves, and worn with long gloves, and upswept evening hairstyle with a matching feather. Fashion Plate via Fashions of London and Paris. https://books2read.com/SuziLoveFashionWomen1801-1804
1810 Yellow Dress, British. Plain woven silk, silk crêpe and silk satin. High-waisted dress of yellow silk, ivory colored silks billow out of four openings at sleeve tops. The puffed trimmings are inspired by the fashionable slashing of garments in the Renaissance period when the top fabric was cut to reveal a colored lining or garment worn underneath. A long rectangular strip of ivory silk on inside of sleeve head and excess gathered into pudds through openings. The 19th-century version of slashing is much more controlled by cut, stitching and piped edges, rather than the raw cuts in fabric seen in the 16th century.
Long sleeves narrow at wrists with double bands at cuffs and trimmed with ivory silk satin frills, yellow silk crêpe, cream ribbon and cording. Trimming around lower hem of skirt of applied vandyked border of ivory silk. Length center back neckline to hem of train length: 158cm Front length shoulder to hem length: 139cm
via Victoria and Albert Museum, London, UK. collections.vam.ac.uk.
1826 Sights the Bridgertons and Jane Austen Saw Around Regency England. The sights that the families and friends would have seen around while traveling around England. via 1826 The English Spy By Robert Cruikshank via Google Books (PD-150)
1800 White Walking Dress, English. Worn with a full length bronze wrap and matching turban. Engraved Plate via Rudolph Ackermann’s ‘The Repository’ of Arts.
The Empire dress which evolved in the late 1790s began as a chemise shift gathered under the breasts and at the neck. Named after the First Empire in France, by 1800 Empire dresses had a very low décolleté, or neckline and a short narrow backed bodice attached to a separate skirt. 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 simple cotton high-waisted dress was worn most days and accessorized according to the importance of the occasion.
1818 December Morning and Evening Dresses, possibly for mourning as Princess Charlotte died in 1817. Published by Dean and Munday, Threadneedle Street, London, U.K.
Walking Dress is a plain high dress of black bombazine with long sleeves. Skirt trimmed on hem with a broad bias piece of black crape with narrow puffing of black crape. Sleeve hem has three narrow puffings of black crape. Fastens in front and ornamented on the bust with black crape, no collar but a very full mourning ruff of clear muslin. Over this dress is a Spanish coat of fine black Merino, cut tight to the body, short in the waist and trimmed with a row of black buttons on each side of the bust. Black velvet collar is finished round the edge with black crape, long sleeves of an easy fullness and trimmed at the wrist the same as the collar. Very tasteful epaulette is a mixture of black velvet and crape. Skirt is slightly full, trimmed up the fronts and round the hem with a broad band of black velvet, edged on each side by narrow rouleaux of black crape.
Dinner Dress is of black crape over a black sarsnet slip with a gored skirt, trimmed on the hem with black crape flounces, lower very narrow and higher considerably broader and surmounted by another narrow one. They are scalloped and finished at the edge by black satin, narrow rouleau of the same material heads top and bottom flounce. Corsage of black satin cut very low round the bust and waist and bust finished French style with points of black crape. Short full sleeve of black satin with three falls of black crape on the shoulder. Via Lady’s Monthly Museum ~ Dean & Mundy, Threadneedle Street, London, UK.
1817 Walks Through London By David Hughson. via Google Books (PD-180) In Bridgerton and Jane Austen times.
1808 French Lady With Head Coverings. Bonnets and jockey caps that tie under the chin and different hairstyles. Fashion Plate via Journal des Dames et des Modes, or Costume Parisien. French fashions like this were copied by English magazines so these styles of hats would have been worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries.
1795-1810 ca. Woman’s Shoes, Or Slippers, English. Kid leather and linen, pointed toes, no heel. via Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California, USA.
