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designs often featuring crowns, trees or flowers.
    Stockings were usually white or black for mourning, but colours were beginning to appear, as the Chester Chronicle reports with some disapproval in 1803: ‘the only sign of modesty in the present dress of the ladies is the pink dye in their stockings, which makes their legs appear to blush for the total absence of petticoats’. Stockings worn with walking dresses were usually of a heavier weight and from 1802 appeared in brown, grey, or olive with yellow clocks.

    Le Bon Genre , c .1810. Emma is told in The Watsons , ‘nothing sets off a neat ankle more than a half boot; Nankin galoshed with black looks very well’. She replied that ‘unless they are so stout as to injure their beauty, they are not fit for Country walking.’
    Gentlemen largely wore tall military style boots for day and casual wear, but for ‘full dress’ occasions shoes were worn with white silk stockings with decorative clocks. These now had latchets to be laced over the instep with two pairs of holes, but were often made of delicate kid leather and very low cut. Little boys’ shoes followed suit being increasingly low cut to become very similar to the ballet-slipper style shoes of their sisters and mothers.
    Women’s shoes came in a variety of fabrics as well as leather and were often made to match a particular gown. Many colours were available, usually pastel. In October 1800 Jane had new shoes: ‘The pink shoes are not particularly beautiful, but they fit me very well’, and in Sanditon Mr Parker exclaims: ‘Blue Shoes and Nankin boots! ... There was no blue Shoe when we passed this way a month ago … Glorious indeed!’ Boots ranged from ankle to mid-calf and were frequently made of satin or kid leather but Nankin boots were made from a tough yellowy-brown cotton fabric, with a galosh section of black leather around the base of the foot, joined to the sole to keep the damp and mud out.
    In the 1790s shoes with pointed toes and little heels were popular; some from Italy were almost as slender as stilettos. Heels rarely exceeded 2 inches in the arched wedge and were lower in the true wedge, but had dwindled to nothing by the 1820s. Most had some form of additional decoration – ruching, lace, or a pierced design to reveal a contrasting colour beneath. These were known as sandals, as were those that laced with ribbons that tied around the ankle, ballerina style.

    Blue silk embroidered shoes and reticule, c . 1790s. The pretty netted and embroidered reticule with matching blue silk shoes came from the estate of Jane’s brother Edward Austen Knight but it is unknown if they were worn by Jane or were embroidered by her for another family member.
    ‘Straights’ had been worn by both genders since the advent of the heel in 1600, but with the return to virtually flat shoes it was easier to make designated lefts and rights. Men – especially those with military duties – were eager to adopt them, but women were less keen because, as straights were alternated between the feet each time they were worn, they kept a nice symmetrical look. For a lady a dainty small foot was an asset, especially once the waltz became popular in 1816 and hems began to rise.
    Shoe making was also a popular pastime: ‘there was hardly a lady’s work table that was not covered in shoemaker’s tools’, the Hon Mrs Calvert noted in her Souvenirs for 1808. ‘I begin a new science today – shoemaking. It is all the fashion. I had a master with me for two hours.’ And as Jane wrote to Anna her niece in 1814, ‘your Grandmamma desires me to say that she will have finished your Shoes tomorrow & thinks they will look very well.’

RETICULE AND RIDICULE

    The beautiful Madame Recamier (Francois Gerard, c . 1800) using her expensive shawl to add luxury and sensuality to a very simple muslin gown. Fashionable ladies were spoken of as being ‘well draped’ rather than well dressed, and in Paris there were those like