Robe ā l’Anglaise (English style gown), updated from 1738 to c. 1770
Eighteenth century dressmaking used pleats wherever possible instead of piecing, to allow the dress to be unstitched and updated repeatedly. The blue silk damask used here was made in China for the Western market in the 1730s. The dress is believed to have been worn by Elizabeth Park of Concord, Massachusetts, at her 1738 wedding with Nicholas Baylies. At that time, not only skirts but bodices were open in the front, with pleated strips of fabric called “robings” framing a triangular “stomacher,” which would fill in the bodice. After 1770, bodices met in the middle, and robings were eliminated.
Possibly this dress’s robings supplied the strips of fabric that now fill in the bodice front, whose woven patterns have been carefully matched. The entire dress was undoubtedly taken apart. There are “ghosts” of earlier pleats on the back of the bodice, and the skirt’s fullness would have needed to be redistributed to keep up with later fashions. The linen lining of the bodice dates to the 1770s updating, as it extends all the way around without piecing. It seems likely that the dress would have been remade and updated at least one more time between its 1738 and 1770s incarnations.
Silk damask woven in China, dress sewn and made in Massachusetts. Gift honoring Jeanette Lawrence Osborn Baylies, President General 78.30
2: John Wollaston (American, born England), Portrait of a Woman (Rebecca Beekman Spry), 1749-1752. Art Institute of Chicago.