1830s fashion in Western and Western-influenced fashion is characterized by an emphasis on breadth, initially at the shoulder and later in the hips, in contrast to the narrower silhouettes that had predominated between 1800 and 1820.
In the 1830s, men wore dark coats, light trousers, and dark cravats for daywear. Women's sleeves reached their ultimate width in the gigot sleeve. Here, the boys (on holiday in the mountains) wear buff-colored belted knee-length tunics with yokes and full sleeves over trousers. The girls wear white dresses with colored aprons. The Family of Dr. Josef August Eltz, Austria, 1835.
1833 Fashion Plate: evening gown (left) and two morning dresses. The lady on the right wears a fichu-pelerine (tippet).
By the later 1830s, fullness was moving from the upper to the lower sleeves. This morning dress of 1836–40 features shirring on the fitted upper sleeves; Victoria and Albert Museum.
This portrait shows the pleated panels of fabric that trim the gown around the bust and shoulders, and the method of gathering fullness in the large sleeves. 1832.
1795–1820 in Western fashion
Fashion in the period 1795–1820 in European and European-influenced countries saw the final triumph of undress or informal styles over the brocades, lace, periwigs and powder of the earlier 18th century. In the aftermath of the French Revolution, no one wanted to appear to be a member of the French aristocracy, and people began using clothing more as a form of individual expression of the true self than as a pure indication of social status. As a result, the shifts that occurred in fashion at the turn of the 19th century granted the opportunity to present new public identities that also provided insights into their private selves. Katherine Aaslestad indicates how "fashion, embodying new social values, emerged as a key site of confrontation between tradition and change."
In the early 1800s, women wore thin gauzy outer dresses while men adopted trousers and overcoats. Rutger Jan Schimmelpenninck and his family, 1801–02, by Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Madame Raymond de Verninac by Jacques-Louis David, with clothes and chair in Directoire style. "Year 7", that is 1798–99.
Painting of a family game of checkers ("jeu de dames") by French artist Louis-Léopold Boilly, c. 1803.
A well-to-do family edges cautiously along a plank to avoid the muddy streets of Paris, by Boilly, 1803
