Similarities...

This following fashion plate has appeared on my Pinterest feed quite a few times over the past couple of days and I guess many of you, who have already seen the said fashion plate and spent a lot of time browsing the pages of The Cut of Women's Clothes by Norah Waugh, have noticed that the cut of the dress depicted in it looks quite close to one of the patterns in the book (see diagram XXXII). It's a pity London Museum doesn't have photos of the original garment, that the pattern was taken from, on their online collections so we can't compare the fashion plate with it.

Journal des Luxus, December 1795.

This fashion plate also reminds of a quite similar dress (in cut) in a painting by Louis Léopold Boilly (below).

At the entrance (1796-1798), by Louis Léopold Boilly.

Why am I bringing this up on the blog, then? Mainly, just out of the joy of sharing and, secondly, because I find the raising waistlines of the 1790's very appealing and would love to sew a gown similar in style to these dresses in the future. This is something I'm only dreaming about so therefore it's not going to happen any day soon. But I wanted to write a brief post abut it anyway since the dresses of this type were definitely on my mind when I began to sew my pair of transitional stays that I think would work wonderfully for something like these gowns, with rising waists and gathered fronts.

Now, who's tempted to buy that fashion plate from Ebay? ;)