Tissot’s 3 Striped Dresses

The striped dress I am currently working on is just one of three striped dresses that feature in some of James Tissot’s paintings.

You can read more about the dress I’m making here, but let’s have a little look at the other two…

Grey and White

This lovely dress appears in Spring Morning, c. 1875, Holyday (or The Picnic), c. 1876, in the etching Woman At The Window, and part of it can be seen in Waiting For The Train, 1873.

There is definitely a play with the direction of stripes with this dress, with the overskirt’s stripes running horizontal rather than vertical. The overskirt is trimmed with a row of pleats.

The pleats are echoed in the cute capelet worn over the bodice in Spring Morning and in The Woman in The Window. The bodice has sleeves and cuffs close to the wrist (unlike the sleeves for the Black and White Striped bodice).

The underskirt is not striped, rather a solid colour, probably black or dark grey. It looks like it has rows of pleated trim but I’m basing this guess on a very small detail from both Spring Morning and Woman At The Window.

In Waiting For The Train, the underskirt is cream, to match the hat (which also can be seen throughout Tissot’s paintings).

Solid And Stripe

This dress appears in Waiting For The Ferry Outside The Falcon Tavern, 1874, The Ball On Shipboard, 1874, and London Visitors, c. 1874.

This dress also has a solid colour underskirt, which looks like it is untrimmed. I can’t be entirely sure of the colour of this because it appears differently in the different paintings. The stripes are a dark grey… there is not the same sharp contrast as we see in the Black and White Striped dress.

The overskirt has a wide black velvet trim, and some fantastic buttons down the centre.

The bodice is a bit obscured by the muff and shawl in London Visitors, but in the other paintings we can see it is made of black velvet, like the overskirt trim, and has striped sleeves.

The flared cuffs are cut on the bias and pleated, with a pleated inner sleeve. This is a little bit similar to the cuffs on the Black and White Striped bodice. There is also strip of black and a black bow just above this.