
Discovered some excellent additions to the Civilian Extant Garments gallery on the V&A site:

Dress Coat, England or Spain, 1790-1800
Blue silk coat with cutaway front, embroidered with sprays of stylized flowers and leaves in yellow, green, pink and cream silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Dress Coat, England or Spain, 1790-1800
Blue silk coat with cutaway front, embroidered with sprays of stylized flowers and leaves in yellow, green, pink and cream silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Dress Coat, England or Spain, 1790-1800
Blue silk coat with cutaway front, embroidered with sprays of stylized flowers and leaves in yellow, green, pink and cream silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Suit, England, 1795-1800
Black wool with cut steel buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Suit, England, 1795-1800
Black wool with cut steel buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Suit, England, 1795-1800
Black wool with cut steel buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat and Waistcoat, England, 1795-1805
Mauve woolen broadcloth, linen, silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat and Waistcoat, England, 1795-1805
Mauve woolen broadcloth, linen, silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat and Waistcoat, England, 1795-1805
Mauve woolen broadcloth, linen, silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat and Waistcoat, England, 1795-1805
Mauve woolen broadcloth, linen, silk. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Court Coat and Waistcoat, England, c. 1800
Purple silk velvet coat and cream silk satin waistcoat embroidered in colored silks, possibly worn by the actor Tate Wilkinson. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

"Incroyable" Ensemble, France, 1795-1805
This double-breasted coat, with its high collar, large revers and oversized buttons, demonstrates the exaggerated style of the late 1790s. Poplin, lined with cotton, with cut-steel buttons, hand-sewn. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Boy's Skeleton Suit, England, 1800-05
Boy's skeleton suit of a pale yellowish cloth known as nankeen. The jacket has elbow length sleeves and a button through front, the trousers ankle length legs and a button through small fall front. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Hunting Coat, Britain, 1810-20
Woolen superfine cloth and metal buttons, part-lined with woven sateen and cotton, hand-sewn. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat, Waistcoat and Cravat, Britain, 1815-20
Wool cutaway coat with long tight sleeves, puffed at the shoulder, a style typical of the period 1815-20. The roll collar has an M-shape notch, introduced about 1803, and a waist seam. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert museum.
The V&A is amazing, but their collection is so extensive that some of it isn’t very well photographed. I kept running into glorious images of buttons and cuffs and such without corresponding images of the garments they belong to. But did that stop me? No, it did not.

Waistcoat, France and England, 1780-89
Silk, silver thread, silver-gilt spangles, glass beads; hand-sewn and hand-embroidered. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Frock Coat Cuff, Britain, 1785-90
Iridescent blue and green ribbed silk. These cuffs have a slit with an attached flap, but the buttons have been stitched through to the sleeve and there are no buttonholes. By the 1780s, slit cuffs were no longer functional but this decorative sleeve finishing remains a feature of men's suit jackets today. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat Cuff, Britain, 1785-90
Silk and satin. The buttons were worked in embroidery silks matching the colours of the coat, probably over a wooden base. The design is quartered; each quartering is created by a type of needle-weaving where the silk threads are laid side-by-side, then passed over and under each other. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat, France, 1795-1800
Striped pink silk, steel buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Court Dress Coat, France, 1800
A court dress coat consisting of a coat constructed of blue ribbed silk with silver embroidery forming flowers along the front edges and buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Coat, Europe, 1800-10
White wool coat with silver lustre porcelain buttons. Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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