Instructions: Tie this “pocket” to your petticoat, with strings; put on your skirt; access pocket through a slit in skirt. Credit: Allan Appel Photo If you saw an elegant crimson scarf around the neck of a flowingly dressed woman in a white chemise, or crossed red ribbons on the back of her dress, or her hair cut extravagantly short above the nape, such fashion statements might well remind you of the target for and bloody effects of the guillotine during the French Revolution’s 1794-95 Reign of Terror. Those fashions statements were very much part of the world of our strait-laced, homespun-favoring American Revolutionary-era power couple, John and Abigail Adams. During Adams’ indispensable service as a diplomat to France and his vice and full presidency, the couple’s newsy letters were full of gossip about what was a la mode, haute couture, and over-the-top, especially in the courts and counsels of pre-and-post revolutionary France. “The chemise or slip dress also became a basis of neo-classical fashions harkening back to Rome, which was appropriate to the new republic.” Such insights were part of a fascinating lecture, “Federalist Fathers and Republican Mothers: The Fashions of John and Abigail Adams,” which textile expert Lynne Basset presented to 75 fashionistas Saturday afternoon at the New Haven Museum. Speaker Lynne Bassett with early 18th century waistcoat — silver threads designed to sparkle in candle light The lecture was part of the museum’s ongoing NH250 series, said museum Executive Director Margaret Anne Tockarshewsky. It focuses on stories from lesser known aspects of the world out of which the American experiment in democracy arose. And don’t let anyone tell you, Bassett argued with relaxed, pre-empting rhetoric, that fashion — that is, the textile industry — is not an important part of history. “The American colonies,” she said, “were established in large part to provide beaver pelts for the fur trade.” During the last decades of the 18th century, women’s dresses were slimmed down, became more cotton-y and “mimicking Roman statuary,” Bassett added. Men’s fashions changed less although they too slimmed down, Bassett added, with the waistcoat, which had gone down as low as the knees, shortening to about the top of the hips by the last quarter of the 18th century. Bassett quoted several of what she called John Adams’ “fits of pique,” especially during his days as ambassador, before the French Revolution, when Frenchmen still flounced around with gold-braided coats and enormous ruffled shirts and cuffs. “The more elegance in fashion, the less virtue,” Adams, with self-righteous Puritan brevity, summarized the obviously appalling fashion crisis. When Abigail prepared to join him in France and had to navigate her husband’s strong opinions with her own fashion anxiety and potential embarrassment, she wrote, “A little of what you call frippery is necessary to be in the rest of the world.” During the violence of the French Revolution, which Federalists like the Adamses abhorred, the fashions, which seemed to attach to it, elicited John Adams’ opinion that the French women were “rouged up to their ears” and their painted faces “called their morality into question.” As First Lady — in Philadelphia, and then in the new White House in Washington — Abigail was still constrained to have at least three garment changes a day, Bassett reported. Rising at 5:00 a.m., she had a morning dress, then the day dress, and, of course, something more elegant for the receptions in the evening. Following the pattern set by the first president, these were called levees — stripped down in a Republican way from European court gatherings, but still ceremonial receptions — Abigail was obviously more concerned about appearances than John. She wrote to a relative that “fashions are as various as the changes of the moon.” The good side, at least from a podiatric point of view, is that Abigail may well have been wearing flatter shoes because women’s heels, which had been high and mighty in pre-French Revolutionary War days, had gotten lower and lower, and, as the 18th century became the 19th, the American First Ladies’ feet may well have been in little Republican slippers. The museum’s NH250 programs will be culminating on July 4 with the reading of the Declaration of Independence, and other events, said Tockarshewsky. In the immediate run-up, in June, the museum will be inaugurating a new permanent exhibition titled “Unfinished Revolution.” For the full calendar of programs between now and then, the site is here. The post You’ll Never Believe What The President Was Wearing appeared first on New Haven Independent. ...read more read less