Artistic Dress

Artistic Dress was a fashion movement in the second half of the nineteenth century that rejected highly structured and heavily trimmed Victorian trends in favour of beautiful materials and simplicity of design.

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.

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.

Her 1903 book, Das Eigenkleid der Frau, which incorporated an Art Nouveau binding by Frances MacDonald, is considered an important contribution to the Artistic Dress movement.

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 .
Jane Morris (The Blue Silk Dress) by Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 1868.
Ball gown designed by Jacques Doucet , 1898–1900, with characteristics of the aesthetic dress movement : simple in design, "yet extravagant by the choice of materials used. The sheer overlayer is enhanced by the solid lamé underlayers and a sense of luxury is added by the hidden lace flounce at the hem." [ 1 ]
Oscar Wilde in his aesthetic lecturing costume, 1882. Photo by Napoleon Sarony . Wilde wrote about aesthetic dress movement in his recently rediscovered treatise The Philosophy of Dress .