The prudish Mélite, only seeming occupied with what must interest her heart the most, seeks to fix her regards in taking the air at the Palais Royal after dinner: she is dressed in a new déshabillé in the fashion of the Ladies of quality and coiffed with a hat à la Charlotte. (1785)
Palais Royal. – “There are the girls, the courtesans, the duchesses and honest women, and nobody is fooled … There one looks with an intrepidity which is only practiced by everyone in Paris, and in Paris even in the Palais Royal: one speaks up, one rubs elbows, one calls, one names the women who pass, their husbands, their lovers; they are characterized in a word; one almost laughs in one’s nose and all that is made without offending, without wanting to humiliate anyone. One rolls in the maelstrom; one lavishes looks with an abandon that always leaves women the latter; a painter would have all the time to capture a face and express it with the aid of a pencil.”
SEBASTIEN MERCIER, Tableau de Paris, 1783
Mimic of Modes 