TN 1734 women’s stays vere worn extremely low. The bodies of gowns were laced up the front over a stomacher, or else stays were worn outside ; but in general there is little change in feminine costume since the last decade.
Men’s costume also remained almost static, although the bag-wig was steadily ousting more ebboratc types of coiffure. The turned back cuffs, frequently of contrasting colour to that of the coat, were cut in pagorla " fashion, that Is to say, narrow at the wrist and expanding sharply along the forearm. The name is a sufficient indication of the slight Oriental influence which made itself felt throughout the eighteenth century, not, however, so much affecting the shape of clothes as their colour, material, and decoration.
In Fiance about 1750 men began to fasten their breeches at the knee over the stockings, but the older mode persisted among Englishmen for some years longer. The winter of 1729 was one of exceptional severity, and fine gentlemen, finding their thin stockings an insufficient protection against the cold, wore for a few months a kind of military gaiter. Men of the lower classes, with their grey or black woollen stockings, were better protected and had no need to adopt thi. s short-ljvcd fashion.
The fashion of leaving the waistcoat open in front in order to display the linen has been already mentioned. The custom reached its extreme in the early Thirties. Sometimes, about a foot of frilled shirt was shown—a fashion to which the modem dress shirt and low-cut waistcoat can be ultimately traced. Women’s riding-habits affected, as so often, a masculine mode, the waistcoat being shorter but of the same pattern, and the hat smaller but similar in shape to those worn by men.
Men's pockets were very ample and the folds of the long coat made it possible to carry comparatively bulky objects in them without spoiling their shape. Some fashionable gentlemen would carry a whole battery of snuff-boxes in the skirts of their coats.
World History
