I'm trying to translate a passage that refers to a woman who falls and gets a foot caught in the bottom part of the dress she's wearing. The phrase is "un pied pris dans la basque de son habit et les cotillons renversés sur sa tête."
In contemporary usage, "basque" refers to the tails part of a coat, so "basque de son habit" would be "coattails". But we know that this is a woman riding through the countryside ca. 1770, so she is most likely wearing something related to a caraco or casaquin — a long, pleated garment with skirts underneath.
Maybe "the pleats of her dress" would be serviceable, but I want to figure out what she's actually wearing and what she actually catches her foot in. So: History/fashion buffs, can you help?
In English she would have been wearing a petticoat with her habit (the upper garments would have been a waistcoat, jacket, and shirt). Likely, the way that term ended up as "tails" is that in the 18th and even 19th century the bottom portion of a mans coat was still referred to as a "skirt". So, it's not unlikely that around the time the term "skirt" was applied to women's outer lower garment (as petticoat came to refer to just the underlayer), the use of "basque" followed in a similar manner.
Best I can find is "tailcoat" but I spent this summer working on 19th century fashion at a historical society and am sure I heard a different (and better) name for it...this is going to bother me now.