Photo credit: Sheffield Museums
As well as its use on stage, fancy dress has always been a feature of balls, masquerades and parties. Public pleasure gardens like Ranelagh and Vauxhall Gardens hosted infamous masquerades in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, allowing experiments with risqué and exotic costumes. French aristocratic society was notorious for its extravagant costume balls.
These costumes can mislead us in portraits.
Sitters in mid-eighteenth-century British portraits often wear so-called ‘Van Dyck’ costume, in the style of the previous century’s most fashionable portrait painter. Classical, Turkish and Indian dress became fashionable later, worn by learned or well-travelled sitters. All portraits provide an opportunity for sitters to dress up: for fun, to reflect their interests or to promote a certain image.
