18th Century Dress turned into a Jacket in the 19th Century

From the seller:

Circa 18THC. a lovely Spitafields polychrome silk embroidered bodice with scattered small floral bouquets in the Damask silk..The bodice is in very good strong condition, with some age spots,some light discoloration under arms and some of the edging that only needs to be sewn back into place.


From Me:

The waist ties and the very badly sewn back innerlining around the waist are both Victorian. Why the Victorians felt the need to rip off the skirt and make this dress into a jacket, I have no idea. However, they did that quite often - I have a bodice that suffered the same fate as this one.

The way the innerling is flipped up and haphazardly sewn to the insides (ie, it's not neat at all), shows that it was cut at a later time - which makes a lot of sense if this was originally a dress. Chop off the skirt and sew everything under to make a jacket. This was originally most likely from the 1780's. You can see similar styled dresses with similar silks at Europeana Fashion and at the Chertsey Museum.