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18th Century Fabrics

Flowing loosely down her back
Draw with art the graceful sack
Ornament it well with gimping,
Flowers, furbelows, and crimping
Let of ruffles many a row
Guard her elbows white as snow;
Knots below and knots above,
Emblems of the ties of love
Let her hoop extending wide,
Show what petticoats should hide
Garters of the softest silk
Stockings whiter than the milk.

- London Magazine , July 1755

Dress fabrics of the 18th Century ware as varied as dress styles. The bold patterned silks which were popular in the first half of the century went through clear style changes each decade or so. Patterns from the 17th and early 18th Century have been labeled as the "Bizarre" style. One that mixed abstract designs and oriental motifs in large diagonal patterns.

 
Textile Length with Pattern of Stylized Floral Meanders, 1709-10, France (?), colored silk and metallic thread brocaded on silk damask ground, purchased with funds provided by the Georges and Germaine Fusenot Charity Foundation. ac1999.10.3   at LACMA

Link: ABEGG-STIFTUNG Bizarre Silks

Textiles for Colonial Clothing

Silk Designs of the Eighteenth Century : From the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Patterns in a Revolution : French Printed Textiles, 1759-1821

Embroidery in Britain From 1200 to 1750: The Victoria & Albert Museum's Textile Collection

Woven Textile Design in Britain from 1750 to 1850 (The Victoria & Albert Museum's Textile Collection)

Guide to Lace and Linens

Fabrics : The Decorative Art of Textiles

Full Color Historic Textile Designs (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)

Textile Design Fashion in Detail : From the 17th and 18th Centuries

Madame De Pompadour : Sex, Culture and Power

 

Masterpieces of Women's Costume of the 18th and 19th Centuries Available from the Nightmare Factory

Textile Designs : Two Hundred Years of European and American Patterns for Printed Fabrics Organized by Motif, Style, Color, Layout, and Period. 1,823 Illustrations in Color

 

Soft Surfaces: Visual Research for Artists, Architects, and Designers Book & CD

After 1712, these diagonal patterns became smaller and were of floral or plant designs.

The dominant pattern of the 1720's was then the so called "lace" pattern which used florals in symmetrical designs of a more subtle nature.

   
"Lace" textile patterns

The 1730's saw a total revolution from these subtle flat designs to ones which used three-dimensional patterns, often of exotic islands or gardens floating in space.

The 1740's reacted against the three-dimensional style and introduced open symmetrical patterns of highly stylized plant forms.

The 1750's continued this trend into even lighter more open floral patterns, often in a single or double "meander" pattern.

 
Textile Length with Pattern of Lace and Floral Bouquets, c.1750, France, Colored silk and chenille brocaded on ribbed silk ground, Costume Council Fund.  tr.12462.8   at LACMA

    "meander" patterns

The early 1760's saw the apotheosis of both floral and "meander" motifs, as well as ribbon motifs.

By the late 1760's, designs had become less elaborate and smaller in scale. Stripes came in and did not go out for the rest of the century.

In the 1770's patterns reduced in size to repeats of an inch.

Late 18th Century silks were pushed to the background of fashion by cotton lawns and muslins. Pattern in silks was increasing confined to stripes when it was present at all.

 Silk Dress c. 1790 in the Musee de la Mode et du Textile, Paris

The 18th Century was also the first time in Western Civilization that printed fabrics became readily available. Early 18th Century printed fabrics were usually crude florals and geometrics of one color on cotton or linen. The mass produced fabric industry that burgeoned in England in the 1760's and the 1770's due to improved spinning and weaving techniques made cotton so cheap and available, that in the 1770's the industry got a real start. Printed cottons launched immediately into fashion for all classes due to their cheapness and washability. Printed patterns usually mirrored the florals and stripes of woven patterns of the time.

18th Century Fabric at at the Musee de la Mode et du Textile, Paris:

• DHM, Everyday Life Culture II, Textiles, Pattern book 

• 18th century Cotton_Prints_Index