Changing Tastes.

During the 1770s fashion began to change in Europe rather quickly. By this time the tendency toward opulent decoration and to fanciful and fantastic clothing seemed to many to have been spent. While richly decorated women's dresses and men's suits remained popular in some court circles for a time, new and simpler styles first began to appear in England and then to spread to Continental Europe. English fashions, although profoundly influenced by the French throughout the eighteenth century, had long evidenced a fondness for simpler and less artificial lines than those popular in France. French innovations, such as the use of elaborate paniers or hoop skirts, had been widely popular in the country among women, but had given rise to native innovations. By the 1750s, English women began to abandon the paniers altogether or merely to favor hip pads that...