Artistic Dress facts for kids
Artistic Dress was a fashion style in the late 1800s. It was different from the popular Victorian clothes of the time. Instead of tight, heavily decorated outfits, Artistic Dress focused on simple designs and beautiful fabrics.
This style started in Britain around the 1850s. It was inspired by artists like the Pre-Raphaelites and groups who wanted to change fashion. Later, it led to other styles like Aesthetic Dress and Künstlerkleid in Europe.
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What Was Artistic Dress?
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Artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood loved old art styles. They often painted scenes from the Middle Ages. For their paintings, they dressed models in long, flowing gowns. These clothes looked like medieval styles.
Soon, the artists' wives and models started wearing these clothes every day. The dresses were loose and simple. They often had long, puffy sleeves. They were made from fabrics dyed with natural colors, which gave them soft, muted shades. Sometimes, they had pretty embroidery.
Artistic Dress was very different from the main fashion of the time. Mainstream Victorian clothes often included tight corsets, big hoop skirts, and bustles. They used bright, man-made dyes and lots of decorations. Artistic Dress was a big change from all that.
In the 1860s, this style became popular among artists and thinkers. They liked its natural beauty. It also matched their ideas about using good materials and valuing handmade things. They also admired the simple designs of medieval times.
Aesthetic Dress Style
Aesthetic dress became popular in the 1880s and 1890s. It kept many ideas from Artistic Dress. For example, it avoided tight corsets. It focused on simple shapes and beautiful fabrics.
However, Aestheticism had a different main idea. It believed that art should give pleasure to the senses. This was different from the earlier focus on simple, handmade things by people like William Morris.
Aesthetic dress included many different looks. Some were "Japonaise" gowns from Liberty & Co.. These were inspired by Japanese art. There were also children's smocks inspired by Kate Greenaway's drawings.
Another famous example was Oscar Wilde's "aesthetic lecturing costume." This included velvet jackets and knee breeches. He wore it during his speaking tour in America in 1882. Wilde also wrote about this fashion movement in his essay, The Philosophy of Dress.
Important designers of this style included Ada Nettleship. She designed clothes for Oscar Wilde's wife, Constance Lloyd. Alice Comyns Carr was another key designer. She created costumes for the actress Ellen Terry.
Anna Muthesius was a German designer living in London. She felt that clothing companies were taking advantage of women. She believed women should choose their own fabrics and designs. Her 1903 book, Das Eigenkleid der Frau, was important for the Artistic Dress movement. It even had an Art Nouveau cover by Frances MacDonald.
How It Influenced Mainstream Fashion
Artistic and Aesthetic dress started in artistic groups. But over time, these styles influenced mainstream fashion. The soft, lightly corseted tea gowns of the early 1900s looked a lot like late Aesthetic dress. These tea gowns then helped pave the way for the early Art Deco designs by Paul Poiret.
Gallery
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Early artistic dress: Symphony in White No. 1 by Whistler, 1862
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The young May Morris by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1872
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The wives and daughters of Frederick Morris and Edward Burne-Jones in artistic dress, 1874
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Leighton Brownlow in artistic dress, 1879.
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Liberty & Co tea gown of figured silk twill, around 1887.
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Liberty art fabrics advertisement showing a young girl's dress with smocking, May 1888
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See also
- The Souls
- Victorian fashion
- Victorian dress reform
- Svenska drägtreformföreningen
- National Dress Reform Association
- 1860s in fashion
- 1870s in fashion
- 1880s in fashion
- The Philosophy of Dress, an essay by Oscar Wilde.
