ANG on trend, pretty and stylish Miss Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus found herself the cynosure of envious eyes when, in late-Regency London, she ‘walked out like a hussar in a dark cloth pelisse trimmed with fur and braided like the coat of a staff-officer, and boots to match, and a fur cap set on one side, and kept on the head by means of a cord with long tassels’. Grant’s ensemble was inspired by British cavalrymen’s uniforms, which, in turn, had their colourful origins in Hungarian national dress. After more than a decade of conflict against Napoleon’s Grande Armée, the military details of her walking outfit—tall boots, braiding and a tasselled cord chin strap for her hat—would have resonated powerfully with her contemporaries. In the first quarter of the 19th century, glamorous uniforms were a familiar feature of fashionable gatherings in the capital.
