#not me overthinking historical clothing of some silly little sketches

[kittensbooksart]

Do you think you can draw a historically accurate version of belle’s other dresses in beauty and the beast?

(While I was searching for the pictures of the original designs for this post I realised I had forgotten the existence of the green dress, which I think she wears at the end of the film?)

I do love making these historical versions so I did do couple of sketches.

I made them based on around 1750s fashion, like the first Belle I made. I do have to admit that the blue dress is not exactly super historically accurate. I gave her jumps, usually a sort of waistcoat that's laced (usually unboned or very lightly boned) and works as a replacement of stays. Usually when they are depicted in art from the time, they are used by working women while they are doing physical labour. Which makes sense, you don't have extra sleeves that might be too warm or hinder arm movement and they are softer than stays so they don't also hinder torso movement but are still somewhat supportive. But upper class women did wear them too as a part of negligee but not really at all in social situations. Then they were usually also quilted. I think it's pretty safe to say Belle is not working class. I think her father could be classified as craftsman and being from that class does make sense to their social status. That would make them under the merchant class and basically roughly lower middle class in 18th century French standards. They do live in rural village though, and jumps seem to be more depicted on rural settings and on peasants too. They are very informal, but it also seems like rural social settings just tended to be more informal. So I think that could lend a little more plausibility.

If I would have taken a safer route I'd given her a jacket/caraco or a round gown/robe a l'anglaise, which were commonly used by middle and lower classes and also upper classes for casual wear. People at the time generally didn't go outside without covering their head. Most women wore caps at least during the day to keep their hair cleaner. In fancier evening occasions (mostly only upper classes and upper middle classes would attend those) they would not cover their hair. Also hats were popular and I've seen several of these very wide brimmed hats, usually made of straw, on artisan and peasant French women.

For her pink gown robe a l'anglaise would have worked too, as it was clearly semi casual, not negligee, but also not the ball gown. But being a castle of a prince and it being used for a dinner scene, robe a la francaise works better, as at the time they were used for salons and other fashionable but not very official gatherings (not outings though) by the nobility. I could have also given it the kerchief, it would have fitted better the look of the original design's neckline made it a little less formal, but maybe we can imagine this is how she wore it to the dinner and she'd had worn it with a kerchief during the day or something.