unknown - Design for a Feather Skirt - 1785–1790 - T-Shirt

This is a painted design for a feather skirt, showing a bundle of white plumes rising from a pale green ground, framed by a scalloped feathered border and finished with garlands, rosettes, and ribbon bows.

Visual Elements & Composition

Sage green fills most of the sheet, and the white plumes stand out against it. A tied bundle of ivory and cream feathers rises at the centre, while garlands of small white flowers and leaves hang in swags across the field. Round rosettes and ribbon bows sit at intervals along the strands. A violet swag crosses the lower part of the sheet, and a chain of feathered ribbon runs down the right edge. A scalloped border, outlined in pale grey and violet, frames the lower and side edges.

Meaning & Symbolism

Feathers and garlands gave fashionable dress of the later eighteenth century a sense of lightness and natural abundance. Bundled plumes and flower swags were standard motifs of the period, reflecting a pastoral taste for gentle, idealised nature. The layout shows the skirt as a surface of tied bunches and hanging festoons, arranged so that trimmings could be applied in a balanced pattern. The sheet dates from about 1785 to 1790, when designs like this were prepared for trimmings and embroidery in the workshops that supplied fashionable dress and furnishing fabrics. This reproduction is based on the original painted design, which is held in the Cooper Hewitt collection.

Designed for the Tee

The design is built around repeating tied bunches and hanging swags, so it reads best when seen whole. On a tee, the central plume bundle sits at the chest, and the garlands carry across the shirt the way the original trimmings were meant to move across a garment.