Chinese Silk Dress

This is an English girl's dress of about 1760. It is a fashionable dress made from expensive Chinese export silk, but it has a thrifty secret.

To us, it often looks as if children in the past were miniature adults, particularly in the way they were dressed. This girl's dress echoes fashionable women's dresses of the period. like them, it was worn over tight stays and voluminous petticoats.

However this dress had one big difference. It fastens at the back, which in those days was a clear indication that it was a child's garment. There are always similarities between adult and children's clothing, but those similarities are more obvious in some periods and less so in others.

The 18th century was not only a period in which children's and adults' clothing were very similar in style, but also one in which clothing tended to be formal and rich in appearance. Even poor people dressed in this formal style by buying garments, which had once been of good quality, but had over time become dirty or ragged.

The sumptuous silk fabric came from China, and would have been extremely expensive. The fabric may even have been considered too valuable to use to make a child's dress when it was new. Its decorative motifs include butterflies, birds and vases in coloured silk threads, all hand-embroidered.

The silk's luxurious finish and the dressmaker's skill disguise the fact that there was not really enough fabric to make the dress. The bodice and sleeves use the colourful motifs to maximum decorative effect, but the skirt consists of the remaining pieces joined together even though they don't match.