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William Powell Frith's satiric painting of 1883 contrasts women's Aesthetic dress (left and right) with fashionable attire (center) at a private view. Detail of A Private View at the Royal Academy, 1881.

The Artistic Dress movement and its successor, Aesthetic Dress, were fashion trends in nineteenth century clothing that rejected the highly structured and heavily trimmed Paris fashion of the day in favour of beautiful materials and simplicity of design.

[edit] Artistic dress

Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti and other members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood were conscious archaizers, emulating the work of the "old masters" and choosing romantic, medieval subjects. They dressed their models in long flowing gowns loosely inspired by styles of the Middle Ages. These styles were then adopted by the painters' wives and models for everyday dress. Dresses were loosely fitted and comparatively plain, often with long puffed sleeves; they were made from fabric in muted colors derived from natural dyes, and could be ornamented with embroidery in the art needlework style. Artistic dress was an extreme contrast to the tight corsets, hoop skirts and bustles, bright synthetic aniline dyes, and lavish ornamentation seen in the mainstream fashion of the period.

In the 1860s, artistic dress became popular in intellectual circles and among artists for its natural beauty; it also reinforced their social ideals of quality materials, respect for the work of the hands, and the purity of medieval design.

[edit] Aesthetic dress

Oscar Wilde in his aesthetic lecturing costume, 1882. Photo by Napoleon Sarony.

Aesthetic dress of the 1880s and '90s carries on many of the external characteristics of Artistic dress (rejection of tightlacing, simplicity of line, and emphasis on beautiful fabrics), even though, at its core, Aestheticism rejected the moral and social goals of Pre-Raphaelitism. The Aesthetes' belief that the Arts should provide refined sensuous pleasure was a direct rejection of the reverence for simplicity and handwork propounded by William Morris.

Aesthetic dress encompasses a range of modes, from the Japonnaise gowns and Kate Greenaway-inspired children's smocks of Liberty & Co. to the velvet jackets and knee breeches of Oscar Wilde's "aesthetic lecturing costume" for his speaking tour of America in 1882.

[edit] Influence on mainstream fashion

From artistic circles, artistic and aesthetic dress spread to fashionable ones. The delicate, lightly-corsetted tea gowns of the turn of the 20th century echo the lines of late aesthetic dress, and in their turn paved the way for the early Art Deco creations of Paul Poiret.