An evening with Ackermann: Evening dress in The Repository of Arts, 1809–1813

Abstract

ABSTRACT This study examines the presentation of evening dress within the first 50 issues of The Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions, and Politics, from January 1809 to February 1813. Within this early nineteenth-century British magazine, published in London by Rudolph Ackermann, several visuals and voices emerge as its primary fashion communicators. Through the written observations of two author-characters, as well as elegant hand-colored fashion plates and tactile fabric swatches of domestic manufacture, The Repository of Arts provided a dynamic array of sartorial instructions for its readers to consider. This study illuminates the publication’s explanation of the temporal boundaries of evening dress and related dress categories, its discussion of good taste and variety in fashion, and its commentary on visual impact, light reflectivity, and bodily exposure, providing new insights into the significance of evening dress at the start of the nineteenth century.