Fashion for a Sea-Bathing Holiday
A Little Sea Bathing
What might Jane Austen (or her characters) have worn for a sea-bathing holiday? Your guide to Regency era resort wear!
During the Regency era, ladies might change clothes several times a day, from undress in the morning, half-dress in the afternoon, and full dress in the evening, the garments becoming more formal and more embellished as they day went on.
Dresses for Sea Bathing
Sea-bathing was generally done in the morning and would generally involve two types of garments.
If one wore a garment for bathing, it was only worn from the bathing machine into the ocean and back to the bathing machine. Ladies would not be seen walking along the beach or to the bathing machine in their bathing garments.
Many bathing machines provided rental garments for bathers to use. These would have been simple ‘sacks’ with openings for head and arms, and possibly an oil skin cap for the hair. A weighted hem might have been added to the garment to help keep it in place in the water.
Mrs. Bell, associated with La Belle Assemblée offered an alternative.
‘The Bathing Preserver‘ is a most ingenious and useful novelty for ladies who frequent the sea-side; as it is intended to provide them with a dress for bathing far more adapted to such purposes than anything of the kind at present in use; and it will be found most necessary and desirable to those ladies who go to the sea-side unprovided with bathing dresses and will relieve them from the nauseous idea of wearing the bathing coverings furnished by the guides [the ‘dippers’ or bathing-women]. Mrs Bell’s Bathing Preserver is made in quite a novel manner to which is attached a cap to be removed at pleasure, made of a delicate silk to keep the head dry. The Preserver is made of such light material that a lady may carry it in a tasteful oiled silk bag of the same size as an ordinary lady’s reticule.’
La Belle Assemblee, September 1814
I have not been able to find an image of the bathing preserver, but the bag referred to above is seen in these two fashion plates:
Both of these gowns were intended for walking from one’s lodging to the sea-side. The advertising copy associated with both notes that they are particularly easy to change in and out of, a true convenience for one using a bathing maching.
Promenade/Walking Dress
Promenade and walking dresses were half-dress gowns intended for walking out in company, to see and be seen. Note the long sleeves, high necklines and informal headwear which help mark them as informal garments. Also notice the sea-side backgrounds and accessories in many of the fashion plates.
Sea-side Walking Dress La Belle August 1814 
Promenade Dress at the shore Ackermann’s Repository of Fashion Sept 1809 
Sea Coast Promenade Fashion La Belle Assemblée for October 1809 
Ackermann’s Repository of Fashion, ca 1820 
Rudolph Ackermann, The Repository of Fashion. 1824 
Rudolph Ackermann, The Repository of Fashion…, October 1810 
Walking Dress Ackermann’s Repository of Fashion August 1822 
Bathing Place Evening Dress La Belle Assemblée September 1810 (This was labeled as evening wear, but more likely it was a walking garment.)
Evening and Formal wear
To enjoy the formal activities of the resort, ball gowns for dancing, dinners, parties, and events were necessary. Here are several gowns suggested for sea-bathing resort evening wear.
Just one more reason to be thankful we live in a modern age. Although some of today’s “bathing suits” are about the same as going naked! (I haven’t put on a bathing suit in more than a dozen or more years due to skin cancer in our family. I carry an umbrella when I walk outside and it is sunny so as to have shade.)