Costume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and Bodice

Costume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and Bodice

Anonymous, French, 18th century

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Page with sketches of a bouffant skirt, a large bonnet-style hat, an obscured ribbon, a bodice, and a ruffled sleeave. At the left is a sketch of a bouffant skirt with a tassled, embroidered ribbon tied at the waist. To the right is a graphite sketch of a woman wearing a large straw and red striped large bonnet-style hat. The hat is rendered in gouache. Below her is a rubbing in which a ribbon is visible. Further to the right is a sketch of a sleeve with a ruffle. Directly below the sleeve is a gouache and ink drawing of a white fabric shirt ruffled at the neck, and a tight green corseted bodice with red trimmings.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Costume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and BodiceCostume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and BodiceCostume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and BodiceCostume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and BodiceCostume Design Sketches including a Bouffant Skirt, Hat, and Bodice

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.