A Most Beguiling Accomplishment

The young Elvire playing with her cat. She is Dressed in a galant Pierrot and Coiffed with a Hat à la d'Hericort . " ... We have asked ourselves a million times why a beautiful woman always had a pleasing air; why being used to seeing her never renders us indifferent; why the more we see her the more we find her beautiful: all that our fecund imaginations could find, was that a beautiful woman has the gift of always seeming novel. If at our house other Frenchman, people, God knows him, lightly enough, the new man only has the gift of charming, it is necessary that a beautiful woman, who always charms us, has the gift of seeming always novel. We believe that that is an argument in form! "We give the means of seeming always to have a new éclat ; that slightly nears giving the means of seeming ..." Le Magasin des Modes , 20 May 1787

Young élégante dressed in a pierrot with pockets and redingote sleeves, plain muslin petticoat, flowered linen apron: coiffed with a beaver hat. (1787) "... This woman is frisé  like men, with three curls on the forehead at each side, a broad, squared  grecque , and a large cadogan in the back. "One sees that the hat is bent over the eyes, the way that we wear it. "Do we blame ourselves here for this hat form, and this manner of wearing it, as we have done for the chapeau-bonnette ?  No.  That allows the greatest part of the face to be seen and uncovers the eye, which can play at sparkling.  The chapeau-bonnettes , falling en toîts * around the head, entirely overwhelming the face:  instead the felt hats, having for the most part turned-up brims, allow it to be seen, and far from damaging it, add most frequently to its éclat , being bent until over the eyebrows.  We all know that a thousand and thousand people only have a handsome face from...

Pretty woman in a morning baigneuse, pierrot with revers and diamond-shaped steel buttons, the petticoat of plain muslin, flounce of the same: she holds a grapevine cane. (1787) Costume of the Marquise . - " Pierrot  and petticoat of embroidered linen, trimmed with lace, pink underpetticoat, kerchief trimmed with seven collars per side; hat à la caravanne , two and a half feet high and five feet in circumference; the hair en Conseiller , shaded by two drapes of three ells of Italian gauze, hanging behind the hat, pink shoes, the soles of which are not 7/12" wide: on the face, 3/24" of white and 2/12" (minus an eighth), of red;* on the ears, spangled rings six inches long; the eyelashes, brows, lips, veins, etc. painted following art; the whitest and best-made teeth that one could find." Les Chiffons , by Mlle Javotte, mender, Paris, 1787 * I believe this might refer to the depth of what is taken out of the pot