Fashion To Die For

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Fashion To Die For?
1600-1700

To the first Plymouth settlers survivial rather than fashion was the controlling order of the day. In fact, on occassion, the early settlers were fined or admonished for "flaunting," As in all societies, however, fashion in Colonial America, as elsewhere, would become a definition of social status.

Modest, austere, in keeping with the times!
Wenceslas Hollar Engravings of English Women's Dress of the 17th Century

English Royalty clothing preferences. Shall we dance?
Seventeenth Century - England Anne Countess of Chesterfield (1640), Courtier of Charles II, Duke of Newcastle

My, My, is she showing what we
think she's showing, besides her
knees, that is. Negligee, 1693

The French: less uptight than
their English friends.

French Nobility in Court Dress
Last Third of the Seventeenth Century

French lady in Mourning. Fashionably so.
Mid-Seventeenth Century - France

color plates:
THE HISTORY OF COSTUME
By Braun & Schneider - c.1861-1880
http://www.siue.edu/COSTUMES/