A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

December 30, 1786 FRENCH FASHIONS. We said in the second Book of this second Year that women hardly go out in the morning but in night caps, when they aren't dressed; we should add here that many wear a chapeau-bonnette  over the night cap. In this manner, they give an air of half-dress which saves them from the great undress that the simple night caps, which would never be supportable without fashion, present to the eye. How was this fashion begun? We dig into our heads to imagine it, and do not succeed. It is impossible for us to conceive it, when we think that there are so few women who have a seductive air in a night cap. Everything that we can find is that women have decided to renounce looking pleasant during this part of the day. Could we concede this beautiful invention without fear that we will be reproached for pronouncing some blasphemy against the Ladies' taste? The Woman dressed in a violet satin gown wears over the night cap a gauze  chapeau-bonnett...

December 30, 1786 [The issue begins with a long remark on the interchange of fashion between France and England, "whose eyes are constantly fixed on one another".] Consequently, one should not be astonished if we happen to give as English Fashion what was some time ago French Fashion, and as French Fashion was we had already published as English Fashion. Men's redingotes, that we should call Franco-Anglomane  gowns, having come from Englishwomen to Frenchwomen, and this Fashion existing still in both countries, one should not be surprised today if we show Englishwomen dressed like Frenchwomen. The Englishwoman drawn in PLATE I wears a man's redingote of olivish wool, with three wide collars falling very low to below the shoulders, with large revers lined with violet satin, with violet satin cuffs, and trimmed on the cuffs, on the hips, and on the fronts with wide white mother-of-pearl buttons. A sort of belt of the same wool, trimmed with the same buttons, bin...

December 20, 1786 FRENCH FASHIONS. Two women's Busts. The first, dressed in a pink satin gown, wears a hat with a very high crown, made of satin with pink stripes and Sky blue stripes, trimmed on the front in three rows of large bows of yellow ribbons with green plain stripes down the middle and pinked pink stripes on the edges, and on the back with three large bows of matching ribbons. In the middle of the three rows of large ribbon bows rises an aigrette of seven medium plumes in white, pink, black, and green. A veil of satin matching that used on the hat hangs from the back. The crown of this hat is, so to speak, the only hat crown which is worn today. They are made in different satins with stripes of different colors - blue and white, black and pink, yellow and black, violet and white, etc. The Woman's hair is all frizzed en tapet , and six curls, placed in three rows, hang over her chest. Her hair, behind, is pulled up in a floating chignon . On her neck, a ...