Silk Coat

1780 –1785

Style: This coat has a loose fit and a turndown collar, different from the fashionably tailored coats of the day. Coats with collars like this were sometimes called “frocks.”

Fabric: “Frocks” started as wool coats worn by working men and by gentlemen in the country for riding and casual wear. In the third quarter of the eighteenth century, they began their upgrade into more fashionable dress made by finer fabrics. By the 1780s, translated into silk and cut in a slender silhouette, this style was well-accepted daytime wear.