Undress, Half Dress, Full dress? What’s a Girl to do? - Random Bits of Fascination
 
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Undress, Half Dress, Full dress? What’s a Girl to do? — 5 Comments

  1. I can understand now why Lizzy was always taken shopping by Mrs. Gardiner, Lady Matlock, and Georgiana in order to prepare her for the Derbyshire winters and to solidify her place in society as Darcy’s wife. She was always aghast at what they said she needed and then they shocked her by ordering even more.

  2. I had read some of these terms before (well, I’m not sure about “undress” ) and wondered about the exact meaning. Walking out dress vs promenade dress?? And carriage dress – why was it specific for carriages?
    I had the thought that this is one of the difficulties in Regency time travel fanfiction. Even if a modern, erudite JA fan (knowledgeable about social rules and terms of address and types of food etc.) should time travel back, she could not possibly avoid horrible social blunders from dressing ingappropriately that are more than just humorous.
    Another thought: how much of this elaborate dress code was known to a country gentleman’s daughter like Elizabeth Bennet (and how much was Mrs. Bennet’s lack of social background detrimental in this?) Was Miss Bingley’s disdain for lack of refinement in the country justified?

    • Actually a carriage dress was for walking–it referred to the way a woman carried herself when moving about. One of the little tidbits I learned researching this, but some how it didn’t make it into the final draft of the post.

      Since fashion magazines circulated in the mail, young women would have the ability to know how they were expected to dress. The actual fabrics and trims through might take longer to get into the countryside. But then they’d be wearing ‘last years'” gown rather than something entirely inappropriate.

  3. Pingback:Fashion for a Sea-Bathing Holiday ~ Random Bits of Fascination

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