ABSTRACT
In the study of Western history, the clothes, jewellery, accessories and hairstyles of a particular period can give us vital information, often relating to the decorative arts of the period in question. To give one example, in the last decade of the eighteenth century, after the French Revolution, the excessive female fashions of 1780s' Paris were replaced by the simplicity of the 'Empire line', where dresses fell straight to the ankle from below the bust. The waist and hips were no longer heavily emphasised, since women had a part to play in the new post-revolutionary France which extended beyond the bearing of children - unfortunately, like the Empire line, this idea did not last.
