In a letter to his son in 1748 Lord Chesterfield wrote, ‘I confess, I cannot help forming some opinion of a man’s sense and character from his dress; and I believe most people do as well as myself.’ Chesterfield was reflecting a common aspect of 18th-century society: the idea that you should be able to look at someone and immediately recognise their character and their social status, and thus know how to treat them. Courtiers needing to wear expensive silks to participate in court life is a good example of how clothing could be a key to social interaction. The clothing of the general population – likely to be woollen, less colourful and certainly less embellished – would not have granted them entry to the inner rooms of court.
Some argue that the French Revolution of 1789, which saw the overthrow of the French monarchy, brought all of this into question. It provides one of the best examples of the link between fashion and politics. French revolutionaries used clothing to make political statements against the ruling aristocratic classes. The sans-culottes (literally ‘person without breeches’), as they were known, wore the trousers of the working man (trousers were easier, and therefore cheaper, to make than the breeches favoured by the aristocracy). Their ‘cap of liberty’ had links to the cap that was given to freed Ancient Roman slaves, and they wore a cockade, generally a red, white and blue ribboned badge. The overall look was in stark contrast to the silken, extravagant and colourful court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
From the early 1700s France was the fashion leader of Europe; the French court was seen as the epitome of style and French silks were considered the best. Even those who didn’t like the French fashions, had to admit to their influence:
‘The French, with all their absurdities, preserve a certain ascendancy over us, which is very disgraceful to our nation; and this appears in nothing more than in the article of dress … we are slaves to their taylors, mantuamakers, barbers, and other tradesmen.’
Tobias Smollett, Travels Through France and Italy, 1766.
But did this influence continue once the French royal court was removed? Those sympathetic to the Revolution were noted for adopting their own version of revolutionary dress. Sir Nathanial Wraxall wrote in his memoirs that men in the 1790s wore ‘Pantaloons, cropped hair, and shoe-strings, as well as the total abolition of buckles and ruffles, together with the disuse of hair-powder’. These men were therefore abandoning the clothes and accessories associated with the aristocratic lifestyle – either as a gesture of support for republican principles, or as a way to distance themselves from aristocratic excesses.
It can be argued, however, that this more ‘democratic’ style of dressing had started in Britain long before the French Revolution. Another letter from Lord Chesterfield in the 1740s describes a trend among young men who wore ‘brown frocks [coats], leather breeches’, uncocked hats and unpowdered hair in order to ‘imitate grooms, stage coachmen, and country bumpkins…’. Frock coats were a functional garment, based on a working man’s coat. We’ve also seen how wigs were losing their popularity in the second half of the century and it can be argued that the it was the 1795 tax on hair powder that also stopped people from wearing powdered wigs or hair, as much as their Republican principles.
This move towards a more ‘natural’ or ‘democratic’ dress can be linked to a number of factors. Firstly, although the royal court was still highly influential, the Georges were not known for their involvement in high fashion and court fashions in particular, were not particularly innovative during this period. The British elite were also spending more time at their country estates – a lifestyle that required simpler, more practical clothing for sporting pursuits like hunting, and perhaps explains Chesterfield’s comment above. Finally, the English woollen trade was seen as one of the best in Europe, and fine English woollen cloth was a popular choice for these more informal and practical wardrobes.
The French Revolution helped to speed up these developments and brought the importance and meaning of clothing further into the public eye, but it is also an example of how fashions could take a long time to evolve, and very rarely does a single event spark a complete change in wardrobe.
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