The muslin dress was the most symbolic item associated with Regency women fashion. The word muslin could be used for both fabric and dress made of it. It is plain-woven light soft cotton fabric without a pattern. It was used as a dress foundation or a dress by itself. Jane Austen exhibited her real interest in fabrics and fashion through her writing, but muslin in particular played an important role in her novel’s characters’ lives. In her novel Northanger Abbey, heroine Catherine Morland asks Henry Tilney on the first time she met him in the Lower Rooms in Bath: “Do you understand muslin, sir?” and he answers “Particularly well, I always buy my own cravats and am allowed to be an excellent judge and my sister has often trusted me in the choice of a gown. I bought one for her the other day and it was pronounced to be a prodigious bargain by every lady who saw it. I gave but five shillings a yard for it and a true Indian muslin”

Muslin went through many phases and changes through history. The first mention of muslin according to the book «The Arthashastra» (Kautilya, 300CE cited in, meanwhile the male Arabic dealer in the ninth century AH called Suleiman, that the origin of this cloth is Bengal. Foreign merchants had to come from distant lands, such as the Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Armenia, China, Malaya and the Levant to buy it. The importance of the aesthetic muslin Bengali, as stated in the book «Geography» of Ptolemy, the smoothness and the delicacy of its texture to the extent that it makes it possible to fully dress it passes from a tight loop. There is no doubt that this cloth claimed global prestige and fame for hundreds of years, where it is believed it is used to shrouding the mummies of the pharaohs. Machelebatnam in southern India and Dhaka in Bengal were known whee the best quality of muslin was made. The famous Roman historian Pliny refers to a type of Indian muslin, known as “Jahoona” which were worn by Roman women of the upper class in order to flaunt their bodies. The Romanian Empire imports large quantities of this cloth, woven with silver or silk, from India and was then known as “Kasida”. It also turns to successive Chinese empires.