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Did Women Really Wear Wet Muslin Dresses?
The story goes like this. It was “all the rage” for women in the 19th century to get wet, don a flimsy muslin gown and thus show off everything they had.
The result was women getting pneumonia, the so-called “muslin disease,” but was it real?
Muslin Dresses in Post-Revolutionary France
What is absolutely true was that there was a fashion in post-revolutionary France for simple, chemise-style muslin gowns.
This was a reaction to the opulence and excess that was part of what triggered the fall of the ancien regime.
The Merveilleuses would wear a pink bodysuit so they looked naked under their flimsy gowns. It was simplicity taken to a complicated extreme. And they had low necklines and slit skirts.
But there is no evidence that they doused themselves in water. This seems to have been satire aimed at women who were showing off their bodies to an extent previously unacceptable.
Was “Muslin Disease” Real?
To a degree, yes…but it wasn’t caused by women intentionally wetting themselves down.
But there do seem to have been incidents of women going out in nothing but one of these simple shifts in inclement weather and catching something. I.e., put on a coat, ladies. But modern women do that too…posing for photos outside in a cocktail dress.
But we can, I think, safely lay the wet t shirt contest idea to rest.