Fries Museum, Netherlands
Caraco
This post is about a fashion that is ready for revival: The Caraco.
Caraco seems to be a French word for a tight fitting jacket. In the Netherlands they are called kassakeintje. probably a translation of a French word Casaquin.
In her book about French seamstresses Fabricating Women, Clare Haru Crowston
distinguishes between a caraco and its longer version a casaquin. As with most textile terms
there is confusion and change in meaning over the decades,
National Gallery, London
Madame Pompadour at her Tambour Frame
by Francois-Hubert Drouais, 1763-1764 (detail)
longer floor-length robe, a wentje in Dutch or banyan in several languages from a Gujarti Indian word through Portuguese.
Rather than analyzing the length of a jacket here we are calling them all caracos and showing a variety from museums around the world.
Daniel Defoe in 1708 complained about the fashion for chintz in England replacing good old English wools: "Chintz from India crept into our houses, our closets, and bed-chambers; curtains, cushions, chairs, and, at last, beds themselves were nothing but calicos or Indian stuffs." To keep English people wearing English fabrics Parliament twelve years later passed a law forbidding 
About forty years after Madame P was wearing the fashion, an English periodical tells readers fashionable French women
"may give the ton to all the women of Europe" in their caracos.
The Victoria & Albert Museum has a caraco and
skirt similar to Mme. Pompadour's without the added lace trim.
They date it to 1750.
Painting of a fashionable woman in
the Netherlands in a red-ground caraco
Tapi Museum, India
A green ground chintz
Similar green ground chintz in a French museum
Metropolitan Museum in New York,
worn in the Netherlands
Another from the Musee de la Mode in Arles
The blue may once have been an overdyed green
as the yellow dyes were fugitive while the indigo
blue was not.
Fashion Museum, Antwerp, Belgium
Plum-ground chintz
Source unknown
Mme. Pompadour preferred the white ground caraco,
which is the showiest version.
And here's the showiest of the showy white ground jackets:
RijksMuseum, Amsterdam NL
These were obviously meant to be seen from the back
with images carefully placed.
Fries Museum, Leeuwarden NL
Súdwest Fryslân
The front with the closures was usually not as well planned.
Post from Natania Barron
Caracos were popular in Holland's Friesland (Fryslân), especially in a port town called Hindeloopen north of Amsterdam where the chintz wearers were considered a bit eccentric by their neighbors. The Fries Museum has a good sample of their Indian imported costumes.
Fries Museum from Hindeloopen
Colonial Williamsburg
Also in Colonial Williamsburg's collection
A longer jacket over a quilted skirt
Royal Ontario Museum
Metropolitan Museum
The front
Three different chintzes
Museu d'Història de Barcelona
Shop Selling Chintzes in Spain by
Gabriel Planella Conxello 1824
"the Use and Warings in Apparel of imported chintz, and also its use or Wear in or about any Bed, Chair, Cushion or other Household furniture".
Like most prohibitions the law, repealed in 1759, encouraged innovations in cheating, marketing and using the forbidden stuffs.
Dutch East India Company warehouse & shipyard in
Amsterdam about 1750
The history of these trade goods is another chapter in the tale of Europe's exploitation of Asia that began with Portuguese traders and continued in a rivalry between Dutch and English traders who formed commercial stock companies to govern conquered areas in the east. We'll look at this trade and the caraco's origins in later posts. (I have to read more books.).
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