All of our 18th century costumes are custom made to order and can be designed, modified or altered in any way desired.

Brief Overview of 18th Century/Rococo Fashions

The style of Women’s garments in the 18th Century reflect the improving status of women in society. While the mantua of the early 18th Century was a rather simple limp garment composed of two lengths of fabric pinch pleated at the waist over the stays with wide soft sleeves sewn in, the mantua was gradually stiffened, decorated and expanded with hoops called panniers until, by mid/century it had been stylized into the Robe de Francaise a doll-cake-like structure that insured that a woman took up three times as much space as a man and always presented an imposing and ultra feminine spectacle. After 1760, women began to expand vertically as well, raising their hair with pads and pomade to a height in the 1770's that only a man on stilts could hope to emulate. After 1780, a fashion for Rousseauesque naturalism took over and women adopted more "natural" looking fashions which still took up a considerable amount of space, but emphasized the natural sexual characteristics of the female figure with padded busts and bottoms and riots of cascading hair under massive hats.

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