Fashion Is Art: 13 Beautiful Dresses in Art History

1. Young Women Looking at Japanese Articles by James Tissot

If there is a list of paintings of fashionably dressed women, French artist James Tissot is surely on it. Tissot’s figures are inseparable from what they wear, often with a “so-bad-it’s-good” sensibility—artificial, melodramatic, and impossible to look away. This is an early example of Japonisme, the European appropriation and reinterpretation of Japanese art and design after Japan reopened to international trade in 1854.

Tissot delights in painting every surface meticulously, whether silk, fur, lacquer, woven carpet, or wood. In this painting, he stages a contrast between the inquisitive lady in red, who steals the show, and the demure figure in white. She sports a brick-red walking coat that follows 1860s Second Empire fashion; fabrics became more sculptural and skirt volume shifted backward. Tissot shows off his skill by rendering the pleating at the hem with the exactness of high-end couture.

2. Lady Agnew of Lochnaw by John Singer Sargent

If anyone could hold his own against Tissot in the fashionable 19th century, it was American expat John Singer Sargent. After a run-in with Parisian artistic circles following the Madame X dress-strap scandal, Sargent relocated to London, where he built one of the most celebrated careers in society portraiture. He became so in-demand that the many aristocrats eager to secure one of his portraits as the ultimate power move were caricatured in newspapers as standing in a long line at the door of his Chelsea studio.

As in the case of Tissot, Sargent has been the subject of major museum retrospectives focused on his depiction of contemporary fashion; Lady Agnew of Lochnaw is widely regarded as one of his most accomplished portraits.

3. Marchesa Brigida Spinola Doria by Peter Paul Rubens

Tissot? Sargent? Peter Paul Rubens would simply say, “hold my beer.” More than two centuries earlier, he transformed portraiture with theatrical grandeur. Rubens is one of the defining forces behind society portraiture as we know it today, not only by his own hand but also through the work of his most talented pupil, Anthony van Dyck, who refined it into the ultimate grand manner portrait.

Rubens portrays 22-year-old Genoese aristocrat Brigida Spinola Doria in satin wedding finery, her face framed by a striking ruff. Her outfit’s luminous folds, intricate lace, and jeweled details leave little doubt that this is wealth and fashion at its highest level in the early 1600s.

4. Empress Elisabeth of Austria by Franz Xaver Winterhalter

Few have Photoshopped in oil better than German artist Franz Xaver Winterhalter. He is best known for crafting highly polished, idealized portraits that circulated as symbols of status across Europe. In the 19th century, industrial wealth created rising classes that needed portraits to legitimize themselves, while traditional courts used portraiture to maintain their hold on power. In short, it was all about PR and image control.

There is a treasure trove of royal portraits by Winterhalter, but narrowing it down is the hard part—so here is Empress Elisabeth of Austria. If you’ve seen The Empress on Netflix, this is the version of “Sisi” the world was meant to see—in a sweep of white tulle and silk, her famously long hair dotted with diamond stars, some of which survive today. Every detail was calculated to project beauty and imperial perfection.

5. Portrait of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud

In this legendary Portrait of Louis XIV by Hyacinthe Rigaud, the French king is basically his own brand—325 years strong. Designed to represent the king’s presence in the throne room at Versailles, Louis XIV’s coronation robe is one of the most opulent “dresses” ever painted. It is made of blue velvet and covered in gold fleur-de-lis, part of long-standing French coronation iconography.

An embodiment of his authority, Louis XIV’s robe marks his royal lineage, highlighted by an almost offensively spectacular ermine lining associated with purity and traditional French monarchy. The high heels, famously worn by the devoted dancer, elevate the king—literally and figuratively—reinforcing his stature and the extravagant artifice of the image.

6. Portrait of Costanza Alidosi by Lavinia Fontana

Lavinia Fontana was a pioneering 16th-century painter from Bologna, widely regarded as one of the first women in Europe to establish a fully independent professional career as an artist outside a royal court or convent. Fontana gained fame for her exquisite renditions of apparel, particularly fabric and jewelry, painted with almost studio-lit precision.

In Portrait of Costanza Alidosi, Fontana builds the image around a cuffed black gown, fully loaded with gold embroidery, intricate puff sleeves, and strands of pearls. This is Fontana in her element, a maximalist display of wealth and authority.

7. After the Ball by Alfred Stevens

Alfred Stevens was a Belgian painter known for scenes of modern women set within carefully observed interiors, a focus that has drawn comparisons to Dutch genre painting. After the Ball is part of a series centered on superbly dressed women caught in private moments. It presents a scene in a bourgeois residence where one woman receives a letter with distressing news and the other consoles her.

Fabrics and furnishings are as central to a Stevens composition as the figures themselves. His virtuoso command of texture and pattern plays out vividly in the interplay between the two dresses on this canvas. His paintings invite a modern reading: the looks might be flawless, but the drama is everything!

8. The Dragon Palace by Rieko Morita

Rieko Morita is one of the most respected nihonga artists working today, a 150-year-old movement that emphasizes traditional materials and subjects in Japanese painting. Her highly detailed, stylized paintings blend decorative richness and personal interpretation, rooted in tradition but deliberately reimagined.

Like this kimonoed figure that seems to reclaim Japonisme, Morita creates visually compelling images that preserve traditional Japanese aesthetics while pushing them toward contemporary relevance, an aspect also central to Takashi Murakami’s work. Rieko has had major institutional recognition, including a 2007 commission at Kinkaku-ji, the iconic “Golden Pavilion” Buddhist temple in Kyoto.

9. Rani Lakshmi Bayi of Travancore by Raja Ravi Varma

Raja Ravi Varma became one of the most important and contested figures in Indian art history by giving subjects the full European academic oil treatment. He follows the royal portrait playbook in rendering the luxurious clothing and jewelry of the Senior Queen of Travancore, a princely state in southern India under British colonial rule; red and gold identify her as a married woman of well-born status.

Varma is often criticized for giving European models precedence over traditional Indian ways of creating images, but his impact on visual culture is undeniable. In 1894, Varma established a lithographic press that sent his art, including gods and mythological figures, into wide circulation across the subcontinent. The critics can take it up with the International Astronomical Union—who named a crater on Mercury after him—alongside names like Van Gogh, Rembrandt, and Hokusai. Enough said.

10. María Cristina de Borbón, Queen of Spain by Vicente López Portaña

This 1830 wedding portrait of the Queen of Spain is the epitome of the highly controlled court image. It is full of symbols of monarchical rank, like the insignia of the Starry Cross, an Austrian dynastic order for Catholic noblewomen. For the 24-year-old fourth wife of the King of Spain, being on the DailyArt Magazine “best dressed” list runs in the family—María Cristina is the great-great-great-granddaughter of Louis XIV, proving Bourbon style didn’t skip generations.

López Portaña is meticulous, if slightly superficial, but for court portraits it was all about style over substance. You are likely more familiar with Francisco Goya, First Court Painter before López Portaña, who brought psychological tension and a far darker vision of power.

11. Sabina Seupham Spalding by Federico de Madrazo

Another Spanish court artist with exceptional skill in rendering fashion was Federico de Madrazo. In this portrait of Sabina Seupham Spalding, Madrazo handles garnet-red velvet so well, Tissot would want the credit. You might notice that Spalding is represented with books as a sign of education (she was a friend of American writer Washington Irving), but all you remember is the velvet.

Trained in Paris and Rome, Madrazo was a central figure in 19th-century Spanish academic art. He came from a dynastic artistic family—his father, José, was also a leading painter and served as director of the Prado Museum, a role Federico later held as well. The Madrazos helped shape the Prado’s early modern identity, and the painting hangs there today.

12. Self-Portrait with Two Pupils by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard

This painting by Adélaïde Labille-Guiard is both a self-portrait and a demonstration piece. The dresses, especially the artist’s striking pastel blue gown, are about technical mastery as much as social standing. Labille-Guiard meticulously renders the luminous, reflective surface of the fabric to show off her ability to represent texture and light. She fashions herself deliberately as a “girlboss” in 18th-century France: a fashionable woman who is also a respected professional.

Teaching was as central to Labille-Guiard as painting itself, and she built a large studio and trained numerous female students. Her admission to the French Royal Academy in 1783 is a pivotal moment in art history, as only four women could be members at a time. She was admitted on the same day as Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun—a rare early example of women breaking into the most exclusive club in French art.

13. Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha by Kehinde Wiley

Kehinde Wiley is an American contemporary artist known for reworking European Old Master portraits to empower Black subjects. Wiley’s Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha directly reuses the title of the 1839 portrait by Edwin Landseer, a British academic artist associated with the Victorian court.

In Wiley’s painting, the figure wears a contemporary gown designed in collaboration with Riccardo Tisci, then Creative Director of the French fashion house Givenchy, for the An Economy of Grace series (2012). Tisci collaborated with Wiley to design six couture gowns, focusing on challenging the marginalization of Black women in art history. Suddenly, the “Princess” title seems to fall short in Wiley’s 21st-century reframing of royal portraiture.