Dress

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Empire dress owes its name, physical emancipation, popularity, and even its sexiness to France. In this English example, French style is slavishly followed in the gown's high waist and modish stripes. But for all its classicizing details and shape, the gown retains vestiges of the ancien régime in its open-robe construction.

The Costume Institute

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Costume Institute's collection of more than thirty-three thousand objects represents seven centuries of fashionable dress and accessories for men, women, and children, from the fifteenth century to the present.

Metropolitan Museum of Art