Costumes of Russian Emperors and Empresses from the Moscow Kremlin funds
Anna Ioannovna

In the first half of the XVIIIth century women's fashion stayed quite stable; only changes in details and decoration of dresses, development of accessories design can be retraced. Design of fabrics' pattern was transformed each half-year by craftsmen of Lyons silk-weaving mills in France. The coronation dress of Empress Anna Ioannovna, enthroned in 1730, was executed in style fashionable in Europe in the early XVIIIth century. Having been made of pink brocade it preserved its colour only in folds. A close-fitting bodice of the gown with a low-cut neckline and very small short sleeves is completed with a wide bell-shaped pannier skirt with whalebone hoops.

Fans, having appeared in Russia in the XVIIth century, became widespread as fashionable accessories only a century later. Mounted in wood, mother-of-pearl or tortoiseshell, and decorated with paintings, these hand-held implements were worn by noble women on ceremonial and festive occasions. Sometimes fans' cloth was made of paper.