European Women's Wear 1700–1770
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Glasgow Museums has a collection of approximately 20 items of early to mid-eighteenth-century women's wear main garments, such as dresses and petticoats, dating from 1700 to 1769.
The earliest extant dress is a robe à la Française (French gown), also known as the sack-back gown, that incorporates lengths of fabric falling from two double-box pleats at the back of the neck. Two classic examples of this style date from the 1760s and were worn by Barbara Stuart (died 1774), wife of John Richardson of Perth (died 1821). Annual fashions were observed in the introduction of new textile designs and details in the robings that trimmed the front of the gown; 1740s' pleats were replaced by serpentine lines in the 1750s and 1760s, which in turn gave way to vertically padded bands. However, as fabrics were expensive it was customary to partially or fully unpick them and reuse the material to make new gowns, taking apart an earlier gown to remake into a more contemporary style to suit the fashion. Several dresses are made from mid-1700s' silks that were altered or re-made into new styles of gowns later in the century, including one in an unusual silk liseré.
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