Dress, French, 1760s, silk, metal thread. Length (a): 73 in. (185.4 cm). Length (b): 39 1/2 in. (100.3 cm). Gift of Fédération de la Soierie, 1950? 50.168.2a, b. The Metropolitan Museum of Art © 2000–2016 The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Western chinoiserie is often a compound of exotic elements, not all indigenous to China. This eighteenth-century dress exhibits such multiple allusions, but they have been assimilated by the technology and aesthetic of Lyonnais manufacture. Palm trees signify the foreign, and the pagoda-inspired follies—Eastern architecture transplanted to the West—are posts with tented swags.