I would very much like to know what's going on here:

Is the sitting one showing his hand or giving something to the standing one? Is it money or something else? Are they gambling or cruising? Is this prostitution? You can't ignore how incredibly tight the breeches of the standing one are (as if they're not there) or that his riding crop/stick is held in a very suggestive way. Is there some hidden code like in this Boilly painting:

Where the man assumes the woman is a prostitute because of how she's dressed and her gesture is meant to say she isn't and the title itself "Point de Convention" means exactly that? Because yes, people in the 1790s illustrated scenes you might think as "too shocking"! People across history don't behave the way you think of as in Prudish Victorian England (which, for what it's worth, might be a completely made up image you have too). (Women very much DO show their ankles IN A LOT OF ART ACROSS HISTORY AND NO ONE FAINTED OR PANICKED!!!!)

Something is definitely going on in this engraving.

But I have nothing besides the info that was tacked to it on Pinterest: "1793, Ernst Ludwig Riepenhausen Göttinger Taschenkalender. Two gentlemen about town." Which is a good start I guess. Better than nothing.

I found it was published in the Göttingen Pocket Calender.

I also found this one:

Labelled "Illustration for Uprightness and Hypocrisy, 1793. Almanac: Pocket Calender of Gotting fot the year 1794." even though it says "Friendship"? It might come from this larger set.

The first one could be coming from this book: Events of Contemporary History, in Göttingen Pocket-Calendar for the Year 1793). Maybe?

I found it! It's from this book! There's no context though. It just seems to be part of a series for fashion plates:

It’s not a social commentary like with Boilly’s painting then. It means it depicts a normal interaction between two men. Still would like to know what they’re doing.

Here’s the book for the other illustration. The set is spread across the almanac but it does seem to contrast good vs false behaviors.

My half-educated guesses:

Maybe it's an étui! While museums online appear to be convinced that ALL étuis are for women and contain sewing kits, it could also be a man's portable grooming kit with a mirror to look at his teeth, etc.

The title character of Frank Mildmay (1829) references his étui: "Perhaps," said I, picking my teeth, and looking at my mouth in a little ivory étui—"perhaps she may be grown a fine girl; she bade fair to be so when I saw her; but fine girls are very plenty now-a-days, since the Vaccine has turned out the small-pox."

An illustration of a young man in 1803 likely holding an étui, in A History of Men's Fashion by Farid Chenoune.

My other idea: It looks a little coffin-shaped, could it perhaps be one of those novelty snuff boxes that looks like a coffin? (Many pictures on auction sites).

Ooohhh thank you so very much!!! I did not know about those things!

Eighteen-Thirties Thursday: Girls Will Be Boys

'Behind the Scenes': an 1838 print by Paul Gavarni, showing an actress playing a male role telling her assistants to hurry up (Rijksmuseum). I enjoy the look at her neckwear being tied (and the shirt frill, although this is the twilight of frilled shirts in menswear).

Aside from fancy dress balls, which seemed to be full of women wearing male costumes and Turkish trousers, the stage was where a Romantic-era woman could be found in masculine attire. Many popular actresses were male impersonators.

Madame Vestris (Lucia Elizabeth Vestris) as Little Pickle in The Spoiled Child, ca. 1830 (V&A)

Mary Anne Keeley as Jack Sheppard the notorious highwayman, 1838 (British Museum).

Maria Foote as 'The Little Jockey', 1831 print of leading ladies (detail). (V&A) This particular character seems to have a lot of merchandise and prints.

Madame Vestris again (V&A), in a circa 1830 print, reminding us that there was also a contemporary song about her legs.

Finally—if you remember the uh, very creative play about the arctic adventures of Sir John Ross and his nephew, which appeared in a toy theatre kit in the mid-1830s (hat tip to @handfuloftime), the role of "Clara Truemore", love interest of the captain's nephew James Clark Edward Ross, is a breeches role, and Clara spends most of the play disguised as "Harry Halyard."

I feel like there is something inherently queer about this, despite the long tradition of "Sweet Polly Olivers" in male drag pursuing their lovers in ballads and broadsides. I wonder how the audience perceived these characters.

I didn't want to do this, but since there is now a version of this post in wide circulation with a lot of snarky added commentary, here is the

Reading Comprehension Special Edition With Added Resources!

Reblog this version, please.

Women’s silhouettes of the 19th century by Alfred Roller

PSA to all historical fiction/fantasy writers:

A SEAMSTRESS, in a historical sense, is someone whose job is sewing. Just sewing. The main skill involved here is going to be putting the needle into an out of the fabric. They’re usually considered unskilled workers, because everyone can sew, right? (Note: yes, just about everyone could sew historically. And I mean everyone.) They’re usually going to be making either clothes that aren’t fitted (like shirts or shifts or petticoats) or things more along the lines of linens (bedsheets, handkerchiefs, napkins, ect.). Now, a decent number of people would make these things at home, especially in more rural areas, since they don’t take a ton of practice, but they’re also often available ready-made so it’s not an uncommon job. Nowadays it just means someone whose job is to sew things in general, but this was not the case historically. Calling a dressmaker a seamstress would be like asking a portrait painter to paint your house

A DRESSMAKER (or mantua maker before the early 1800s) makes clothing though the skill of draping (which is when you don’t use as many patterns and more drape the fabric over the person’s body to fit it and pin from there (although they did start using more patterns in the early 19th century). They’re usually going to work exclusively for women, since menswear is rarely made through this method (could be different in a fantasy world though). Sometimes you also see them called “gown makers”, especially if they were men (like tailors advertising that that could do both. Mantua-maker was a very feminized term, like seamstress. You wouldn’t really call a man that historically). This is a pretty new trade; it only really sprung up in the later 1600s, when the mantua dress came into fashion (hence the name).

TAILORS make clothing by using the method of patterning: they take measurements and use those measurements to draw out a 2D pattern that is then sewed up into the 3D item of clothing (unlike the dressmakers, who drape the item as a 3D piece of clothing originally). They usually did menswear, but also plenty of pieces of womenswear, especially things made similarly to menswear: riding habits, overcoats, the like. Before the dressmaking trade split off (for very interesting reason I suggest looking into. Basically new fashion required new methods that tailors thought were beneath them), tailors made everyone’s clothes. And also it was not uncommon for them to alter clothes (dressmakers did this too). Staymakers are a sort of subsect of tailors that made corsets or stays (which are made with tailoring methods but most of the time in urban areas a staymaker could find enough work so just do stays, although most tailors could and would make them).

Tailors and dressmakers are both skilled workers. Those aren’t skills that most people could do at home. Fitted things like dresses and jackets and things would probably be made professionally and for the wearer even by the working class (with some exceptions of course). Making all clothes at home didn’t really become a thing until the mid Victorian era.

And then of course there are other trades that involve the skill of sewing, such as millinery (not just hats, historically they did all kinds of women’s accessories), trimming for hatmaking (putting on the hat and and binding and things), glovemaking (self explanatory) and such.

TLDR: seamstress, dressmaker, and tailor are three very different jobs with different skills and levels of prestige. Don’t use them interchangeably and for the love of all that is holy please don’t call someone a seamstress when they’re a dressmaker

Bubblegum Pink Evening gown, c. 1865.

Entirely handmade 2-piece bubblegum pink silk taffeta evening gown with black velvet brocade in Greek fret pattern, bodice with extended peplum & pagoda sleeves & tri-tiered ruffled skirt. Augusta Auctions.

Choose your own fashion disaster

"Historical lesbian" is goals.

Entering my sans-culotte era babes

How a napoleonic soldier dressed up Source

Heaven! I had to reblog this.  Merci, merci, merci, @histoireettralala!

This reminds me of the anecdote about Napoleon in his undies I posted a while ago, when he undressed in front of a no doubt stunned Polish regiment.

A while ago, I also posted the link to a video about how a British officer of the period would have gotten dressed. Different country, true, but the differences were minimal. Here is the link again: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSksa0RZdio&list=PLdrid-Z1I8wrauKPgyIK4X9N7fWkWaIur&index=21

An amazing realization in light of Saint-Just being revealed to still have a plait despite it not looking like it on the front:

Is how we see the same process with Carnot (one of the brothers) in ~1791:

And Basire in 1793:

And (presumably) Lindet in 1795:

And the same with Saint-André:

And then there's the inventor of the physionotrace himself, Gilles-Louis Chrétien, in 1792:

What's really interesting is that the hair on the sides is still long enough to curl but progressively gets shorter or is floofed differently.

It's also very likely Prieur and Barère still have a braid or ponytail behind these:

I think it's very interesting to compare with Robespierre's rather small roll/curl on every single portrait/bust.

Unnamed man, dated between 1786-1792:

There's also this posthumous medal made of Drouais after his death in 1788:

Which you can compare to this look:

And to these fashion plates:

And these random attractive young men:

(The last two portraits are of the same man from ~1781 and 1793.)

And then this beautiful painting from Boilly in 1798 that shows competing hairstyles:

Business Microbangs in the front, party in the back.

(Though interestingly, not all have microbangs. Were they optional?)

From what I've read, microbangs are more closely associated with jacobinism/sans-culottism? I think. I know they become political. Take Boilly's self-portrait as a sans-culotte vs as a muscadin:

Or this illustration:

(Though there's no microbangs that I can see in these.)

Hair becomes even more political in 1795 though it seems to have settled by 1798 in Boilly's paintings of Isabey's students.

La mode pendant la révolution  Fashion during the revolution

Hypothesis: this man is the reason Saint-Just might have worn hoop earrings, and how the fashion trend spread

This is Auguste Vestris (27 March 1760 – 5 December 1842), a ballet dancer nicknamed "the god of dance":

First picture by Thomas Gainsborough, ca 1781 | Second picture by Adèle Romany, ca 1793

Now that second pic is quite uncanny: this is quite literally Saint-Just's fashion style, from head to toe gloves, accessories included (yes, he had a bamboo cane).

Interesting to note: Vestris was born in 1760, and therefore, by being a few years older, has the time to influence an entire generation's most fashionable looks. And, yes, stardom around artists (and others) is on the rise. Their influence is increasingly democratized via engravings and various prints which become more accessible. We also know Saint-Just was very fond of theater - so it's not a stretch.

Now the question remains to know if it's just him, or if Vestris copied someone else.

That 1793 painting is definitely SJ’s style (what he liked). Even though we are not sure if he had earrings or not, it makes sense that the earrings were popularized by someone like Vestris. Yes, the origin of the trend were sailors (who were ~inspired/culturally appropriated Caribbean styles) but it always sounded strange that bourgeois men would adopt the earrings from sailors so suddenly, and in that number. But a stylish celebrity? More likely. And yes, I know dancers and performers were not seen as respectable but it still makes sense that the style/fad was popularized by someone like Vestris. (Now, I have no idea if he was the source but he sure embodies the style so many of them loved at the time). 

medieval hoods kind of came back in the 1860s!

Der Bazar, January 1860.

Hood, c. 1865-70. Met Museum.

I love them and would like to add my 19th-century-focused costumer stamp of approval to them alongside the medieval and 18th-century contingents!

Ooh I didn't know that! They're so cute!

Chinese period clothing from different dynasties.

English added by me :)

The drip is unreal

YouTube GIFs || Crows’ Eye Productions: Getting Dressed in the 18th Century — Working Woman

Robe à l’anglaise, 1780′s

From the Maryland Center for History and Culture