The fashionable

Fashionables of 1817, George Cruickshank, 1817, Hand coloured lithograph

William Heath and Will Dyson's satires, contrasting the fashionable excesses of the past with their own age, make clear what a perennial theme fashion was and what a rich subject it provided for each new generation of artists.

Fashions change such as the 'beau' of the mid eighteenth century becoming the 'dandy' of the Regency, but the jokes remained the same. The satirists highlight vanity and pretension as the motive that produces clothes that are both ludicrously unnatural and against common sense.

       

Some of Cruikshank's most famous satirical creations were his 'Monstrosities', published annually from 1816 to 1828. He delighted in mocking contemporary fashions and here he mocked the men and women promenading in the park with their thin waists, ballooning pantaloons and high collars.