Boston.)

Original caption text

In England, the engravings were of a rather different style. Dutch prints of allegorical subjects were in vogue, and there are innumerable sets of prints of the seven Ages of mankind, the five senses, the four seasons, the continents, and the liberal arts, typified by real and imaginary figures in all styles of dress. Jean Barrà’s figure “Seeing” (fig. 13), with her looking glass and perspective glass, accompanied by the farsighted eagle, is illustrated here mainly because of its explanatory quatrain mentioning fashions.26

Not until the early 1640s can reliable engravings of English fashions be found. Most of Wenceslas Hollar’s 1639 series, “Ornatus Muliebris Anglicanus, or, the severall habits of English women from the Nobilitie to the Country woman, as they are in these times,” is slightly suspect as being imaginary or at best idealized, though the lady in waiting (Hollar’s no. 23) and the country woman (Hollar’s no. 26) walking on her iron-ring pattens may be portraits. Hollar’s “Theatrum Mulierum or Aula Veneris” of 1644 has a much stronger claim to represent the fashions of London, although some of the European women may be in the traditional clothes of their cities and states. The full-length female figures of the seasons are really costume portraits set against London backgrounds27 (fig. 14), and, although charming

in themselves, they are not true fashion plates, while those of the series of women’s heads in circles, which are not copied from other work, are simply portraits28 of ladies whom Hollar actually knew in London. Notwithstanding his engravings of muffs,29 it is most unlikely that Hollar had any connection with either a fashion house or a milliner’s shop in London.

During the Commonwealth period (1648-60) Hollar’s work depicting costumes faded out, but the diarist John Evelyn was writing a little book, Tyrannus, or the Mode, which was published in 1661.30 In it he

mentions a French woman in London during the troubles, whose customers tormented her with inquiries about French fashions to such an extent that she used to devise “new Fancies out of her own Head, which were never worn in France.” Most likely she did not distribute fashion plates but displayed actual garments or miniature models, perhaps mounted as dolls (“babies”), as examples of new fashions.

In the Tyrannus, Evelyn not only touched on the history and psychology of fashion but also went as far as to recommend a reformed dress for men, including the Persian vest and sash which was to be reflected to

a certain extent in the fashions of the mid-1660s. Since he did not illustrate his theory, there has always been some dispute as to what the Persian dress actually was,31 but in any case the fashion did not last. On the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660, Charles II, returning to England from Holland, retained Dutch fashions for a while (fig. 15). But, by 1670, English men’s dress approximated the French in style, although not in sumptuosity.

In the second half of the 17th century the attention of Europe was focused on the court of Louis XIV and the French style of dress, especially for men, predominated. In particular, the coat (justaucorps), which evolved from the cassock, an outer garment, began to be worn regularly over the doublet, which by this time was already much reduced in size yet destined to survive as the waistcoat (veste). This fashion spread fairly rapidly through Europe—in England, as has been mentioned, it was dominant by 1670—but it is not clear how. The position of France, however, was stated in a fashion article in the Mercure Galant in 1673 (vol. 3):32*

. . . rien ne plait davantage que les Modes nées en France . . . . C’est pourquoi dans toutes les Provinces du Monde on fait venir de France quantité de choses qui regardent l’habillement encor qu’on ne s’habille pas tout-a-fait à la Françoise . . . .

The Mercure Galant, strangely neglected by costume historians, occupies a most important place in the history of fashion literature, since it is the first and for almost a century the only periodical to contain regular articles on contemporary fashion. The person responsible for editing and indeed for writing these articles was Jean Donneau de Visé (1640-1710), an unsuccessful dramatist, rival of Molière, whom he sarcastically attacked several times in print. The story of his journalistic venture is not at all easy to