Dress

The fabric of the dress is a calico printed with vegetable motifs. This fine flexible material was used to give a feeling of lightness to the clothes and the body, an idea that is lost from 1850. The decoration also reflects the return to nature typical of Romanticism. This simple day dress is beautifully made and finished, with edging on the seams.

By 1830 the volume of the dress had acquired rounded, inflated forms. Around 1828 the corset reappeared, covering the torso and the breasts and gently marking a narrow waist now restored to its natural position. The silhouette of the Romantic woman recalls the shape of the number 8, with no angles. The dropped shoulders draped with a pelerine are characteristic of this period, as are pale hands and makeup, gathered-up hairstyles, and feet profiled in low shoes, which, together with the dress, combined to give women a disembodied image, seem not to touch the ground with their feet but to float above it.

Inspired by the Renaissance, earlier dressmaking techniques were revived in order to increase the volume of the sleeves, using a full circle of fabric and a curving seam, with padding and broad pleats at the shoulders. The sleeves of this dress are puffed down to the elbow and end in narrow cuffs which emphasize small pale hands not accustomed to work. The body is fitted, with small folds and pleats adjusting the fabric to the torso. Skirts in this period were both wider than before and shorter, and worn over a number of petticoats to achieve a balloon-like shape. To give volume, several metres of fabric were used for the skirt, gathered in pleats at the waist. The demure neckline covered by a pelerine contrasts with the décolletage of earlier periods.