In the aftermath of the French Revolution, fashionable women in Paris briefly rejected the boned corset in favour of the neoclassical Empire silhouette: high-waisted, loosely draped muslin gowns inspired by ancient Greek and Roman dress. This radical fashion shift was part of a broader repudiation of the ancien régime's artificiality. The corset was temporarily displaced, and a new, freer female body — at least among the fashionable elite — became briefly visible in the salons and streets of post-Revolutionary Paris.

This period of relative bodily freedom coincided with the first flourishing of female Romantic poetry and the expansion of women's intellectual life in salons. Poets such as Germaine de Staël and Marceline Desbordes-Valmore found their voices in this more open cultural atmosphere. The Empire style's classical influences also shaped the language of Romantic verse, with poets across Europe celebrating liberty, natural beauty, and the unshackled body as interlinked ideals.