Robe de Cour with its hoop, trimmed as Jacob's Ladder.
"Court dress requires that women, on the presentation days, have uncovered shoulders. This was formerly a handsome spectacle; it has since changed. Ambition nourished women's
embonpoint and seemed to augment their youthfulness. Today one would say that this same ambition desiccates them and makes them thinner: the attractions of the court seem to have removed from them the rounded attractions which distinguished their predecessors as is attested in their portraits; but it has been decided, for the last thirty years, that the evidence of full health will be left to the
bourgeoise, and that an exhausted or half-dead woman will be offered instead."
SEBASTIEN MERCIER,
Tableau de Paris, 1788
