Dress

Unknown

1876–78 · wool, silk · Costume Institute

The most salient feature of eighteenth-century appropriation demonstrated in this dress is its long line of embroidery at center front and descending to the hem. The floral decoration and its placement on the garment arise not from copying eighteenth-century women's fashion but from a comprehension of eighteenth-century menswear. It is as if the waistcoat's ebullient decorative impulse has been transferred to the brown wool of this almost too-dour nineteenth-century dress.

Artist

Unknown

Date

1876–78

Medium

wool, silk

Culture

American

Department

Costume Institute

Credit line

Gift of Mrs. Charles Edward Freet, 1939