Introduction: Seeing dress in art -- Part I. Portraying dress. Introduction ; Artists' fashions ; In the studio -- Part II. Identifying the nation. Introduction ; Going Dutch in the seventeenth century ; Fashioning the court of Louis XIV ; Reading dress : class, character and identity in Hogarth's work -- Part III. Dressing up. Introduction ; Masquerade ; Looking east ; Addressing the antique ; Romancing the past -- Part IV. Painting modern life. Introduction ; Dressing stories ; Reigning taste : depicting fashion in the Second Empire ; Artists and fashion -- Part V. Designing artists. Introduction ; Fashioning beauty ; Reforming dress -- Afterword: Seeing art in dress.