Dress

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Western chinoiserie is often a compound of exotic elements, not all indigenous to China. This eighteenth-century dress exhibits such multiple allusions, but they have been assimilated by the technology and aesthetic of Lyonnais manufacture. Palm trees signify the foreign, and the pagoda-inspired follies—Eastern architecture transplanted to the West—are posts with tented swags.

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