Early French Revolution Dresses

Some of these dresses were made of such sheer fabric (often muslin) the ladies claimed the entire dress would fit in a teacup.

Costume Parisien Empire Fashion Plate

French Empire Fashion Plate

While looking thru my files for scans that might make a nice "Regency Valentine's Day Card" I found nested file-within-file a folder labeled "MISC Scans". Full of gorgeous scans, mostly of French fashion plates. So I am looking forward to hours of nit-picky photoshop fun.  Heh.

Work in Progress

After working for 2 days on the face, this lady has a very sweet smile.

I've been working on cleaning up a Costume Parisien fashion plate.  The plate is in bad condition; it looks as tho the person doing the water-color wash accidentally smeared it, or spilled something on it.  The original engraving must have come out a bit odd; giving the lady's face a sort of negative-racoon-look!

Its taking me awhile because I'm trying to get results that look a lot like the original intent.  Otherwise, I'd just sketch it by hand.  Which I may do anyway, just for fun.

La Mode Feminine

Here are some scans from a book I have, published in the 1920's, of fashion plates from the eras starting in 1795-to 1820.  They used the pochoir (stencil) technique, rather than individually painting each print with water-colors as fashion magazines in the Georgian-Regency-Empire Era did.

La Mode Feminine, Empire/ Regency Fashion

La Mode Feminine Late Regency Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

The drawings are somewhat Art Deco-y; I think they highlight the similarity of Fashions of the time to the Regency time. Both were influenced by "Greco-Roman classicalism" mixed with Egyptian themes, the Empire/Regency got theirs from Napoleon (and then Admiral Nelson's) excursions to Egypt.  And in the 20's fashion -and Art- was somewhat influenced by the discovery of King Tut's tomb.

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

I'll be adding more in a bit.  The prints are in good condition, tho yellowed.

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion

Here is the next La Mode Feminine, years 1820 to 1845.  Some plates are missing. It wouldn't be hard to loose one or two as they are loose, not bound.

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

La Mode Feminine  Empire/Regency Fashion, Early Victorian Fashion

French Fashion Illustration

This print was in such bad condition -it looked as tho it had been used as a place-mat- that I went ahead and did a lot of "fixing up" of the original.

La Bon Genre, Empire Fashion plate

Children's fashion plates from Costume Parisien

The plate on the left is a little boy.

They're surprisingly similar, aren't they?

Equestrian Ladies from Costume Parisien

I colorized the plate on the right- my original was so faded, everything was greyish-yellow, except the lady's green shoes and bright scarf.  Also, I added some color to the fur hat on the left.

Another Costume Parisien MEN's Fashion 1817-1820

Couple of cuties

Here are two, make that four - now six- more Men's Regency (Empire) Fashion.  One coat in the Russian style, another announces a new type of ... hat?

Costumes Parisiens, and Costume Parisien

Some equestrian fashion plates.

Fashion plates from the French Fashion magazine "Modes Etc"

These are very good engravings, but the watercolor washes over them were rather sloppy, and when scanned every flaw in the paper was magnified.  I whitened them, and touched up some of the painting.

 

Eifel Tower

france 2010 - a set on Flickr

My friend Claire visited France in June, and posted some really cool photos, which reminded me of a couple of really cool pics I got when visiting Paris 3 or 4 years ago with my sister.