1810-1815 ca. Salmon Pink Empire Style Dress, Norway. Typical Regency high-waisted dress. Long sleeves with puckered sleeve cap. Deep neckline with short shirred bodice. Long full skirt. via Digital Museum, Norway. digitalmuseum.no Regency fashion at its prettiest. The style of Empire style, or high-waisted, dress worn by Jane Austen and her contemporaries and the ladies in the Bridgerton family.

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. Jean-Jaques Rousseau advocated copying peasants and returning to a simpler life and more natural fashions. Unrestricting clothing was part of the new Democracy in France and these simpler and flowing fashions were adopted all over Europe, including Britain and despite the continual wars being fought against France during the early 1800s. Not even war stopped fashions from being copied everywhere.

Fashion Women 1810-1814 History Notes Book 27

This book looks at what was fashionable for women in Jane Austen’s or the Bridgerton family’s times, or the early 1800s, or the Regency Era in Britain. Wars were being fought around the globe so women’s fashion adopted a military look in support of soldiers. Fashions, like the lifestyle, became progressively more extravagant and accessories went from colorful to over-the-top.