What was the mantua? How a 17th-century gown transformed dressmaking and ushered in financial freedom for women

• Originating in France in the 1670s, this women’s garment consisted of lengths of t-shaped fabric that were pleated to create an unstiffened bodice with attached overskirts.
• This gown was worn over a pair of stays (corset) and an often contrasting petticoat.

What was the mantua?

• Although strict dress codes at the Versailles court of French King Louis XIV prohibited the wearing of mantuas, women at the English court helped popularise it in England.
• By the 1680s, the mantua was widely worn in Western and Central Europe, as well as in European colonies around the world.

the loose style called a robe volante
the iconic robe à la française (sometimes called a sack gown) with its back pleats that draped to the floor, and
the tighter fitting robe à la anglaise (also known as English or Italian gowns).

Tailors vs mantua makers

• As well as changing the look of western fashions, the mantua radically changed women’s involvement in the fashion industry.
• Before the 17th century, outer garments were usually made by male tailors.

• Significantly, in 1675, women in Paris and Rouen acquired their own, independent couturière (dressmaking) guilds and began to take over making women’s clothing from male tailors.
• Due to the considerable influence of France on western fashions, women in London began to train under French dressmakers, giving rise to what were known in English as mantua makers.

Dressmaking and financial freedom

• New training opportunities in dressmaking – coupled with historical peculiarities such as London’s feme sole status, which allowed married women to run businesses and have finances independent of their husbands – meant many women began to open their own businesses.
• Single women often lived in houses with other mantua makers and their apprentices, working as teams.
• Married women usually operated in workshops in the family home alongside their husbands, many of whom worked as tailors.

• French mantua makers were particularly popular, with women in London paying substantially more for gowns made by French women with access to the latest fashion knowledge in Paris.
• The famous fashion merchant Marie-Jeanne “Rose” Bertin designed many of French queen Marie Antoinette’s gowns (her detractors labelled her the queen’s “minister of fashion”).
• By the 19th century, senior dressmakers and milliners called modistes often ran their own luxury fashion houses in the West End of London.

Legacies of mantua makers

• The term “dressmaker” also came to slowly replace the term “mantua maker”.
• During much of the 19th and 20th centuries, men were more likely to be tailors and have their clothing made by tailors.

Sarah Bendall receives funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council UK and Pasold Research Fund.