Robe à la française

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Standard European silhouettes of the eighteenth century accommodated a world of change and specifically a changing world dominated by new textile techniques from Asia and the Middle East. This French textile emulates ikat (a technique in which yarns are tie-dyed before weaving) in a manner then known as a result of a geographic mistake as chiné. The softened edges of the ikat do not mitigate a bold textile design, nor do they entirely surrender to the authority of the Western shaping. Pinked-edge pleated and ruched self-fabric (see detail) trace the form of the open robe. An eighteenth-century template of dress is all but unchanging, yet the influence of new material requires a syncretism. In terms of eighteenth-century revivals, it is important to recognize how much the classic forms of eighteenth-century dress accommodated translations into arresting new textile forms in the 1760s and even the new textiles in the cottons of the 1780s.

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