The Manteau dress, up to 1788 in various fashionable forms an important component of courtly attire, was also worn in noble bourgeois circles. The dress of urban-middle-class origin presented here was made in the style of a "robe à l'anglaise". This version of the French Manteau dress, created around 1770 by the English rural nobility, already indicates the wish to free oneself from the constricting traditional clothing of the eighteenth century. With the "robe à l'anglaise", for example, the tight-laiced chest was maintained, whereas for the sake of convenience the dressmakers refrained from the wide crinoline. Instead, hip paddings or multi-layered skirts provided for the garment’s body-aesthetic modeling. Originally this robe could have been thought of as a wedding dress.
The Manteau dress, up to 1788 in various fashionable forms an important component of courtly attire, was also worn in noble bourgeois circles. The dress of urban-middle-class origin presented here was made in the style of a "robe à l'anglaise". This version of the French Manteau dress, created around 1770 by the English rural nobility, already indicates the wish to free oneself from the constricting traditional clothing of the eighteenth century. With the "robe à l'anglaise", for example, the tight-laiced chest was maintained, whereas for the sake of convenience the dressmakers refrained from the wide crinoline. Instead, hip paddings or multi-layered skirts provided for the garment’s body-aesthetic modeling. Originally this robe could have been thought of as a wedding dress.