
As many of you know, in my day job I’m an academic librarian. That means that part of my work involves research, and as I specialize in history and, to a lesser degree, art, my research involves fashion history, both styles and social context. For many years I have been working on a research project about Turkish influence on Western European fashion in the 18th century, and that research has just been published as a book called Dressing à la Turque: Ottoman Influence on French Fashion, 1670-1800. It’s just been released and is available to order from the publisher, Amazon, and many other booksellers.
The book summarizes much of the existing research on what historians call “turquerie,” or Turkish/Ottoman-focused Orientalism, and demonstrates how the overwhelming interest in Ottoman dress strongly influenced fashion from the late 17th century through the early 19th. The particular focus is on fashion of the later 18th century, when gowns including the robes à la polonaise, circassienne, and turque were modeled on Turkish styles and huge popular. The book traces the connections between these styles and Ottoman dress and delves into their social and cultural context.
For a taste of this research and in honor of my book’s release, let’s look at five (secretly six) times turquerie has been done well in frock flicks!
Amadeus (1984)
I know you’re all immediately thinking of the scene in this film when a singer tells composer Salieri, “It’s Turkish, darling!” And indeed, many elements incorporated into high fashion referenced Ottoman dress, including:

Where did all these references come from? Let’s look at this 18th-century example of Turkish dress as seen in a stage costume, which was probably the biggest influencer in terms of French people having an idea of Ottoman dress:

We’ll be looking at real Ottoman dress in a moment, so we can compare what they’ve gotten right and wrong, but for now notice the layering (including the short-sleeved outer kaftan), tassels, and fringe.

But there are many other, less obvious, high quality takes on Turkish-influenced French dress on screen:
Shadow of the Guillotine (1956)
Honestly, a majority of 18th-century fashions were based on “Middle Eastern” dress via the dressing gown, which became the manteau/mantua, robe volante/sacque, and robe à la française/sack. However, in the late 1760s a new fashion was introduced called the robe à la polonaise, and I have yet to see as good an interpretation as in this French film about Marie-Antoinette:

The robe à la polonaise was PROBABLY inspired by the Polish kontusz, a kaftan-like garment worn by Polish men that was heavily influenced by Ottoman dress. But what they’re really referencing are two things:
The “cutaway” front, which closes at the neckline and then slopes away towards the waist:

That’s likely a reference to the Ottoman fashion for wearing loose outer kaftans that closed at the neck and then hung open in that same inverted V shape:

The Shadow gown features this cutaway line:
Meanwhile, the 18th-century polonaise was cut without a waist seam, likely inspired by Turkish and Polish kaftans cut similarly, and the back of the gown was lifted up into three swags, likely inspired by Ottoman tents:

The lack of waist seam is frequently overlooked, so I give the film props for cutting this polonaise correctly:
Farewell, My Queen (2012)
Another incredibly popular late-18th-century fashion that was inspired by Ottoman dress was the lévite. The gown itself is very complicated, because it went through multiple stylistic iterations, many of which are very distinct from each other, and honestly you just gotta read the book to get the full story. But it almost always had a shawl collar and sash:

It was inspired by a stage costume from Racine’s biblical play “Athalie,” specifically the costumes worn by “levite” characters who formed the chorus. There’s no record of what that specific costume looked like, but most biblical plays were costumed in Ottoman/Middle Eastern dress as that was considered to be “ancient”; and we do know the lead character was so costumed:

I’m pretty sure the gown in the painting on the left is a lévite based on the shawl collar and sash; it’s trimmed “à la harpie,” with contrast fabric along the skirt openings and petticoat in serrated teeth:

This film fucks up a LOT of the costuming, so color me impressed that they made this very nice reproduction of the Tischbein painting for Marie-Antoinette:


That Night of Varennes (1982) / Marie Antoinette (2006)
As mentioned above, that pesky lévite went through several transformations. There’s only three gowns that I know of that may be extant lévites, and one of them lives at Tirelli Costumi:

It’s not well displayed — I think the bodice front edges would fold back more and be continuous with the collar. It’s patterned in Patterns of Fashion 6, where you can see that the back is cut continuously without waist seam and pleated with multiple teeny tiny vertical pleats.
Because Tirelli is a costume production shop, this gown has been copied twice — first in That Night of Varennes (review coming very soon!):



Another version of the gown was made for Marie Antoinette, and I’m pretty sure it’s a different garment as the bodice front waistline is different and there’s no embroidery:



Sense and Sensibility (1995)
By the 1780s, English and then Revolutionary fashions predominated. But Ottoman/Turkish themes didn’t leave French fashion entirely — they remained a strong theme in gowns, outerwear, and headwear.
One thing you see particularly in the 1790s are over-robes that combine elements of the robe à la francaise’s pleats and the robes à la polonaise, circassienne, turque, and lévite’s one-piece (i.e., no waist seam) cut:


So it makes me happy to see these kind of pleated over-robes in Sense and Sensibility, even if they seem to wear them more as outerwear than as part of (say) an evening ensemble as well:



Want to know more about how Turkish dress influenced French fashion from the late 17th through the early 19th centuries? Want to know more about the fashions described here and why they were considered Ottoman? Check out my book!
I had pre-ordered it at CSA and it arrived already. It’s beautiful. Brava! And the bibliography!!!
Had been looking forward to it ever since you spoke at CSA (Stella Blum award??).
Here’s hoping it was another award or two …
Thank you!
I noticed “That night of Varennes” some months ago when it was in the arte-Mediathek. I loved the representation of the French stage coach which is so typical for France in the 18th century that you might wonder that nobody before or later focussed on that subject. Unfortunately the movie is very long and I had not the time to look the whole film, which in some scenes is too long. But I loved the cast especially Harvey Keitel as a foreigner in revolutionary France. But I hated the extensive number of stereotypes there too. I would vote therefore for “The night of Varennes” as the production standard was not really high and some other costumes were bad and some were OK at least. Some better costumes in my opinion could not make “Farewell My Queen” into a better film as acting was not good too and the whole project a wasted chance to represent the focus of a servant on the court and the last days of French “absolutism”. I can’t really be kind to “Amadeus” because I’m not a Mozart-fan…
Great topic for a blog post by the way…
I love Mozart!
Which is one reason I loath the film “Amadeus”. The idea that Mozart just scribbled things down while idly rolling Bullard balls is absurd and insulting. His manuscripts are full of corrections and editing… like any other composer.
But mainly I HATE the costumes… including the Turkish ensemble. It all looks like a high school student designed it. And the same designer did the same lousy crap in “Valmont” so it wasn’t a fluke.
I’m sorry you don’t like Mozart. His earlier stuff is amazing for a very young man, but his later compositions are better and fantastic! That’s why his early death is so frustratingly tragic. He was just getting even better!
Have you tried the “Haydn” string quartets, or the last 4? And “Le nozze di Figaro” is the BEST! (I’m not an operaphile either) The 2 piano quartets are also pure genius. Ok, I’ll stop nagging you. 😀
I just prefer Grétry. But I learned that maybe it is better that Grétry and all those others are not noticed so much although they made similar music like Mozart (or even more impressive operas) because they don’t have to suffer under bad representations of their lifes or on stage.
I think that in most films about composers everything is reduced to a very poor way in which the musicians get their ideas. It’s hilarious that there is even a film about Da Ponte (Io, Don Giovanni) telling the opposit of most of the other flicks that Da Ponte had all the ideas which were leading to the plot of the opera…
Forman has his own taste. You will find it in works of many directors, that they just disslike the historical costumes in one way or another and you can see the same handwriting through most of their work (at least when they are influantial enough in the whole process).
I’m halfway through Varennes and will be doing a review soon! You’re right, the coaches (especially Casanova’s) are SUPER cool! And yeah, a lot of stereotypes.
Farewell My Queen was mostly a shitshow, which is too bad because its source novel is great. That lévite is one of its few redeeming qualities.
What a great post. So interesting.
As far as men’s clothes go… is the banyan, often with a turban-y head gear for the wigless head, part of this?
Absolutely! While they were generally referencing all kinds of cultures, including the Ottoman Empire, India, and Japan, it was basically supposed to be a “Middle Eastern/Asian” kaftan/robe/garment… and the turban is definitely an Ottoman reference. I get into all of this in the book, but the short version is they were both imported and made locally and were part of the move towards (relative) comfort in clothing, lounging/loungewear, and being a worldly intellectual.
If I may add something… There was female version of kontusz (kontusik), and I suppose that’s what influenced robe a’la polonaise.
La Nuit de Varennes! We saw it brand-new in a movie theater, subtitled, and loved it. Have seldom heard it referenced since. And, congratulations on your new book, how exciting!
The clothing worn by Charles Dickens’s character Dolly Varden would fall in this category. I don’t know that there’s ever been any sort of actual frock flick with Dolly, but it was apparently a thing in Victorian England to dress as “Dolly Varden” for costume balls, where those women were referencing Dickens’s reference to the 1790s.So there might be some frock flick set in that era, with a costume ball where someone comes dressed as Dolly.
Congrats on your book! As soon as I read this post, I thought of Princess Caraboo, and its OTT Orientalist fashions. :)
Congratulations, Kendra!!!!!!
I remember your first a la Turque dress. I followed your diary closely and wanted to make one for myself. Still hasn’t happened, but I made one for one of my dolls. Ill put your book on my wishlist.