Clothing

=American Revolution Clothing=


 * 1770-1775**

In 1773, night-caps, were worn a lot. Sometimes they had lace "wings" at the sides, giving it a kind of ugly look when you saw it from the back. For a very short time men tried to like fight with women in the height of their dresses. At the very beginning of the century when the full-bottomed wig had was really "popular", it was almost impossible to wear hats. The solution though was just to make the hats bigger. But the hats became smaller and instead of wearing them they would just carry them around under their arm. It started to become something men would do as well. The fan in the sixteenth century was awkward compared to the folding fan of the eighteenth. It could be carried easily, it opened fast, and it was used for cooling their faces in the overheated ballrooms, and as a way to look cute with smiling eyes, to hide blushing, or a simple yawn. Some of the eighteenth-century fans which have come down to us are special because of the that can't get more pretty.


 * 1775-I780**

The headdress like wigs, that were custom made, for the women reached its biggest height in the middle of the seventies. It almost was like they were doing it for the guys to wear their own hair, or at least to get more and more of their own hair with a wig, encouraging the hair people to invent even more head-dresses that are more complex for women in order to keep their job. The "head dressing" lasted for three or four hours. Head-dresses were so big it was usual for the women to have hats to match, although sometimes a small hat was pinned on top of the coiffure or hairstyle. Sometimes the hat was a part of the hairdressing. Women of all classes would wear bonnets made of satin, taffeta, or linen when full dresses were not required. Long walking-sticks with gold or silver knobs were used by men and women. Military men started wearing their swords. Around the year 1778 a new fashion sense started by trimming the diagonal front edges of their overskirt with the same material that was at their sleeves. The overskirt was sometimes puffed out with stuffing and loosely crumpled paper which made a strange rustling noise when they moved. The underskirt was kind of informal because it had horizontal gathers with its material or with strips of lace, ribbon, or fur. The two skirts were lots of different colors of lighter and deeper shades of the same color. The skirt with paniers, before it disappeared, was worn short showing their shoes and their ankles. A shorter skirt led to more care for the niceness of shoes and stockings or socks.


 * 1770-I780**

In the end of the seventies there was an big change in the number of documents that were asked by the student of fashion. In a Single word, the fashion plate quickly went into the "new thing", and it is interesting to see that some of the earliest fashion plates were not even concerned with the whole costume clothing but with the hair. The hairdressing fashions of the decade made a lot of the women eager to be aware of the latest mode, like some today, and publishers worked fast to make them happy. A magazine with the title Souvenir a I'Anglaise et Recueil de Coiffures went to Paris in 1778, and there was soon tons of ladies reading that and wanting to have that fashion. The fashion paper donated lots to changing modes than they had been to customizing. Men hairdressing became nicer and closer to their heads, the three cornered hat being very small and worn far forward, so that the brim came just above their eyes. The sleeves were sometimes extremely thin, with a edge of lace sticking out from the cuff of the sleeve. The buttons and buttonholes, were to keep the turned-back cuff in its place, still on the sleeve as decoration, just as some clothes have today. The undeveloped element in the dress is always large and is a bit of proof that the fashion to today has changed quite a bit.