Frock coat, 1780s
Beneath the surface of a deceptively simple silk coat are several linens of different weights carefully placed to provide stiffening, create a smooth fit, and bring a customer’s body closer to the fashionable ideal.
Tailors sometimes trusted seamstresses with simple stitching, and often fit and cut pieces of simpler garments for customers’ wives to sew at home; but fashionable coats required years of tailoring experience and skill.
Coat, 1780s, and partial reproduction of its front, 2023.
Silk and linen. Friends of Museum Purchase 2015.23
Reproduction: patterned and made by Mark Hutter and Mike McCarty. Lent by Colonial Williamsburg Foundation