Gallerie des Modes et Costumes Français, 1785, nr. 3, Kopie naar V 126 : Circassienne de taffetas (...) c. 1785

This is a print by Pierre Gleich from 1785, part of a series on French fashion. It shows a fashionable woman of the time, and the image is all about textiles, their qualities, and how they were deployed to create a specific effect. Just consider all the labor embedded here: the growing and harvesting of flax for linen, silkworms cultivated for taffeta, the carding, spinning, weaving, dyeing, cutting, and sewing – all of which would have been done by hand at this time. And, of course, the design itself! The textiles are not just there for warmth and modesty, they announce wealth, status, and taste. Note the emphasis on stripes and layers, lace and ribbons – so much careful, painstaking work, all rendered in delicate detail by the printing process. It makes you wonder about the contrast between the leisured life suggested by the image, and the intense labor required to produce it. This print gives us a vivid sense of the material world of the late 18th century, and the social realities that underpinned it.