Cabinet des Modes, 3e Cahier, 3e Planche

PLATE III.

It represents a Woman coiffed in a cap à la Laitiere, trimmed with a dark green ribbon. Accommodage with two curls, the chignon underneath.

Earrings, as plaquettes.

Plain kerchief, of Italian gauze.

Fourreau with collar, à l'Anglaise, of the color King's eye, edged with white ribbon à la Jannette. The Fourreau is tied in front with a dark green ribbon.

Gloves of the color soft sulfur, or canary's tail.

Apron of plain muslin, with three pleats.

Pink shoes.
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Choice Jewelry.

Earrings, and necklaces in gold pearls, lined and cut with facets, bestoned and polished in a stone-mill.

Idem. Bracelets, Purse drawstrings, Pins, Gold watch chains, cut and bestoned the same way.

Note. Decorations like these are never made in steel; they have the greatest effect in gold.

Men's Buckles, with a double row of gold pearls, interlaced with silver brilliants.

Watch cords, in silk, with buckles and a large gold key, or a seal à la Talisman.

Pendulum clock and Torches in Queen's porcelain, trimmed with matte ormolu.

Coat buttons, in eight sections, called au Firmament,  blue ground dotted with white stones.

Rings surrounded with brilliants: the middle filled with stones of diverse colors.

Women's Buckles, with stones, long square, composed of broken stones, without overlapping; sewn on the shoe, they take the form of the ankle, without hurting it.

Rings with bouquets of fine pearls; without crystal, surrounded with colored stones.

Women's Buckles, à Lantilles, of blue composition, with Childbirth* of Cayenne stones.

Idem. For the belt, with fringes.

Silver swords, with inlaid gold pearls.

Watch chains, with links of arborized agate, mounted in gold.

Silver spurs, cut in diamond points, like steel.

All these articles of jewelry are found at the shop of M. Grancher, Jeweler to the Queen, at the Little Dunkirk, quai de Conty, in Paris.

* I suspect the figurative meaning is either "a center" or "a border"

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The Fourreau

When people are discussing eighteenth-century gown styles, the fourreau does not rank alongside the polonaise and turque; in fact, it never seems to come up at all.

The main, traditional meaning of fourreau was for a child's dress. In Garsault's L'Art de la Lingere, infants are described as wearing various pieces of the layette until they reach three, at which point the girls are put into shifts and jacquettes, while boys wear the fourreau until they're breeched at four or five. However, in Galerie des Modes, the caption-writer is consistent in describing the young fourreau-wearers as girls. (It's possible that this is not contradictory - Garsault was published in 1761, and a shift in word- or dress-usage may have occurred over the following two decades.)

32e Cahier, 5e Figure, 1780

The fourreau depicted on children in Galerie des Modes is the typical children's gown of the eighteenth century: back-closing, but otherwise very similar to women's gowns. The fashion plates show that these fourreaux could be made à l'anglaise, worn retroussée à la polonaise - echoing fashions in gowns.

This sort of echoing existed in the adult woman's fourreau as well. The Cabinet des Modes reported that "gowns and fourreaux à l'Anglaise, à la Turque, à la Janseniste, à la Circassienne, are still in fashion.  When a Lady is in a green fourreau, à la levite ..." 

The adult version of the fourreau appears in the fashion plates in 1784, around the same time as the chemise gown, and the plates seem to show that - like the child's fourreau and the chemise - it has a closed skirt.

39e Cahier (bis 2), 3e Figure, 1784

The fourreau could be full or fitted, but in either case it looks to have not just been a "round gown" with a closed skirt, but a back-closing garment like the one worn by children. There is no back view in a fashion plate to examine, but it seems most likely that it would fasten with hooks and eyes or pins, rather than lacing.

So far, I haven't been able to determine how late the fourreaux were worn - 1790 is the latest I've come across the term at the moment - but they seem to be generally part of the pre-Neoclassical Anglomania period. To my knowledge, there are no extant fourreaux in collections online, which would suggest that they were less common outside of the pages of fashion magazines. However, many portraits of the 1790s show very plain gowns that could possibly be fourreaux.

(As of this point, I haven't translated much of Cabinet des Modes or Journal de la Mode et du Gout, and given their time of publication it seems very likely that the fourreau will come up in more fashion plates and descriptions. This page may be updated later!)

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Galerie des Modes, 61e Cahier, 2e Figure

The tranquil Egle dreaming of the inclination of her heart. She is Dressed in a Fourreau à l'Enfant and Coiffed à la Flore.

" ... The courtesans in the realm give the tone and are copied at will by other women, of some condition that they could be. Lais* going out to an orgy perceives that a disheveled air suits her hair: in consequence, she will show herself the next day in public with her hair in disorder; and the day after, bourgeoises and bankers' wives, patricians and ladies of the highest trimmings, let their hair fall below their belts; and the modest beauty, in order not to stand out, will be obliged to adopt the appearance of a bacchante ..."

SYLVAIN MARECHAL, Notice on the mores of Paris (Actual costumes of all the known people), 1787

* Lais of Corinth, a hetaera in Ancient Greece

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Galerie des Modes, 52e Cahier, 2e Figure

Lady of distinction in a morning fourreau with a brocaded gauze belt: she is coiffed with a galant hat, her hair in little curls and her chignon hanging. (1787)

"Ladies still dress in very long fourreaux.  It is not permitted to make them, as at other times, in silk fabrics, or in colored linen: they can only be made of white linen, or plain white muslin; still, those of muslin are very rare.  One dares sometimes to wear them over pink, blue, green, or violet transparens; but the best, and the most fashionable, is to wear them without transparens."

Le Magasin des Modes, 1787

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Galerie des Modes, 47e Cahier, 3e Figure

Pretty Woman walking alone in her garden to avoid all dissipations, she engages herself entirely with sweet ideas that pleasure presents to her; this makes these flattering images which render her an agreeable solitude: she is coiffed with a hat called à la Charlotte; over her long gown she has a pelisse lined with fur with a gauze apron. (1785)

"Women's actual outfits, in Paris. - The gowns and fourreaux à l'Anglaise, à la Turque, à la Janseniste,* à la Circassienne, are still in fashion.  When a Lady is in a green fourreau, à la levite, she wears a straw hat with a high crown, trimmed with a violet ribbon, with a cockade bow, the two ends of the ribbon hanging about two or three inches.

"Her coiffure is a half-herisson, ended by two hanging curls; the hair hanging behind the ears, à la conselliere: the earrings are large, trembling rings; the kerchief, of trimmed linen; the mantelet of black satin, spotted; the apron of linen; petticoat of violet satin; white shoes, with violet rosettes."

Journal general de France, 6 December 1785 (later the Cabinet des Modes)

* Jansenism, originating in the 17th century, was a flavor of Christianity similar to Calvinism.  By the 1780s it had mostly died out as a sect.

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Galerie des Modes, 39e Cahier (bis 2), 3e Figure

 Young Person in indolent négligée with a simple Fourreau d'Agnes, amadis sleeves, triple Kerchief, Ribbon Necklace, and Globe Cap; having an air of braving the heat of the Sun as much as the fires of Love. (1784)

Globe Cap. - "The aerostatic discoveries did not fail to furnish a number of ingenious names for fashions.  The only Galerie des Modes provides much evidence of this.  In addition to this plate, which dates to 1784, others from the same year show the globe ribbon (pl. 176), the globe hat (pl. 188), the hat à la Montgolfier (pl. 190), the demi-balloon hat (pl. 197), the hat à la Blanchard (pl. 199), the Globe cap (pl. 202).  Furthermore, the twelfth and thirteenth books of coiffures, for [1785], show the aerostatic balloon hats worn in 1783, à la inflammable air, au flying globe, au Robert's globe, etc.

"To be precise, note that the first attempt of the Montgolfier brothers was on the 5th of June [1783]; that of Robert was on the 1st of December in the same year and that of Blanchard in January 1785."

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We tend to use the term "fourreau" in relation to the vertical pleats used on the back of a gown, but I find that it appears most frequently in period texts as the name for a child's back-closing gown.  The uses with adult clothing are mostly ambiguous, but in this case it's clearly in reference to a woman's gown with no front opening in the skirt.  It's possible that the bodice fastens in the back, like the children's garment, but this could also be a front-closing gown with an apron-front skirt.

"Agnes" is a character from Moliere's School for Wives, an innocent young girl brought up in a convent, so this dress might be intended to evoke charming simplicity.  I haven't found any other likely Agnes to have lent her name to the gown, but perhaps I will come across one while researching something else in the future.

This version of the plate is from the MFA Boston, 44.1567.

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