Enfilade

Now on view at The Georgian House, from the National Trust for Scotland:

Ramsay and Edinburgh Fashion
The Georgian House, Charlotte Square, Edinburgh, 7 June — 24 November 2024

Bringing together Allan Ramsay’s portraits of women from the National Trust for Scotland’s collection, Ramsay and Edinburgh Fashion explores how vital it was for a painter in the 1700s to be familiar with dress styles, materials, and accessories because fashion was a key signifier of good taste. New research lays out the trades involved in fashion along Edinburgh’s High Street—from the milliners to the mantua-makers—and sets this against the fashion for portraiture in the mid-18th century.

Allan Ramsay, Portrait of Katherine Anne Mure, 1760s, oil on canvas (National Trust for Scotland, Hill of Tarvit Mansion House & Garden).

Katherine Anne Mure was painted by Ramsay in the 1760s wearing the height of French fashion. Katherine lived in Abbeyhill and is pictured wearing a fine laced kerchief over her shoulders, sleeves fitted at the upper arm and trimmed with tiered lace, flowers at her bust, and a stomacher decorated with buttons and ruched strips of expensive blue silk.

Ramsay understood that being well-versed in the language of fashion was one of the keys to social mobility. Being aware of the latest trends was becoming easier for customers in cities like Edinburgh, which was filled with a world of goods and a diverse cross-section of retailers. Fabrics mostly came into the city from textile manufacturing centres like London, Manchester, and Norwich. They were then sold by auction or directly purchased by consumers, merchants, drapers, and milliners.

Foreign textiles were hugely popular. So much so that legislation was introduced throughout the 1700s to protect and encourage domestic production. The encouragement to buy well and buy local fostered a trade in second-hand goods. Wealthier women sold on outdated dresses, in pursuit of the newest trends, while less affluent women searched for the ideal gown that would last and which they could adapt with small alterations.