Fans were waved in front of the face to keep a lady cool in the steaming hot theatres. Some men complained that the large fans were more like windmills! They were decorated with pictures but also with verses of songs or paragraphs from popular books. (If you got bored at the opera you could always read your fan.) Ladies learned to use fan-fluttering as a signal to people watching. One flutter might mean anger while another flutter might mean love. Fans were also useful to hide a lady's mouth if she had rotten teeth. And they could wave away the foul smell if she had bad breath.
Dresses were worn over wide, hooped petticoats. These came into fashion in 1710 and went out of fashion in 1780- but at the royal court they were still being worn over 40 years later. A writer complained that when one young lady walked down the street she took up the full width of the pavement,