Joanne Major

Strange as it may seem, the best idea we can get of Kitty’s famous bonnet is from a painting of two girls dressing a kitten by candlelight.

She tumbled from her horse and the press loved the idea of a fallen woman, falling. Overnight, Kitty became a sensation.

They were an item of clothing that transcended any notions of class or status and worn throughout most of the eighteenth century by all women, from nobility down to fishwives. These petticoats had a variety of uses. Usually tied at either side of the waistband, they had a gap in the side seams which allowed access to a pair of pockets worn underneath.

Horace Walpole claimed that Bolingbroke asked Reynolds to give Diana’s eyes ‘something of Nelly O’Brien, or it will not do.’

Kim Kardashian might have broken the internet but Kitty Fisher did the Georgian era’s equivalent. Kitty was a ‘celebrated’ courtesan, a style icon and the eighteenth century's version of today’s ‘it-girl.’