![]() ![]() Despite all of this, Austen rarely goes into the specifics of fashion in her novels her letters, by contrast, are full of witty references to changes in fashio ns and personal tastes, her own and other people's. This was also a period in which the choice of styles, accessories, even fabrics-the choice of lace and muslin, for example-often had specific social and political connotations. By the time of Austen's death in 1817, all this would completely change: women were wearing relatively simple, high-waisted gowns, bonnets, and shawls, and men had largely abandoned bright colors and laces for a more austere style of clothing that is the ancestor of the modern suit. ![]() Elegant ladies of the time wore wide hoop skirts (originally called paniers), also lavishly decorated, and tall, elaborate, powdered coiffures. At the time of her birth in 1775, it was still permissible for fashionable men to wear elaborately embroidered colored silks and velvets, lace, wigs and perfume. Jane Austen's lifetime saw some of the most radical changes in fashions and styles in history. THUS JANE AUSTEN, writing to Cassandra 8-9 January 1801, delivers one of the many characteristically pithy assessments of fashion that fill her correspondence. ![]() Powlett was at once expensively & nakedly dress'd -we have had the satisfaction of estimating her Lace & her Muslin & she said too little to afford us much other amusement.-" ![]() "Martha & I dined yesterday at Deane to meet the Powletts & Tom Chute, which we did not fail to do.-Mrs. ![]()
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