A Clinging Liberty Tea-Gown instead of a Magenta Satin - The Colour Red in Artistic Dress.

This article addresses questions about the use of strong colours, particularly red, in aesthetic fashions of the late nineteenth century. Contrary to our perception of the Aesthetic Movement, there are actually images, surviving textile patterns and literature which show that strong reds were used in dress, despite the fact that there appear to be no surviving Liberty garments in these colours. Rather than because of a disdain for cheap dyes, it is due rather to practical matters: ideas about the unhealthy aspects of certain dyes and the unreliability of their colour fastness seem stronger than class-bound feelings of contempt.

It was possible to come to some of these conclusions by a systematic search through the silk pattern books in the Liberty archive and the extensive texts in their mail order catalogues, and by studying the examples of surviving garments in different collections. The ideas were strengthened by reading the many books giving advice on style and colour in dress and home interiors, which were so prolific at the end of the nineteenth century and the magazines of the same period, which write about fashion and interiors, but from which one can also distil the interests and desires of the middle-class Victorian consumer.

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